Every Leader knows that mastering effective delegation is key for their own success and their team development and empowerment.
Knowing that delegation is a key skill for every manager and delegating effectively has a great impact on all parties involved, we can always enhance this skill further by realizing how delegation is a mindset as much as a it is a skill.
Yes Delegation is a mindset, in fact having the right perspective towards delegation is what help delegating effectively.
Being excellent at your job or function is what made you move up to where you are today, taking more and different new responsibilities. Therefore, delegation might not be your natural response as a leader as you might be saying to yourself:
Every time I delegate we face a problem at work and I will be the one to blame.
Or you might be saying by the time I explain to them what to do I would have done the task myself faster.
Or maybe something in the arena of how they can deliver such an incomplete task or why can’t they deliver on time.
All these thoughts and others are eligible, nonetheless such thoughts will not be helpful to you or your team on the long run.
So, what might be helpful going through the process of delegating?
The following mindsets are essential to make the delegation process a success, and to be able to delegate effectively.
1- Delegation needs time and patience
Sure, it would. You will be spending extra time on the task delegated, more than if you just do it yourself. But this extra time teaching, mentoring, and directing the delegate is well spent.
Specially, when knowing that on the long run this extra time will be reduced as the delegate gets more experienced, and eventually it will be eliminated from your schedule, when your delegate gets full responsibility for the task. This means you are laying the foundation of getting the time you need the most. The time to focus on more strategic tasks on your agenda that are core to your role as the manager now.
So, when you start the delegation process you need to make a conscious decision about it. it won’t come easy, or naturally.
Secondly just Be Patient with yourself and your delegate at the beginning.
2- No to delegating just the easiest or I don’t like doing Tasks
Yes, do not fall into this Trap of delegating the easiest tasks or the tasks that you don’t like to do only. Noting that sometimes you will be delegating such tasks because they are the right ones to delegate at that point in time.
But what I am saying is if this is the norm, you will be ruining the relationship with your direct reports. People need to be challenged and need to grow, and such tasks will not help them do that.
That’s beside a very important fact that you need your team to be able to carry their weight, take ownership and be more accountable and unexamined tasks will not help you achieve that.
When people feel stagnant for a long time not developing and not growing they disengage and leave.
3- Team Expertise level and Attitude are key to what and how to Delegate
It is crucial to evaluate your team and understand where they are in terms of expertise level and the skills they acquired or already have, in addition to their attitude. In order to know what responsibilities you will be delegating to this professional.
And this applies to each one of them individually.
You can assess that by asking yourself questions such as:
Is She/he ready to take more responsibilities?
What areas that could use more development?
How do they feel about themselves and the tasks they have in hand?
How do they feel about the department and the organization?
Simply you are assessing the readiness of your team member for the delegated task/s.
4- No Success without Clarity and Follow up
We almost always we assume that the delegate knows what he/she needs to do about the new task or knows at least; what is the criteria of success we have in mind. Unfortunately, they don't. Wish that was true though.
We all are different, and we don’t think alike, in addition to the fact that the level of experience in business and life is different too. So, you must spend some time with the delegate at the beginning to
Explain the task concisely and specifically.
Explain how does the end result look like.
In the middle of the delegation process (After giving and explaining the task),
You need to Dedicate time to ask for feedback and to give feedback
Then you must follow up if there are any challenges or inquiries facing the delegate.
Towards the end of the process,
You need to keep following up and asking the delegate powerful questions such as:
What went wrong and what went right?
Check-in with the delegate if they need any help?
and how you can provide it?.
5- No to Blaming
The easiest way to ruining the whole process of delegating is to blame at signs of a mistake or unexpected results of the delegated task. Sure, this happens to all of us especially at times of craziness at work, when overwhelm gets us. In these situations, Just take a deep breath and don’t push blame on the delegate shoulder.
After calming down try to ask effective questions such that would help you and the delegate find solutions. Questions such as:
how can we solve this problem together?
What is your assessment to what happened?
After the dust settles ask questions to clearly understand what would be the areas of improvement for the delegate or the process.
6- Yes to Rewarding
To get the fruits of Delegation for example your direct report is being more empowered or is taking more responsibilities and you are getting more time towards your strategy, etc. rewarding will always be your magic tool.
So, planning how you are going to reward your direct reports is essential. It does not have to be something fancy though, it might be as simple as praising the direct report publicly or privately for noticeable achievements.
In summary Delegation really starts from within. The thoughts and believes around it is what might be stopping you or holding you back. Being a leadership coach rarely I would see the challenge is about capacity or know-how for example how to delegate, mostly it is a mindset that is holding clients back from delegating.
By Lina Ayesh
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