Why Leaders Have a Hard Time Letting Go

When you first started your business, you were probably a one-man show. You had the capacity to not only be the business owner and do what you love but to also do everything else your business needed—from marketing and sales to operations and human resources.

However, over time as your business grew and started demanding more, you’ve probably noticed that what was once easily manageable has turned into a never-ending to-do list that has not only halted your business’s growth but has also disrupted your work-life balance and led to you feeling more and more burnt out. And, even after bringing more people into your business to help, you still feel overwhelmed and like you should be accomplishing a heck of a lot more than you are.

For most small business owners and entrepreneurs, this struggle is all too familiar. The issue stems from the fact that many leaders struggle to let go of their tasks (even the small ones) and this can keep businesses from ever reaching their vision. However, learning to let go is one of the best ways a leader can help their business continue to grow and break past that ceiling so that they can continue to become bigger and better.

Why Do Leaders Struggle to Let Go?

Do any of these sound familiar?

• It will be faster for me to just do it by myself
• Other people can’t do it as well as I can
• It will only take me a few minutes to do
• I don’t think anyone else on my team knows how to do it

If you’re like most leaders I’ve worked with, you’ve probably said a few of these excuses to yourself before. However, that is exactly what they are—excuses. The truth is, while it might be faster for you to do it by yourself right now, or in the short term, it is actually taking away time from other important things you should be doing for your business. And when you spend your time on tasks that someone else could be doing, you’re actually just making life harder for yourself. By delegating those tasks now, it can actually save you hours of work down the road and reduce the amount of stress and burnout that you feel.

However, that’s more easily said than done—right? Learning to delegate is one of the hardest things to do as a leader because it requires trusting others. You know that you can’t do it all, but the struggle is in actually letting go. Taking control out of your hands and putting it into someone else’s. Empowering your team to make decisions themselves—even if they don’t do things exactly the way you would have.

Why You Need to Delegate to Elevate Your Business

While it may be scary to not know exactly what everyone on your team is up to and doing without your direct involvement, delegation allows you to get back to the point where your business is getting the most from you!

And it doesn’t mean giving up on doing the things you love to do in your business. When you have the right people in the right seats in your business, delegation created the opportunity for you to hand over the tasks that aren’t entirely right for you and give them to someone who excels at them. When you delegate correctly, it allows you to break through the ceiling that was holding your business back and elevate it to the next level because each member of your team is doing exactly what they are best at and making it so that it is not just up to you to get it all done.

Even I have struggled personally to learn to let go, but by overcoming that hurdle and by letting go of things like my calendar and email to my assistant, it has given me back time to add more focus and value to my clients. And by letting go of my marketing to a partner who knows more about it than I do, it has allowed my business’s messaging to have more impact when connecting with potential clients and provide more value to my network.

Ready to Learn How to Delegate? EOS Can Help!

The Entrepreneurial Operating System’s Delegate and Elevate tool is designed to help business leaders learn how to delegate effectively so that they can find more time and focus on the important parts of their business. If you’re ready to start letting go of what’s holding you back, let’s connect and see how EOS can help you!