|
|
Delegation: A critical facet of leadership
The challenge
In almost all coaching assignments I undertake, at whatever level in an organisation, at some point in our discussion the issue of delegation raises its troublesome head. Most of my clients are preoccupied by it. Few feel they have mastered it. For many of these business leaders, their failure to master the skills of delegation represents a serious impediment to their upward career mobility.
Effectively, in hierarchically structured organisations, all jobs are a form of delegation. Unfortunately, this natural cascade of authority and challenge down through the organisation is often unnecessarily blocked by a combination of fear and lack of trust.
Delegation is best defined as a state half way between instruction and abdication. When you delegate you allocate responsibility for specific task along with the requisite authority, whilst at the same time retaining overall accountability.
The benefits
The advantages that accrue from effective delegation are numerous. The most obvious benefit being that of releasing time and allowing you to feel that you can at last get your head above the waters. It gives you back the time you need to think strategically and adopt the necessary broad, long term perspective. A critical facet of leadership is this ability take time out to stop and think, reflect, review and analyse, an activity which those who can not delegate, rarely find sufficient quality time to do properly.
With the hurry worry of the overload that is the consequence of poor delegation, comes stress and potential burnout. This energy draining pressure on your time and personal resources can spill out into other areas of your life, creating a downward spiral. With effective delegation comes not only the personal benefits of significant stress reduction, it also generates job enrichment for both you and you team members.
An important benefit of delegation is that of personal and career development. For the leader, many of the required coaching, influencing and communication skills are the very same skills which are at a premium at the highest levels of the organisation. The job enrichment experienced by the subordinate is also likely to enhance their career development and generate increased motivation and morale.
The practical demonstration of trust provided by delegation directly encourages initiative and commitment. The truth is that good people thrive in settings that are more open to risk than regulation. It is only poor performers that tend to be comfortable in undemanding roles.
The most telling point, however, is that a mastery of delegation is essential to a full and effective transition from management to leadership. In the excellent book “The Leadership Pipeline” (R. Charan, S. Drotter and J. Noel, Josey-Bass, 2001 – for a detailed summary of the points covered in the book, click on the following link: http://www.personalbusinesscoach.co.uk/extra24.html), the writers identify the inability by leaders to change the way they structure time as they progress higher up the organisation as one of the principal causes of career derailment. Following a similar theme, Lauren Keller Johnson (Harvard Business Review, July 2004, Volume 9, Number 7) points out that managers “manage details (for example, by solving direct report’s problems). Leaders manage people by encouraging a sense of ownership and responsibility among subordinates. By envisioning themselves as leaders, managers become more comfortable and open to delegating tasks initially and to passing monkeys back to their owners.”
The barriers
Sometimes, leaders simply avoid delegating. Others accept the necessity to delegate, but their application of it fails to deliver the expected results. Reasons for avoiding delegation are mostly around fear and perceived risk. These fears include loss of control, loss of power and possible job impoverishment. There is often the fear that the subordinate’s mistakes will reflect badly on the leader or, more perversely, he/she would feel threatened by his/her subordinates success.
Reasons why delegation fails are more complex. They include lack of planning, poor communication and lack of trust. Sometimes, leaders simply mistake delegation for dumping, passing on only undemanding or tedious tasks. At other times, delegation fails because leaders fail to offer the necessary support, training and development and thereby leave their subordinates floundering and destined to fail.
More insidiously, delegation often fails because handing over tasks that we feel comfortable doing, and perhaps enjoys, means that we will have to face up to more challenging and demanding tasks. That is, under-delegation keeps us in our own personal comfort zone and helps justify task avoidance. It is an uncomfortable fact that, for both leader and subordinate, personal development, career development and growth involves committing to and embracing tasks which stretch us and, consequently , have the capacity to make us feel uncomfortable and more than a little vulnerable.
Finally, it is sometimes the culture of the organisation itself that undermines delegation. This is especially true of organisations which venerate the idea of the heroic leader. Where leadership is required to be transformational rather than transactional, the pressure for the leader to perform and have all the right answers can be intense. In such a context it is up to the leader to deliver, followers can sit back and be passive onlookers. Experience tells them that, somewhat like with managers of premiership football teams, as the organisation’s unrealistic expectations remain unmet, the current hero is likely to be replaced by another.
When not to
It would, of course, be a mistake to believe that delegation is appropriate in all situations. Some tasks should never be delegated. Such task would include: performance reviews, strategic planning, employee discipline, employee development and communication. Equally, what we would call the “ritual” activities that are often associated with leadership should never be delegated. These are those sometimes frustrating and time consuming activities where the leader’s presence as a figurehead is important.
The rules of effective delegation
The rules of effective delegation are mostly common sense. They are, none the less, worth going through and being reminded of in some detail.
We would recommend that before embarking on delegation, the wise business leader should start with a careful analysis of his/her time and the tasks he/she currently undertakes. The purpose of this essential first step is to establish where the leader is currently spending most of his/her time and to be ruthless in identifying all those tasks that others could do just as well or, at least, sufficiently well.
It is important to remember also that people often need to be prepared for delegation. Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership model informs us that different employees will be at different stages of readiness for delegation. For those who are not used to delegation, it may be more effective to pass on responsibilities progressively, moving bit by bit from “telling”, to “selling”, to “participation” and then, finally, to full blown “delegation”. The important point that the Situational Leadership model teaches us, however, is that the speed with which we can move to full delegation will differ from person to person and, indeed, from task to task. The implication, therefore, is that you need to know your subordinates as individuals. You need to know their capabilities, motivations and interests, so that you can tailor your management style appropriately.
This also implies that when delegating you need to match tasks carefully to people. It is also much better if you delegate whole tasks and be sure that you obtain acceptance from the person concerned rather than simply imposing.
It is obvious that, for any delegated task, you need to agree clear objectives and timescales, and that you need to be specific about the end results you require. Most people are now aware of the importance of SMART objectives. That is, objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. It is surprising, therefore, how often this is either not done or is done badly.
As well as agreeing the specific deliverables, a successful outcome will be much more likely if you take the time to paint the bigger picture and explain why the project is important. Here at Inspire we also like to stress that, whenever agreeing performance objectives for a delegated project, you and subordinate should also agree specific learning objectives. That is, how specifically will the subordinate increase their knowledge, skills and experience as a result of delivering the delegated task.
Having agreed clear milestones, the next step is to hold regular reviews. There is a happy medium to strike here. It is all too easy to give into the temptation to micro manage. We advise business leaders to learn to let go and view these meetings rather as coaching opportunities. Instead telling and instructing, the leader needs to lean to ask questions. Of the many tools and models we use when training coaches, two are worthy of specific mention here. The first model, Kolb’s Learning Cycle, suggests that you should first start with questions that encourage the subordinate to reflect on what they have done so far, what went well, what went less well and what they could have done differently. Then, and this is an important step, you should get the subordinate to make sense of and generalise, from what has happened to date, principles and theories of management that they will subsequently apply to the task under consideration. The objective here being to improve this or her competence, confidence and the quality of the work undertaken.
The other model we like to use is these contexts reminds us that when people are faced with new and challenging tasks they tend to move from conscious incompetence, to conscious competence, to unconscious competence. It is your job as leader as to coach, guide and support them through the process. The more you are there to offer support and challenge in equal measure, the more likely your subordinate is to succeed and grow in confidence.
Finally, coaching approach to delegation means delegating things that stretch the person concerned. This means cultivating independent thinking, providing the necessary resources (including, when required, training and development), treating mistakes as learning opportunities and giving constructive feedback.
In short, the more you view delegation as a coaching challenge, the more likely it is to be a success and to repay your investment many times over.
|
|
