Delegating vs taking ownership
When you think you have a problem, you reframe it into a problem you can actually solve. And then you're faced with this:
What you want to do is to end up here:
But what does that box contain?
More often than not, solutions to problems involve doing not-so-fun things.
Delegation is the art of making the not-so-fun things someone else's problem so you can focus on what you think is fun. It's a good skill to have, specially if you're leading – because good leadership is also the art of mapping problems to teams so that when distributed over a team, the magic box mostly contains fun things for everyone.
On the other hand, it pays to do the opposite a lot of times; be good at doing the not-so-fun things so you can add value in unexpected places.
Being a consistently good team member is the art of balancing how much you take ownership of versus how much you delegate.