I’ve been expanding my knowledge and abilities around delegating in this last year. I consider myself an expert delegator in many ways, but there is always more to master and new things to discover. I’ve been moving myself from simply delegating well-defined tasks and projects to a world of Delegating Thinking.

I got off a call today that I had to force myself to cut short. I said to this person, “I need you to do the critical thinking on this and then send me what you’ve got.” We were working on an agenda for a meeting. I gave him some areas and ideas to think from and I noticed he kept asking me questions. I was pulled to want to stay on the line and keep answering his questions. He would have happily and expertly executed my thoughts and put them on paper in a way that I wanted. But what I really wanted was his thinking mixed with mine. I realized in the moment that the more questions I answered for him, the less of his thinking I would get.

There is more to be found about this in this article, plus other valuable ideas for how to get more out of delegating.

Harvard Business Review article, “You’re Delegating. It’s Not Working. Here’s Why.”