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The disastrous myth of delegation
Passing off your work to others can increase your stress.
Four simple words can strike true terror into the heart of any competent adult. “Let me help you.” If someone offers to help, don’t let them. Run. They’re trying to trick you — even if they don’t know it. Just say no. This is your brain on delegation. You see where I’m going here.
Actually, let me rephrase. Don’t let just anyone help you. Because help from the wrong person can screw things up even worse.
Functional grownups know how to turn down help. They also know better than to go around offering it all the time. That sounds weird. Because we’re so often told to delegate. To work together. Teamwork, everyone cheers. You may have heard similar mantras at your company retreat.
Your boss might love to delegate. In fact, that’s all some of them do. They sit around and come up with extra jobs for people.
Sometimes they don’t even know why. They’ll just say something like “increasing productivity.”
But most often, it’s just paperwork they don’t want to do.
For the rest of us, delegating is bad advice. Why?
