The first-time manager that needs to learn how to delegate

This story is about Capri Mammoth, a first-time manager learning to set his team and himself for success in this new configuration. Each of Wave’s clients is known as an alias to preserve confidentiality. Each alias is granted randomly and is a coloured animal.

When Capri Mammoth came to Wave, he was going through a transition period. He was moving from an operational position to a manager position. He needed Wave to help him embrace that change and make more time for strategic topics. Indeed Capri Mammoth felt he was constantly running out of time to reflect on long-term topics as he was still focusing too much on the operational aspect of his job. After a first exchange with Wave, he realized he needed to delegate more. However, this was something difficult to do for him.

After answering some guided questions, it appeared to Capri Mammoth that his sense of perfectionism was blocking him a lot. He also understood he had difficulty letting go of the doer position as he was associating “doing less things” with being “less useful” to the company. And beneath this feeling, was lying the fear of losing his central place within the company

Before moving forward it was important to understand better those fears and difficulties. Wave shared a reference book on perfectionism with Capri Mammoth that turned out to resonate a lot with him. He felt understood. Wave also shared specific exercises on fear settings to better understand what it would take for him to lose his place in the company. Putting his fears on paper and analyzing the worst-case scenario reassured a lot Capri Mammoth. It helped him make the difference between reality and the thoughts that were going through his mind. It helped him reflect on solutions as well. Another topic showed up though. Capri Mammoth felt he also had a trust issue regarding the fact his team members could be up to the operational tasks he was used to doing. Again, together with Wave, they dug into the roots of this lack of trust. He realized he needed to better set the ground for his team before delegating.

In parallel with this investigation on blockers, Wave shared resources to Capri Mammoth to nourish his reflection and find inspiration on how to delegate more. He delivered concrete exercises to identify which tasks to delegate and how to slowly but surely, decrease Capri Mammoth's involvement in the operations. Finally, the last step consisted in helping him anchor his new habits on delegation. The consolidation phase is often the most difficult part. But thanks to different tips and exercises about how to keep those new habits running in the long term, Capri Mammoth felt confident that the new dynamic he was in was going to last.

At the end of his coaching, Capri Mammoth said talking to Wave helped him be aware of his difficulties in delegating and face the problem once and for all. He also told us that the resources and frameworks shared on delegation helped him be more clear on what he needed to delegate. And that he understood how to better prepare and brief his team so they can take over a significant part of his operational topics.