Legend in Your Own Mind

10/06/2010

We are, essentially, stealing from children when they are forced to train for the future instead of allowing them to play in the now. Trust in play.
Suzanne Axelsson

Readers sometimes take exception when I highlight ideas from the past. Well, today I am going to risk more comments by selecting an excerpt from an article I wrote in 1989, "So You're the Director — What Else Can Go Wrong?":

"Just beneath the surface of nearly every director is an ego struggling to control everything that goes on. Not that directors don't know intellectually that they should share responsibilities. It's just that emotionally they can't let go.

"Delegation means never having to say you're worried. But it is very difficult for a director to delegate a task and not worry that it will be done right. It requires a deliberate effort to develop trust in your subordinates, to accept that subordinates will do things differently, and to allow them to make mistakes along the way.

"A refusal to let go can have serious consequences. In the short term, it can undermine staff motivation. Staff members will be frustrated when they are not trusted to share responsibilities.

"In the long term, it can undermine the future of the organization. In a non profit center, where the organization will outlive the director, failure to develop a strong management team can leave the center in chaos when a director leaves. In a for profit center, it can handicap the sale of the business. According to acquisition expert Lisa Berger, buyers of businesses 'look for companies showing management depth that can generate profits without their master architects.'

"It takes a person with a great deal of self-confidence to put up with the plethora of aggravations and the paucity of rewards from running a child care center. But the real challenge for a director is to keep one's ego in check. Your goal as a director should be to work yourself out of a job — to build up a team that can run the organization without you.

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