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“You are the biggest delegator I have,” “Bob,” the CEO, said to me during my annual review.
Usually, I would take this as a compliment. Not this time. In fact, this was the worst review I ever had in my career.
I thought I was doing really good work turning the division around. Order had been restored, and we were building momentum. The negative review was because of the past performance of the division, not the improvement.
“Why are you blaming me for mess I inherited?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we be reviewing the progress?”
Bob didn’t see it that way. That’s when he added the words about my delegation tactics.
True to his words, Bob didn’t delegate much to me. I could easily see why he didn’t agree with what I was doing.
I could see firsthand the effects his lack of delegation was having on me. I was bored and underutilized. My motivation was dropping by the day.
I could also see why Bob acted the way he did. He had spent most of his career at a large company dominated by politics.
Even though he was very capable, he had developed a lot of bad habits. One of his bad habits was not successfully delegating.
