After spending a substantial time doing sundry work you find yourself catapulted into an exalted position. This happens to be your first professional leadership role and you find all the eyes fixated upon you askance, for you to deliver the goods.
Running on Fumes
After taking stock you find yourself putting in 60 plus hour weeks over the past two months and you find the project has made only about one-fifth of the progress so far, add to this woe you are running on fumes, it is high time that you do something about it.
The Perks
What is a person in your position supposed to do. Well, the answer is quite straight and simple, just go ahead and delegate. You are in good luck as the perks of occupying a leadership role on a given project is the fact that you have a team with you.
Spread Your Workload
If you happen to be a first-time leader, you may find it difficult to comprehend that you have been presented with an incredibly great opportunity to be able to spread your workload amongst your team members.
A Liability
On the other hand, many view the team as a liability, another to do in their list of managing things. As an engineer, you may not find your encounter with delegating tasks to be quite a simple affair.
Reluctance
And the reasons behind such reluctance is not farfetched, it has to do with their emotions while working engineering jobs. For the simple reason up until this point, they have found themselves in the role of a doer.
New Environment
All of a sudden they find themselves in an entirely new environment, and having taken up this role they may find themselves still doing things, however, they are required to be passing on the work to other people as well.
Hoard Work
The most common mistake that first-time leader make is not being able to, leverage the team in order to effectively accomplish a project. Many a first timer engineering leaders tend to cling on and hoard the given work.
Final Words
Even if they happen to delegate the work they commit the second cardinal mistake of micro managing the situation which only leads to further alienation and resentment as no one likes to be breathed upon the neck, being a perfectionist at heart is quite ok, delegate with a mindset of service where the team’s interests are supreme while keeping your emotions at bay.
