Q. What were some important leadership lessons you’ve learned?
A. I found early on as a manager that it was hard to learn how to delegate. I think that most people in their early leadership positions either tend to delegate too little or too much. And I delegated too little at first. I felt I needed to know everything that was going on, so I ended up doing a lot of the work myself that the people who reported to me should have been doing. I found myself working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I stepped back and said, “This is not going to work.”
So I sat down and talked to the people who worked for me, and we agreed on various goals. But then I delegated too much. When they came back at the end of the quarter and I saw what they did, I realized that approach didn’t work well, either. So I learned the importance of weekly check-ins, and then I think I got the balance right.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Deborah Farrington of StarVest, on Evaluating C.E.O.’s - NYTimes.com
