No One Else To Do It

I was meeting with an executive director when she mentioned being utterly stressed out by this tech initiative she was spearheading. She was starting from scratch -- not her area of experience or expertise or insight. And as a bonus – she had a total aversion to the whole thing, with no interest in learning about that area other than the immediate need to find a solution for her team. Why was she leading it? 

“Because there is no one else to do it.”

Except there was. The nonprofit sector is pinched right now and capacity and resource limitations are very real, but this very thoughtful, compassionate leader’s first instinct was to absorb any outlier tasks and to-dos as her own. It came from a well-intentioned servant leadership mindset and desire to protect her staff, but the reality was that her undertaking something she was ill-suited for and outside her expertise would come at the cost of being available to doing things she was uniquely able to do, would delay implementation of a needed solution because of her lack of knowledge in this area, AND her effort to protect her staff would take from her staff an opportunity for leadership. 

So we tested her assumption. We paused and thought it through, and in fact, there were a few people who could do it (having both more capacity & more expertise than the executive director). And as we explored it further, she reflected that it actually could be a significant opportunity for professional growth for at least two. We identified her next step as raising it in a leadership team meeting to gauge interest, and sure enough she had an eager volunteer who wanted to lead this high-visibility, org-wide effort. Executive director’s source of dread converted to team member’s source of enthusiasm & increased engagement.

This isn’t to say that leaders should delegate everything or thrust new initiatives on team members indiscriminately, but before assuming there is no one else to do it, ask the someones in the room.