Delegate to Elevate: Unlocking Your Potential with Others
During my first couple of years teaching I ate alone during lunch, I sat by myself at FFA events and felt alone singing “All by myself, Don't wanna be, All by myself anymore”
I was working myself to the bone trying to make all the things happen on my own. Why? Because that is how I thought it needed to be done.
How very naive of me!
I’ll be honest it took me a while to realize I didn’t have to feel this way. I didn’t have to feel alone in my classroom, as an advisor, and most specifically with all the tasks on my to-do list.
If you actually did all the work on an Ag Teacher’s plate by yourself I think it would be a 24 hour/7 days a week/365 days a year job with more work to do.
It doesn’t have to be this way if you implement one thing into your career. Asking for help.
But, you might be saying…
What do I even ask for?
What can I even ask for help?
What if people say no?
Those are very valid questions that we have crowdsourced the answers to. Because we get it, asking for help is an acquired taste that a lot of us overachievers hate more than the taste of Vegemite or Robitussin.
In this blog post, we’re sharing three tips that you can use as you start customizing your career by maximizing delegation.
Three Tips to Customizing Your Career by Maximizing Delegation
1️⃣ Just do it
People can say no, and that’s ok.
Make a list of tasks that you have to do. Then categorize them into “I MUST DO” (like purchase orders, field trip forms, or grading) and “THINGS OTHERS CAN DO” (like coaching teams, proofreading proficiencies, dinner reservations for nationals)
Then start asking!
You might find that some of these tasks can be done by your officer team! (ex. Sending thank you cards, making phone calls, managing social media accounts, writing emails)
And maybe even involving young alumni in college who can virtually help! (ex. Coaching CDE teams, judging CDE teams, proofreading applications, big event clean up/take down, recruitment presentations, young alumni guest speakers)
Help doesn’t have to be in person! (ex. CDE coaching/judging, guest speakers, monetary help, officer application judging)
2️⃣Pick your levels of involvement
While some things require more experience and authority, there are plenty of levels of involvement for delegating in the FFA world.
Here are some examples of differing levels of involvement for help!
Low: We all know that food gets kids to show up to everything! So use your local senior citizens at an old folks home to prepare food and beverages for FFA meetings!
We each have those end-of-the-year banquets that require set up and clean up, so get a group of parent supporters to bring their students early and stay after to help. Need a guest speaker who might not be nearby?
Guest speakers can show up to your classrooms “virtually” from anywhere through an online platform like Zoom! The sky is the limit on low-level delegation.
Medium: As you get closer to award application season, use your community and industry professionals or advisory council to proofread papers/award apps, have college students Zoom (for mentorship, or to train teams), in-person guest speakers to motivate your members, send letters for financial or physical sponsorship at a banquet or for an award/scholarship.
High: Don’t coach it yourself, let the expert do it! Have a community coach prepare your CDE or LDE teams. Have someone transport or drive your students to contests/road shows and chaperone overnight trips.
3️⃣Learn from it
When you ask for help and delegate to others it is truly a learning moment.
You might realize that it didn’t work out so well or it knocked your socks off. All of these outcomes from delegating tasks are opportunities for you to learn! That might mean learning how to do the task better or even learning how to delegate more effectively!
Here is the truth: Some people are better at certain things than you. You are not an expert in everything you need to do as an ag teacher. Good news, you don’t have to be!
When you decide to hand over some control to others you might just learn a thing or two from those people. This might look like delegating a CDE team to an expert coach, delegating a guest speaker to teach about a certain topic in your classroom, or delegating copy editing of applications to an English teacher or friend who LOVES writing.
In all of these scenarios, you are attached to the event or outcome of the delegation. You will be present at some CDE practices so you are learning alongside the students, you are listening as the guest speaker teaches your class and you get to review the copy edits of those pesky applications.
As you observe and reflect on those instances you are gaining knowledge in those areas that might have caused you problems in the past. And you will be better for it instead of avoiding that work or hating it the entire time you struggle through it.
It is also important to reflect on your delegation. You need to learn what is worth delegating and what isn’t.
One thing you need to keep in mind while delegating is you must teach the expectations to the people you are delegating to. Yes, that even means if you are delegating to an adult like an industry member, student teacher, or Alumni member. You might realize that some delegated tasks were almost too much work for you to delegate (like how hard it is to sub-plan when you are sick and you tend to just go to school anyway).
Take time to reflect upon those delegated tasks and ask yourself:
“Did this help lighten my load?”
“Did the work get done to a satisfactory level?”
“Would I do this again?”
If the answers are mostly yes then delegate again!
If the answers are mostly no then think about reworking your delegation strategy (maybe change who you delegate to or up your training/expectations for your helper) or decide to delete that activity (if possible)
At the end of the day if you don't know something yet or it is something that others could do just as well as you, delegate and learn!
