When things get busy, you start making lists. More and more lists. Either in your head, your phone’s Notes app, a big notebook, or by leaving sticky notes in 50 different places.
These to-do items are often for you AND everyone else in your family. Your kids need to tidy the playroom before company comes over, your partner needs to remember to get the car serviced before your road trip, and you need to remember about 1,329 more tasks.
Is it “easier” to do it yourself?
When you think about your family’s organization, it probably looks a little like an octopus. Or a Christmas tree.
You’re at the top with lots of underlings beneath you, taking orders, and reporting back.
When they forget or do an incomplete job, you’re there, ready to clean it up or issue reminders. You have to swoop in to save the day yet again.
This is why you might only delegate when you’re feeling particularly organized. Or trying for the hundredth time to get more organized.
When things feel overwhelming, you ditch the idea of delegating and snap into I’ll-just-do-it-myself mode because it seems easier. At least that way you know that things will get done. And you don’t have to give reminders and feel like a nag.
SHOULD I DELEGATE MORE AT HOME?
Delegation at home might seem attractive because it’s routinely praised in the workplace. Harvard Business School says that delegating at work will free up the manager for more important work, empower employees, and boost productivity. It’s less a question of whether to delegate, but how to do so effectively.
Recommendations for effective delegation include: assessing the strengths and skills of your team, providing clear and concise directions, avoiding micromanaging, establishing regular communication, and focusing on the outcome.
While, yes, these are excellent management skills in the career world, using them at home may lead to uncomfortable results.
WHEN DELEGATING AT HOME WORKS & WHEN IT DOESN’T
Delegating at home is only a good idea if you want to be the household manager. Notice that I said “want.” Some people enjoy running all the details of the home and find pride in this work. If that’s you, cool!
Other people, however, find themselves in this role accidentally, or by default. Possibly because you spend fewer hours at a paid job than your partner.
Or maybe because you’re a woman. Women do almost 3 times the amount of child care care and household work than men globally.
When women become the default household manager because of unquestioned gender roles or differences in paid work hours, it encompasses way more than cooking, cleaning and laundry.
In many homes, these roles carry unspoken expectations that you will carry the mental, cognitive, and emotional loads, too. These require you to build and maintain friendships and community, anticipate the long list of tasks needed for holidays, research and implement strategies to manage your child’s meltdowns, remember your family’s health needs, build your child’s enrichment, and create a home that is beautiful and organized.
THE PROBLEMS WITH DELEGATING AT HOME
When you take on the role of default household manager, willingly or not, you also accept the role of task delegator.
It is now your job to figure out which tasks your partner and children are capable of completing, find the time to train them on a new task, give reminders, and ensure completion. In addition, you often handle the consequences of incompletion!
Related: why “honey-do” lists don’t work
Take, for example, car maintenance. Despite women doing almost 3 times the amount of household chores than men do, men are more likely to execute AND carry the mental load for trash and vehicle duties more so than other tasks. Certainly, this stems from gender roles that men are expected to be more mechanically-inclined. Nevertheless, let’s use it as an example.
The secondary partner takes on responsibility for taking the car for oil changes and getting it serviced. But somehow you find yourself completing the paperwork for insurance, registration, and testing. And because your partner hasn’t noticed your car is two months overdue for an oil change, you give a friendly reminder. When that reminder is forgotten, you start to get mad but don’t want to sound like a nag. So you put in the emotional work to craft your words and message in a way that your partner will receive it and not sound too harsh. Ugh!
Why isn’t this getting done?
MOVE TO AN OWNERSHIP MODEL
This scenario is so common when one partner notices, thinks, and plans, while the second partner does only the “do-ing.”
This is why, in the Fair Play world, a system created by Eve Rodsky, we recommend moving from a delegation model to an ownership model. Stop delegating; start owning.
With an ownership model, one partner takes full responsibility for a task, such as car maintenance or children’s dental care, and sees it through from beginning to end.
We call this CPE: conception, planning, and execution.
Rather than having one partner wait for instructions and reminders while the other partner does the cognitive load of anticipating, researching, and planning, one person takes ownership of the entire task.
Just imagine: a world without reminders and follow-ups. A world without having to nag your spouse to wipe down the kitchen counters or buy birthday gifts. Is it possible?
Yes, but it requires a shift in the way you and your family view the work that goes into running a home and family.
I’m Catherine, I’m a certified Fair Play Facilitator, and would love to help you move out of the delegator role and get more support from your family without feeling like a nag! Contact me about coaching packages that work for your busy schedule. Head here to get started:
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