Delegation

The most common reason leaders give for not delegating is because they can do it faster or better than their team. This will often be the case as one reason individuals move into leadership roles is that they were high performers in their area of expertise. 

However, this is where the shift from team member to team leader needs to happen. Yes, perhaps you, as someone with a very high level of expertise, can do it better and faster, but you're failing your team for several reasons:

• You're not providing them with the experience to grow and eventually obtain your level of expertise by doing it for them.
  
  
• You're taking time away from your ability to work with team members one-on-one to help them grow.
  
  
• You're not focusing on systems, processes, training, and other initiatives that can help the entire team do their job quicker and better.
  
  
• You're taking time away from other important tasks like planning and quality assurance, so lower quality products of team efforts may result.

A great example is copy editing for the content writing team. A Senior Copy Editor could easily make the changes themselves, but then the writers will never learn to recognize their own common mistakes. In this example, the writer is not improving and, utlimately, the Senior Copy Editor has to take more time to copy edit because the same mistakes are being made over and over. Once the Content Writer learns to recognize or correct their own mistakes, everyone's job is easier and the Content Writer has become a better writer.