 In this week's Engineering Manager 80-20 Shorts video, I was lucky to speak with Anya O'Dwyer. Anya is a civil engineer and the CEO of Innovate Engineering in Anya. You've done some amazing things in your career so far, including building your own engineering company from a couple of people up to 20 people. And I know that in order to do that, you have to delegate effectively. You have to give work to others, which is something that all of us as engineers struggle with. So what I'd like you to talk a little bit about in this video today is how did you delegate? How do you do it effectively and how do you continue to get better at it? Start right off the bat by saying it's one of the hardest things to do. It's hard because you're delegating things that you actually want to do. There's so many technical components and like there's times where I have to force myself to hand things off and I want to get into the details. I mean it's my natural tendency. So it's something that I am constantly learning, but I'm also constantly aware that I have a natural tendency to do it. So for me, I mean I surround myself with people that I know and trust that I can delegate these things to do, for them to do them and assign them. But then I still have this tendency to want to follow up. So I try and put kind of management techniques in place where how can I delegate something but not be a micro manager and trust that people are doing it. But it's like I am constantly working on that because my natural tendency is to want to open that spreadsheet and dive into it. And I get so much joy out of setting up formulas and thinking things and like I can't do that. There's so many other bigger more important things that I need to get done. So it's a struggle but I'm constantly working on it. And I think as engineers we'll likely always be working on it throughout our career. I think you just kind of have to recognize that and continuously work and manage that process. It does sound like though from what you said there is something that is interesting is that you know there's things you can certainly work on like the actual process of you know delegating to someone and maybe setting expectations and breaking a task down for them. And like you said then you know balancing between micromanaging and maybe laying off too much. But another thing you said there was you know kind of surrounding yourself with the right people. So you know and in your position I'm sure you know with hiring and things you have some of those some of the abilities to do that where if you find the right people and you build the team with the right kinds of people with the right talents and the right people skills then the delegation process I'm sure will just be easier because of the you know because of the interaction. So I think that's something that's an important kind of takeaway from what you said there is. I think the delegation process itself we can continue to work on a streamline but the people that you're working with to begin with I think play a huge role there. Yeah I mean they play such a big role and you know it's about hiring the right people but then it's also about recognizing what you know what are the strong talents and points of these people right. Like and I'm I constantly try and work on that you know there are some people that I work with that you know anything say administrative or you know paperwork things like that they will they despise it they hate doing it. So you know I try to be conscious and maybe push that to someone else that that gravitates a little bit more towards it and so it's about surrounding yourself with the right people recognizing you know what value they bring and where they can thrive and what you know what makes sense to kind of have those people work on but then it's also it's a coaching them too right and kind of you know I can assign responsibility to someone but if they don't know what they're doing or a lot of times if they don't know why they're doing it right then it's just another task that they're receiving and so from my experience you know I mentioned earlier that I'm the kind of person that you know I like to be empowered and given responsibility and so if I was just given a task and asked to do something sure I can do it but when I'm told why I'm doing it and the impacts it will have and maybe where it feeds to the wider chain so I try and recognize the people that really need that and coach them and work with them and you know it's a there's a lot of aspects to it I think you know when you are a delegation and surrounding yourself with those people I mean you know just trying to be aware as much as I can is something that I also try and work on