*article by CEO Sarah Riegelhuth

I wrote a little piece on my personal blog last week that's inspired some thoughts worth sharing with you.

What I'm best at as an entrepreneur is staying focused on the bigger picture.

If we, as the leader of our companies, are not focused on the big picture... then who is?

One of the casualties of small thinking is a disempowered, and disengaged team. Why?

Our inability to delegate.

Delegation, training and trust goes hand in hand with big picture thinking. A leader focused on the long term vision of the company will always (almost always!) take the time to hand responsibilities off to their team, so they can continue to steer the ship and look ahead.

When, as leaders, we take our eye off the horizon and get too deep into navigating the current waters, we often fall into the mindset of "I'll just do it, it's faster if I do it".

This thinking will cripple our growth.

This thinking will disengage our team.

This thinking will result in a high level of personal stress for us.

We'll start to believe the story that only we can do it, that our team are not competent, that the business and our clients need us at every turn.

None of this is true.

Our team are just as competent and capable as us (in their specific area of expertise), and we will become far more competent and capable of steering the ship and ultimately reaching our destination, if we take the time to handover, delegate, train, trust and empower our team to do their role.

This is a practice. We don't become good at it overnight, and there is one simple thing we can do each day to help us remember to delegate.

Review your to do list.

Each morning take a look at your list. What's on there you don't want to do, don't enjoy doing and could be done by someone else. Use the time you would have used to complete the item to hand it over to someone else.

If you're interested to find out how terrible of a delegator you are right now, take a look at your to do list in this moment. Scan it and ask yourself if anyone else could do each item as you look down. Observe all the reasons in your mind why you need to be the one doing it.

Question those thoughts! Are they real? Is it true? And no, your situation is no different to mine, the excuses are all just our monkey mind stopping us from 'changing', protecting us because with change comes the unknown, and the unknown means potential mistakes and failures.

Guess what? Mistakes and failures are ok.

We make mistakes and failures all the time here, and guess what else? We're still standing.

Remember it's impossible for us to become great leaders, and grow great companies if we're unwilling to make mistakes, step out of our comfort zones and empower those around us.