This is Part III of a six-part series about leadership for engineers preparing for their first professional leadership role.
You’re in your first professional leadership role and all eyes are on you to deliver the goods. After two months of 60+ hour weeks you’re running on fumes and the project’s only a fifth of the way done. What’s a person to do? Delegate.
The good thing about occupying a leadership role on a project is that you have a team. For some first time leaders, however, they may not understand the great opportunity they have to spread their load to those on the team. Instead, the team becomes just one more thing that they have to manage.
Many engineers find their first encounter with delegation to be anything but simple. Why? Emotions. Up to this point, they’ve been the doer and now they are in an entirely new environment where they may still be doing, yet need to pass on work to other people so they can be doing. Instead of leveraging team to effectively accomplish a project, many first time engineer-leader’s horde the work. Or worse, micromanage the work that is delegated. [Read more…] about Why Delegating Will Make You A Better Engineer
