More than One Way to Reach Your Destination

I heard this amazing singer songwriter last week and I keep hearing her songs in my heads. Her name is Sarah Potenza and she has been on both The Voice and America’s Got Talent. One of her songs is The Road to Rome. She talked recently about writing it and how she had come across the story of the ancient Romans building an amazing network of roads everywhere they went, so much so that roads from every city eventually led back to Rome. This gave rise to the famous saying ‘All roads lead to Rome’, which we often say today to mean there are different paths and ways to reach the same goal.

This struck a chord with me. Different paths to reach the same goal. In supervisor training, we talk about delegating your task and letting it go. Essentially, letter your team find their own way. Delegating can be tough, but Marcia Zidle from the Management Library, shares these thoughts:

• Ensure that the person has the time to take on the responsibility and has the training and resources to succeed.
• Communicate the rationale and benefit.
• Identify the reason for the task and how it will contribute to the goals of the hospital or department.
• Set clear goals and expectations, then let it go.
• Give information on what, why, when, who and where, but leave the “how” to them.
• Provide support, guidance, and instructions.
• Point team members to the resources they may need to complete the task or project.
• Take personal interest in the progress of the delegated task.
• Request to be updated on the progress of the task, but do not be intrusive.
• Evaluate and recognize performance.
• Evaluate results more than methods. Analyze cause of insufficient performance for improvements and recognize successes as soon as possible.

Letting go can be the hardest part of the delegation process, but the only way to empower others is to let them find their own path, remembering that we are all on our own Road to Rome, and there are many ways to reach the same destination.