When was the last time you did something for someone? Probably quite recently. But what was your reason for doing so?
As a leader people come to us for help, often to show them how to do something. It’s because we probably used to do it ourselves, we’re somewhat of an expert at it.
But, because we’re now in a different role, we have even more responsibility & our availability is less. So, when we get asked to show someone how to do something, we make our decision based on time.
Your inner voice (yes we all have one!) probably goes something like this, “It’s going to take me an hour to explain this, it’ll take me 20 minutes to do it myself. Tell you what, I’ll do it now, then next time I’ll explain it, yeh that’s what I’ll do.”
Sound familiar? Yep.
So instead of explaining, you set about doing. So much faster, right?
Or is it?
I bet if you look back, reality is actually the same person coming back multiple times, after the same thing. They then get the same response. I wonder how many times they come back? I wonder how many times you do the doing?
Probably a lot longer than 1 hour.
So saving time is a myth.
Spending an hour, explaining & teaching someone a task, is far faster than taking the 20 minutes to do it yourself. Why?
Because you don’t do it once do you! You do it over & over again, because you’re always ‘busy’. So you’re just doing it once multiple times!
In a bitter sweet irony, you become so good at doing it for them, they come back for more. They even tell others who come to you, because you’re so accommodating. You’re actually creating a culture of Learned Helplessness (more on that another time).
Taking the hour, saves you time.
By the way, it also creates self sufficiency in that task, for that person. That then enables them to teach others that task, which saves you even more time!
Willa Cather once said, “There are some things you learn best in calm, but some in a storm.”
Take the hour, embrace the storm.
That’s leadership.
The Myth of Saving Time.
