Delegation in practice
Not long ago I was working at my desk and realized that it was so late that it was actually the regular work day for my team in Asia. Unfortunately, this was common. I had begun working so many hours, that I was actually working two shifts (US and Asia). I was growing increasingly frustrated with the project and with my team. The team however was bewildered by my reaction. They were doing everything I assigned to them. What could I be upset about?
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, clearly define the task. What is it that needs to happen? What’s the desired result?
2. Second, select the team or the individual that you think can best accomplish your desired 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. Maintain a monitoring system, so you can ensure that they’re not getting off-track.
5. And finally, complete a final review. Look for lessons learned and how things can be improved in the future.
The key is putting these five steps into practice. I began with the project that was causing me to work so many hours then I examined the members of my Asia team to determine who had the ability to best drive the deliverables per the plan. Before assigning the team member the task I set clear objectives and goals so everybody understood what results were expected.
I found that Helen had strong skills and a willingness (as well as bandwidth) to take on additional responsibilities. Now that I had the right person, I had to provide the authority needed so she could actually achieve it. This is a vital point. Trying to retain authority while expecting her to deliver will never work. You may also need to teach her how to do what you want her to do. You can’t just delegate and walk away. You must ensure that the rest of the team understands this shift in ownership.
After you’ve delegated, you need to monitor progress. Make sure that there are some scheduled goals and meetings to ensure that tasks are being completed. I usually do this in a 1:1 meeting. This is a time for us to talk about upcoming due dates and milestones as well as anything that may be of concern. Provide feedback and, if necessary, direction. Give your team clear objectives and goals and then provide encouragement to keep them on track. Boosting morale helps make sure that people are making progress. A good way to do this is by monitoring milestones.
Often, it helps to create a series of small, interim deliverables that will serve as checks-and-balances on the progress of a larger task. These milestones can then be used as a basis for progress reports (1:1 sessions).
What happens when there are problems? The key is organization and follow up. Make sure you know where they are in the process and that they know and can track their milestones. In this case, Helen got behind on a key deliverable. To head off the problem we worked together until she was back on track. It was difficult for me personally, because I just wanted to fix it. In the short term, it would have been much faster. However, I needed Helen to maintain her authority over the Asia team - this required her to find the solution and implement it. But how?
Structure. If the people you’re delegating to are having trouble, help them, train them. Establish the monitoring systems we talked about. Have milestones in place that will keep the task on track. Make sure they know that if they run into a problem, they can contact you. This may seem like extra effort but it will be short term and the long term benefits are many, including not only the deliverable at risk, but the entire delegated ownership and, who knows - bigger and better projects in the future. As for Helen, 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!
Ultimately, 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.