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If you find that you carry most of the "emotional weight" of ensuring that work you oversee is successful - including spotting what needs to be done and assigning work - you might need to give your staff members or volunteers more meaningful roles.
If you define others' roles in ways that utilize them as "helpers," rather than giving them roles with real ownership, you'll be left having to identify, delegate, and manage every task that comes up. (Plus, you'll leave people feeling that they're only responsible for fielding the specific tasks you assign. Here's a tip on assigning clear responsibility, too.)
For instance, if you assign a staffer to coordinate your event registration and ensure that the speakers have water and the workshop rooms are stocked with supplies, she will (hopefully) do those three things. But if instead you say, "You're responsible for making sure all logistics at the event run smoothly," she'll likely do things you hadn't thought about, as well as field problems that arise that you didn't anticipate when assigning the work.
By carving out more meaningful roles, your staff members will become the ones responsible for obsessing over details and driving work forward, leaving you able to focus more attention on the rest of your job.
How do you ensure that members of your team have real responsibility? Share in the comments!
Alison Green writes for The Management Center and is the co-author of Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Leader's Guide to Getting Results
Photo from Peter E. Lee, via Creative Commons.
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