64. No job beneath you
I was chatting with a few friends who are executives at various sized businesses, and I was surprised that we all agreed that, of the many different skills that we look for in candidates (and professionals for that matter), one of the key items is the ability to be independent operators. A key factor in such independence is the mentality and perspective that there should be no job that is “beneath” them.
Over delegation is a major issue in corporate america. We’ve built up this perspective that as we level up in rank we are somehow immune to doing the dishes or taking out the trash. No, in fact, as you level up, you have more of a responsibility to ensure that such chores are done well.
1. Ego is the death of productivity
The perspective that “oh my time is better served doing higher level thinking” while accurate in some cases, is often not what drives effective work product. My friend, you need to know how to do the job before you can delegate it. It takes work to understand how a task is done. Obviously you can’t take this to extremes (I’m not going to figure out how), but if you have to (repeatedly) do the task ultimately, then the delegation made no sense in the first place.
Listen, I get the allure of being able to delegate items with the hope that you don’t have to worry or handle about it later, but that’s not how leadership works. We always hear these anecdotes that “so and so leader delegated everything s/he did and was able to accomplish so much,” but the bulk of successful leaders are not that person. The bulk of successful leaders became experts at the “low-level” tasks and understand who was equally successful at accomplishing that task to their standards.
2. Organization solves a lot of it
I’m guilty of this as well, I have responsibilities that span multiple areas so that causes me to slow down and things can definitely get messy, but I do still attempt to keep things organized. You would be amazed what a todo list can accomplish for your life and even the smallest tasks that are completed can drive your own personal performance.
I’m not going to state the obvious, make a list, do the list, check the list, and do it all over again. That said, maybe I can help with knocking out the little things for you. Keep sub-todo lists, only items you can fit on a single post it note. Don’t get overwhelmed by writing everything you need to do, just prioritize and take it one step at a time.
3. Every task is an opportunity to win
On occasion I will ask more (or less) of someone to gauge their capabilities. Someone I worked for would say “you would be surprised, if you ask a lot of someone, they’ll rise to the challenge.” I think that messaging should be taken with a grain of salt, but have found for the people I like to be around, this is true. Rising to the task doesn’t need to just be “up” in your perspective.
Go get those rebounds and assists.
