Are you a control freak? Do you like to make sure everything is done perfectly? Do you quickly take work from someone else because “it’s faster if I do it”? If you are honest with yourself, would you say you try to have your hands in everything? If you answered yes to any of these, you may either be an unknown control freak or a recovering one like me.*
As I was thinking about my battle to let go in many areas of life a few ideas came to mind which I hope you find valuable.
Recognition
The first step to dealing with a problem is recognizing it. This may require getting feedback from others who will tell you the truth.** The biggest sign I see both in myself and in clients I work with in helping them develop their leadership is the temptation to do everything.
I understand it is quicker to do it yourself, but let’s think about this on a personal level. Imagine you take an hour to train your children how to do the dishes even though it only would take you fifteen minutes to do yourself. How much time will you ultimately save by them doing the dishes over the next number of years? 
The same applies professionally. Leaders frequently express concern about the time it may take to equip another employee. First, recognize you may have a control issue of wanting the task done exactly how you do it. After you have accepted the potential of that, then think about equipping another person which will build leaders for your team/organization while freeing your time for responsibilities more aligned with your role.
Know Your Real Job
In his book Procrastinate on Purpose author Rory Vaden interviewed successful entrepreneur Troy Peple about managing time. During the interview Peple stated:
“My job isn’t to do; my job is to make sure it gets done.”
Vaden described how Peple had become so good at delegating that people worried if he was doing the work. As the leader you see the job and organization from a much higher level. When examining what you do there are some essential questions we will cover in the next section. One helps determine if this is really your job to do.
As an aside, this is not a statement of being above a job, but a question of if you do this daily is it the best use of your time. Good leaders are willing to do any job.
Each of us may not have the same ability to delegate as Peple, but what we can learn from this statement is understanding his real responsibility was not to do all the work. I would guess he had learned to tame his control freak as he saw the value of letting go. Let’s explore how you determine what you do need to keep on your plate and control.
Three Key Questions
When I do masterminds helping professionals apply the principles in John Maxwell’s book Developing the Leader Within You 2.0 we discuss priorities. In this section John challenges us to answer three critical questions. These questions will help us prioritize and determine what our primary job is as the leader.
- What is required of me? – Among all the responsibilities you have, what must you do. Peple would say casting vision is his number one job. Depending on your organization this and maybe a few other items are what are required.
- What gives me the greatest return? – If the task is not giving you a great return on your time maybe it would be better to let go of control and give it to someone else or not do it.
- What gives me the greatest reward? – Not all of us can operate in this area depending on the stage of our team/organization. We can get clarity on what we enjoy doing the most and this can give us clarity on why we are trying to control it. If we enjoy it, we may not want to let go of it, but does it serve the overall vision?
The Role’s Requirement
In this final section, allow me to get nerdy for a brief minute. There are three skills leadership require: technical, human, and conceptual. All three are required but depending on your role more of one may be required than the other. Knowing which of these is required helps determine if you are controlling areas you should not be.
Let me illustrate, the skilled worker who becomes a manager may try to teach his team to do everything exactly like he or she used to. In this new role more time needs to be dedicated to building people and looking at the bigger picture. Micromanaging the how of what your people do may frustrate them and not tame the control freak within.
So where do you need to let go of control? Need an outside thinking partner to help you discern where you may not be leading as well as you could. Contact me and let’s set up a time to think into your results. We all fight this battle and we all can improve. Lead Well.
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*As an aside years ago I read a book called The Control Freak by Les Parrott which not only helps with dealing with control freaks around you, but also the one within. A small recommendation if you want to dive deeper in this topic.
** If you want tips on getting or giving feedback you can go here for the first part of a short three-part video series.
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