You're using a phrase that's hindering your success

“Let me know” is a phrase that is greatly hindering your ability to claim a greater amount of success and ownership of your career.  Let me explain…

Jim (not his real name) and I have been friends for almost 15 years.  We often talk of how we can take the world by storm with our many business ideas.  We have, on a few occasions, even started down the road of creating a business plan and testing the water for investors and practitioners.  Each of these exercises have fizzled out after a few weeks or months.  We often leave frustrated that our ideas didn’t deliver results and we didn’t understand why.  I’ve since learned the reason for our continued failure to launch… “Let me know” was plaguing us.

Let me know represents the many phrases that we use to place accountability or responsibility on another person.  We do this often and rarely recognize that we are doing it.  Here are two simple examples:

Sue says, “Bob, let’s go out to eat this weekend.”
Bob replies, “That sounds like a great idea!”
Sue states, “Awesome, it’s a date.  Tell me where you want to go and when you’re free.”

Boss emails, “I need you to complete this report by the end of the week.”
Employee emails response, “Do you want the monthly report or the annual, let me know and I’ll get started.”

In both of these examples someone passes responsibility to another.  In the first example, Sue could have taken responsibility to say, “How about Saturday at 8pm and you pick the place Bob.”   And in the second example, the employee could have said, “I’ll dial up a monthly and annual report for you.”

Jim and I never succeeded with our big ideas because we both fell victim to the “Let me know” game.  We expected the other person to take the lead or make the big decision or take the first leap.

Although we didn’t realize we were doing it, our subtle avoidance of responsibility and ownership killed the projects we desired to complete.  Let me know... Keep me posted... and other phrases are a subtle way to avoid work and accountability and ultimately hinder our ability to achieve greatness in what we are doing at work and at home.  The next time you think to use a term like, “Let me know”, consider how you can take more accountability to get the outcomes that you really want in your professional and personal life.

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DuVall J Laws is the Director of Information Technology at Partners In Leadership. DuVall has managed in the Insurance, Banking, Healthcare and Leadership Training Industries.  DuVall holds a B.S. in Information Systems from Utah Valley University and an M.B.A from the University of  Redlands.