Christine, One of the toughest challenges of any new leader's responsibility is delegation, so you are not alone in feeling the "stress" of balancing task completion and delegation of authority. The key to effective delegation is to stop thinking about it as "removing tasks from your to do list" and thinking about it as a developmental tool. It is a leaders responsibility to develop her people by providing them with challenging work and opportunities. Once you embrace this, delegation becomes a shared responsibility between the leader and the employee. Yes, the person to whom you delegate a task has to accept full responsibility for the task; however, you as the leader maintain the "ultimate accountability" for it. With the proper guidance and level of oversight, delegation can reduce your stress and help your team develop. Perhaps a helpful exercise would be to create a "T" chart with the things you see as negatives about delegation on the left side and all of the positives (for you and your employees) on the right side. This will provide you with a more complete picture of how you can approach delegation in order to reduce your stress and enhance the development opportunities for your team members. Best wishes for your leadership success. Dr. Robert Roehrich