The Power of Delegation

I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to the office in time for our Fortnightly Focus at the Leadership Team Meeting, so told them to go ahead without me.

Three years ago, I couldn’t, I wouldn’t have done that. ‘Wait for me, wait for me…’. I had to be there, had to be all over it – me, me, me.

Now, we have a great Leadership Team, each of whom represent one of the key operational facets of the business – HR, Finance, H&S, Operations, Marketing … oh yes, nearly forgot, electrical installation and competence / training & development.

It takes courage to let go.

It takes trust to practice ‘the act of redirecting tasks and initiatives to other team members’.

Trust is easy (easier) with the right people in the right operational roles. The right bums on the right seats.

Here of course we are talking about ‘general delegation’, which is in fact letting people do the jobs for which they are responsible without unnecessary interference.

‘Specific delegation’ is to brief a task, project, job for someone else to action and report on, a job you would otherwise have done yourself.

General Delegation empowers the team to deliver within their fields of responsibility and expertise and to develop that expertise further in the process.

Some key criteria:

• Is the work more aligned with another team member’s role?
• Is there someone else with the information and context to do this work already??
• Would this be an opportunity for someone else to grow and develop their skills??
• Will this become a recurring process??
• Is their time better suited to the task than mine??
• Should I hang on to it for the purpose of protocol – being seen to do it rather than someone else?

Specific Delegation is to take a special project that may well be a one-off requiring research, systems and procedures and appropriate KPIs establishing to measure the results.

Some key criteria:

• Set your chosen delegate up to succeed. This is not just getting rid of a task you don’t want to do yourself.
• Provide guidance on how to get the work done, together with timescales and reporting procedures – how do you want it packaging for presentation?
• Provide tools to get the job done, priorities, goals, expectations.
• Stress the value of the task in terms of the difference the outcome may make to operations / profit / morale etc.
• Assess mutual understanding by getting the delegate to re-affirm the key points of the task or to create a short presentation of intentions.
• If you both know what you want, there’s a good change of getting it.
• Praise the success / Re-own the failure.

We will be looking at The Art of Delegation and its aggregate power over the coming weeks and months. Members of the team are following their own CPD training on the subject. And we will create a document or series to share the power ...

... now, I wonder who I'll get to do that !!!