Another Misstep but, All’s Well that Ends Well
Working with His Boss, James Applies the Steps of Effective Delegation in a New Way
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my clients who have shared their hopes and fears, challenges and successes. It has been, and continues to be, a tremendous pleasure to work together. I have learned so much from you.
Thank you to my family and friends for their support and encouragement. Special thanks go to those who read the first drafts of this book and provided very helpful feedback and encouragement: Aleta Edwards, Michael Dennis, and Frank Hagel.
Thank you to Greg Winston and Warren Farrell for providing all the initial helpful tips about publishing.
A huge thank you to my editor, Joyce Quick, for her guidance and support, and for making the original work come alive. I hope this will be the beginning of many ventures together.
And finally, thank you to my publisher, Stephen Blake Mettee, for making the decision and the phone call that made this book a reality. I look forward to sharing this adventure.
Introduction
For the past fifteen years I have coached executives to achieve their peak potential. These managers came to me with diverse agendas and goals. The problems they (or their organizations) presented to me were as varied as their job titles. At some point in the coaching process, I inevitably came to teach each of them how to improve their delegation skills. Each student of this process was grateful, relieved, and eager to try it out. But the dramatic applicability and impact did not dawn on me until one week in March of 2002.
During this portentous week I coached twenty people. As usual, each client came to me with different concerns, from feeling overworked to wanting to learn how to develop his or her people to dealing with difficult employees. It seemed that regardless of their “symptom,” the “cure” was the same: learning how to delegate more effectively.
I offer several consulting services so it is rare for me to have such a condensed experience in any one area as I did in this case. But the biggest eye-opener was to see how so many people consistently reacted to the delegation process I taught them. Comments like, “I wish I had learned this years ago!” “This will change my life!” and “Why don’t they teach this stuff in graduate school!” were common. But the most frequent comment was, “Every manager I know could benefit from this. It’s great stuff! You should write a book!” So I took their advice.
Having been in management myself, I knew I wanted to write a book that was a quick and informative read. One that gives you something you can do that will make a positive difference the minute you put it down. A book that is simple and practical, yet life-changing—if it’s contents are put to use.
May you have the same reactions to this powerful process as my clients have had. Happy delegating!
Meet Jones and James: So Alike, So Different
John Jones, Jr. and John James, Jr. weren’t typical cousins. They grew up in the same town, on the same street, next door to each other. Their mothers were identical twins and best friends who married John Jones and John James at about the same time. Amazingly, the two men had also grown up as best friends. Even more amazing, the two John Juniors arrived on the same day, in the same hospital, with their mothers sharing a semiprivate room!
Because four Johns in such close proximity created confusion, the cousins were called Jones and James inside the family. In time, everyone else used these nicknames, too.
No one knew if the cousins’ similarities were caused by identical-twin mothers. It didn’t matter; the cousins looked and acted like twins. Before they were in kindergarten, they had discovered the art of deliberately confusing family and friends. In elementary school, they perfected it. In high school, they spent almost all their free time together, took the same classes, played the same sports. They were equally matched as both students and athletes.
The cousins attended the same college and continued to show up in the same classes. They took some flak about it, but anyone who was paying attention could see that they weren’t doing these things out of some kind of dependence. The truth was they genuinely enjoyed the same things and got a kick out of doing them in tandem, so to speak.
After college, they continued the tradition of amazing everyone (at this point, no one was really surprised—just amused and curious) by marrying twin sisters in a double ceremony. They started families at the same time. They took jobs in the same company and mortgages on houses on the same block. What’s more, they both did their jobs well. Everyone was happy. Things were looking good.
And, things were good, too, until Jones and James were both promoted into management. Their offices were on different floors, so they didn’t see much of each other at first, and, for a while, each assumed the other was, as usual, duplicating his own experience. But that was no longer a safe assumption. James began to notice a difference. And it wasn’t a little difference at that. Worse yet, it seemed to be growing!
You see, Jones consistently left home after a healthy breakfast and returned in time for dinner with his family. James’s schedule was nowhere near so regular. In fact, James’s Day-Timer looked like it had been in an explosion. He often skipped breakfast in order to get to the office a little bit earlier. When he got home depended on how many fires he had to put out that day and how deep things were piled in his in-box.
Not only that, Jones still did the things he loved; he played golf, made furniture, read books about the Civil War, took his kids camping. James, on the other hand, had so many things he had to do that he seldom had time for the ones he merely wanted to do.
For his birthday, Jones’s wife gave him a Hawaiian vacation for two. James’s wife was barely speaking to him, a fact that weighed heavily on his heart and mind.
Jones looked good—healthy and fit. Probably all that golf and sunshine. He still ran three or four times a week. When James looked down, he saw a pot belly, and he felt tired more than he liked to admit. The constant energy deficit had James hooked on coffee which he liked to think made him sharp but, in the quantities he was drinking, only made him edgy.
At work, Jones always seemed to be chatting and laughing with the people on his team, and he was involved in several company and community events. He clearly enjoyed mentoring others, giving his time freely. James didn’t have any time to give. Besides, even if he could have found the spare time, he didn’t have any spare energy. More and more, all he wanted was to finish the day and