The Practice of Delegation
Not too long ago, as I was sitting at my desk working - it was so late that it was actually the regular work day for my team in Asia. This was common. I was working so many hours, that I was working during two shifts (US and Asia). My frustration was rising with the project and with my team. However, the team was bewildered by my reaction. They were doing everything I assigned to them - why would I be upset with that?
Why indeed. I had fallen into a common trap. I thought I was delegating, but instead, I was simply assigning tasks and retaining ownership of everything. It was during one of these marathon work sessions that I realized I needed to make big changes - and fast. I began to look at when projects worked, seemingly without my intervention and when they didn’t. Breaking it down, the solution jumped out clearly. There are five steps to successful delegation.
1. First, you must clearly define the task. What is it that needs to happen? What is your desired result?
2. Select the team or individual that you want to accomplish this result.
3. Third, tell the individual what’s being delegated to them. It’s also important to let other people in the organization know that this person is now responsible for the task, so they know not to keep coming to you about it.
4. Keep in place a monitoring system, so you can ensure that progress is being made.
5. And finally, complete a final review. Look for lessons learned and how things can be improved in the future.
These five steps are logical enough - the key is putting them into practice. I started with the project that caused the most work hours for me. I looked at my Asia team to determine who had the ability to lead the team on-site, then, before assigning the team member the task, I set clear objectives and goals. Successful delegation requires a clear end result.
I selected Helen for the role. She had the skills necessary as well a willingness to take on more responsibilities. After I determined the right person, I knew I had to give her the authority she needed to meet her objective. This is an important point since you can’t expect success without a willingness to give up some authority. You also can’t just delegate it and walk away. You may need to teach new skills and also ensure that the rest of the team understands this shift in ownership.
After you’ve truly delegated, you need to monitor the progress. Look at the plan. Make sure that there’s some scheduled goals and meetings to ensure that the tasks are being met. I usually do this with in 1:1 meeting. This is a schedule time for us to talk about anything that may be of concern as well as upcoming due dates and milestones. These informal discussions can provide an excellent framework for feedback. If necessary, provide some direction. Give your team the objectives and the clear goals to keep them on track. Provide encouragement. You want to boost morale and make sure that people are making progress going forward. A good way to do this is by monitoring with milestones. A subtle but effective form of monitoring is using these milestones.
Create small, interim deliverables to serve as checks-and-balances on the forward movement of a larger task. These milestones can provide a self-regulating form of monitoring, and a basis for progress reports (1:1 sessions).
What happens when you run into problems? When it comes to delegating, you need to keep it organized. Solid organization helps make sure employees know and can track their milestones. In my case, Helen started slipping on a key deliverable, so we worked closely until she was back on track. It was difficult for me because I just wanted to fix it, but I also knew Helen needed to retain authority over the Asia team - this required her to find the solution and implement it. How?
Develop a structure. If the people you’re delegating to are having trouble help them, train them. Establish the monitoring systems we talked about. Have these milestones in place so that the task can be kept on track. Keep your virtual door open. Make sure that they know that if they run into a problem, they can contact you. This extra effort should be short term and the long term benefits are many. They include not only the deliverable at risk, but the entire delegated ownership and who knows - bigger and better projects in the future. With Helen, that was the case. She overcame the short term concern and the project went on to deliver on time. Even better, I was back to just working the USA day shift!
Performance and deliverables are in your control. Are you ready to make it happen? Go to http://www.delegatesuccess.com and take the readiness quiz.