Volunteer Report

Learning to Delegate

By Mary Beth Beckman

I find myself with an enviable problem: as Sheer Dance’s volunteer production team grows, so does its complexity. One of the goals of Sheer has always been to have a large volunteer team with an even larger pool of writers and photographers submitting content. As we take the slower summer months to work out the kinks and suffer the growing pains, my mission as Executive Editor is to become a better manager.

Sheer Dance started as a bit of a two-man show, with a clear division of labor: the other founding volunteer, Nicholas Westlake, was responsible for design, layout, and the website; I did everything else. When you’re a perfectionist with a high degree of skill in a rather esoteric field, this arrangement is both satisfying and utterly unsustainable as a volunteer. Being unable or unwilling to delegate is a direct path to burnout, which is just another word for failure.

In the May 2015 issue, I wrote about preparing for the future in the specific context of my volunteering. People who have followed my writing for a few years won’t be surprised to hear that, in many ways, I write to learn. The process of writing shakes loose many of my sticking points as I confront my own weaknesses, insecurities, and trust issues, and the process of writing that article helped me let go of my need to do it all myself.

Because the truth is that I’m not special. I’m not the best editor in the world or the state or the city. I’m not the only person with the combined skills, experience, ambition, and volunteer spirit to do excellent work. The more I can loosen my white-knuckled grip on this magazine, the freer it will be to grow and thrive. I can add more value to Sheer Dance as a manager than I can spreading myself too thin over many jobs that should be divided amongst many volunteers.

I know how to do it all, but that doesn’t mean I do it all well. In fact, there are a great many pieces of the production of Sheer Dance I’m kind of terrible at. That isn’t a failure on my part; the only failure was in doing these tasks so long when they weren’t well suited to me. At the same time, I believe managers should understand the work of the people they supervise, so none of that time or effort was wasted. I will be a much better resource for the other volunteers because I’ve done these things and understand them. And because, to some degree, I was only ever making do, I trust and expect that the new crop of volunteers will do it better than I did. Once they’ve acclimated to their roles, they’ll streamline and take ownership, and the quality of the magazine will improve because of the unique contributions of every person involved in the process.

None of this is lip service; I don’t say things I don’t believe. Sometimes I just have to practice writing it out to see how I really feel about something. If you hadn’t guessed, that’s what I’m doing now, and I’m pleased to discover that I have the utmost faith in all of our volunteers. I thought Sheer Dance was something special before, but soon it’s going to be downright amazing, and I’m excited to facilitate this flourishing by being an excellent manager.

Delegation is the first of many managerial skills I’m working on. Trust that you’ll hear about other skills in future issues. Until then, I welcome your insight, critique, questions, advice. Shoot me an email; give me your thoughts.