Accomplishing Through Others
Several years ago, I was tired after a particularly long week. We’d been under a deadline and trying to wrap up final tests for a feature. It had been a bumpy week, to say the least.
One of our tests revealed a bug we needed to fix. Being the (newly minted) senior engineer on the team, I thought I needed to be the one to fix it. I spent the week juggling this fix while trying to keep up with my other work in flight. I got through it but was exhausted after the effort.
The following week I mentioned how tired I was, thinking the rest of the team would feel the same way. And while they agreed it was a long week, they seemed much more rested than I was. I was surprised and asked why. One engineer said politely, “Well, you sorta kept us from helping.”
Ouch.
That helped me realize that “doing it all yourself” is not only a bad idea for your mental health but can also keep others from learning, growing, and accomplishing important too. I needed to learn how to delegate. I needed to learn to accomplish goals through others.
I’ve learned a lot since that week several years ago. And while I still have more to learn, I’ve been practicing this idea in four key ways that I wanted to share. If you follow me on LinkedIn, this will sound familiar to a few posts from last week, but with more depth and…
