Charles Fallon, President, LIDD Consultants Inc.
In the professional world, especially within project management and consulting, there’s a common fear that keeps many of us from truly delegating: the fear of mistakes. Whether you’re a newly promoted project manager or someone stepping into a leadership role, you might find yourself thinking, “If I want something done right, I should do it myself.” But mistakes are inevitable. They’re a natural part of growing a team and building leverage. And if you’re not okay with that, you might be holding your team back as well as stalling your own growth.
The Fear Of Letting Go
Imagine this: you’re a great consultant, promoted to team manager, tasked with overseeing a team of analysts and the pressure is on. You’re worried that if they mess up, it’ll not only affect the client but also make you look bad. It’s easy to fall into the trap of micromanaging or holding onto the work. After all, taking the time to train someone else can feel like a burden, and it seems faster and more efficient to just get it done yourself. This is a classic situation that many professionals face as they move up into management roles.
But here’s the reality: Mistakes are a feature, not a flaw. If you’re going to build a successful team, you need to be comfortable with the idea that things will occasionally go wrong. It’s only through trial and error that your team members will learn and improve. You’ll have to take a step back and embrace the fact that not everything will be perfect, and that’s okay.
Building Leverage: The Ultimate Goal
The goal in any professional services firm or business is to build leverage. Let’s break that down. As a sole practitioner, the number of hours you can sell is limited by the number of hours you can work. But when you build a team, your one hour of work becomes multiplied by however many people are on your team. Suddenly, your impact and potential revenue grow exponentially.
That’s the power of leverage. And the only way to achieve it is by investing in your team. You need to shift your mindset to see delegation not as a necessary evil, but as an investment in your firm’s future. When you train someone, you’re not just passing on tasks—you’re creating the opportunity for your business to scale and thrive.
Turning Delegation Into A Daily Habit
For managers and directors, this concept needs constant reinforcement. As you begin to manage others, it’s easy to fall into the habit of doing everything yourself. The instinct to execute tasks rather than delegate them can be hard to break. But you can’t scale if you’re doing all the work.
The most successful managers understand that delegating tasks—no matter how small—should be a top priority. This includes not just delegating major projects but also the smaller, day-to-day tasks that often get overlooked. Training your team to delegate and creating systems for them to follow is crucial to long-term success.
Mistakes—They Will Happen
An important aspect of creating a high-functioning team is ensuring that people are comfortable making mistakes without fear of punishment. Often, managers feel that if something goes wrong, they’ll be held responsible, and that fear leads to a need to control every detail. However, this mentality creates an environment where mistakes are punished, not learned from.
Mistakes are a part of life. They happen when people are working hard and in good faith. It’s crucial to differentiate between mistakes made out of negligence and those made under pressure or while doing the best they can. In professional services, as a team leader, your job is to catch and correct those mistakes early. However, the goal isn’t to eliminate them entirely, it’s to manage them effectively. Clients, in fact, like to see you admit to a mistake upfront and present a plan to correct it rather than try to cover it up or ignore it.
Leading A Successful Team
There’s a myth that the most successful people are those who do everything themselves. These “superheroes” seem to take on every task and responsibility, but in reality, they’re often not accomplishing much—they’re simply overloaded. While they may appear busy, they’re typically stuck in a cycle of overwhelm, on the verge of burnout. Constantly taking on more work leads to gridlock, not progress.
What looks like productivity is often the downfall of those who refuse to delegate. True success lies in the ability to leverage the skills and efforts of others. By learning to delegate effectively, you can break free from burnout and unlock your team’s full potential, achieving far more than you ever could on your own.
The Bottom Line
As you climb the ranks in your career, you’ll face the inevitable challenge of letting go of tasks and responsibilities. The fear of mistakes, the reluctance to invest time in training and the fear of losing control are all natural hurdles. But if you want to build a sustainable business and create a truly productive, high-functioning team, embracing mistakes and letting go of control is the only way forward. Training your team is not a burden; it’s an investment in your own ability to create leverage and achieve long-term success. Let go, embrace imperfection and watch your business—and your team—grow.
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