Learning how to delegate

My first manager task

I’ve been what corporations call an “individual contributor” for my whole career. I take tasks from my managers and do them well. If they want an article, I write them one. If they want a deck with our 2024 strategy, I put one together. If they want a video filmed, I’m ready with my camera.

Being an individual contributor is great. All I need to do is manage myself. Having done so for 28 years, I think I do a pretty good job at it. I can manage my own pace, push back on deadlines, and even take time off without guilt because nothing needs my sign off. I often see my managers reply to emails when they’re on holiday. Or see their disheveled faces when a team member asks them for a raise and they have no budget. I always think, “I don’t envy their job.” I don’t know if I ever want to be one.

Alongside my day job, I have a gay job. Last week, I picked up co-leading my company’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group, which is basically a queer club within a company. I’ve led student societies before but it was not as big of a deal as this. Definitely never co-helming a team of twenty across Asia-Pacific.

A task came across my inbox today. I was to update my Pride event calendar, a task that was assigned to me under the previous co-lead. I was about to do it myself until I remembered — I have a team now.

I opened up our team chat: “Hi! Looking for 1-2 folks to update our event calendar. It’s pretty simple, I promise! Let me know if you’d be open to it.” 

I was worried that there would be no takers. After all, employee resource groups tend to be voluntary in nature. The people who prop them up are also often older and more senior than me. But in the context of the Pride group, I’m the co-lead. I have the authority to delegate tasks. If I took the team’s load onto myself, the workload would be unmanageable.

Thankfully someone replied in a couple of minutes: “Hi, I can do it”.

Phew! That was close. I sent her the details, emailed some other folks to sort out her access, and held in a grin. A colleague in charge of the centralized event calendar sent her a how-to guide and she’s all set.

I just did my first manager-adjacent thing! Me! And updating the event calendar isn’t my responsibility anymore!

Low-pressure situations are looking to be a great place to pick up managerial skills. Earlier this year, I had to learn how to have a tough conversation. Several folks in my writing group approached me in January about a disruptive participant. As the unofficial leader of the group, I consulted my gurus

Rik

and

Lavinia Iosub

for tips on how to deal with this tricky situation. In the end, I “ejected” that person hopefully professionally and without being rude.

I still don’t know if I ever want to be a manager. But now that I’m presented with several opportunities of being a part-time manager, I could continue putting skills such as project management, resource allocation, and having tough conversations into practice. 

Speaking of… I just received a directive to cancel one of my Pride events. I had already booked in a speaker and already had a brainstorming chat with them. Usually one of the leaders would talk to the speaker to cancel, but oh look, the new leader is me. Having this hard conversation is my job now.

I guess I’ll be learning this manager thing faster than I thought.

Thank you to friends who helped shape this essay:

Josh Ponelat

,

Chao Lam

,

Christin Chong, PhD

,

Dominik Gmeiner

, and

Lavinia Iosub

.

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Update log:

• 📖 Reading Crypto Confidential by

  Nat Eliason
  (36% completed). This book is hard to put down. It’s very reminiscent on my own early conversations during the crypto hype in 2021.

• ✍️ Logging my stories into

  Rick Lewis
  ’ All My Stories web app. This is going to be super helpful for an ebook (!!!) that I’m putting together.

• 🛂 Wrote a guide on how I made an electronic Indonesian passport in South Jakarta.

• 💪🏼 Exercised 5 out of 7 days last week. It would have been 6 if there was no typhoon passing last Friday.

• 🤑 Great personal finance podcast episode from Ramit Sethi, this time he’s the guest on the Prof G pod.

• 🎥 On the YouTube channel: Simple monthly Plotter A5 setup.

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