There is tremendous confusion in leadership circles today about when to be Directive if ever. When should you use Collaboration and how does that impact how decisions are made? Finally, we all know we should be Delegating more but what we don’t know is how it should work.
One the one extreme we give someone a project responsibility and never check on the status again. The other tendency is to still micro-manage and in reality all that is delegated is the work, not the responsibility.
I have developed 4 simple steps over the years that seem to produce great results. Every situation is different and will require varying degrees of these steps but they are solid.
- RESEARCH: When I start a project, I am wanting to evaluate a leaders capability on this subject. I will ask them to do some detailed work on the topic. Some times I give direction and sometimes I intentionally don’t.
The outcome I want to see is how thorough they are, how much they grasp the content and what recommendations would they make moving forward. Fail here and there is no more delegation on this subject, but impress here and I have a project leader.
2. PROGRESS: You must avoid both mistakes of too many conversations with the project leader or not enough. It’s not fair to them for you to watch every move they make but nothing is worse than lots of work and it totally fails in meeting expectations because you did not communicate well.
So what you must do is to build feedback loops into the process. They could be on the one hand standing weekly meetings or on the other the use of some project management software like Basecamp. Bottom line for the leader you can’t just walk away.
3. AGREEMENT: Now the project is in the final stages ready for execution. One more final touch point for ensuring alignment with stated outcomes is necessary. Your are looking for the win-win outcome here.
Then fully execute the project and just be available for troubleshooting as needed. By now its 90% theirs and delegation is serving its intended purpose.
4. EVALUATION: Most people don’t want to spend the time to complete this most necessary step. You first must determine the effectiveness of the project. Do we want to kill it, change it or scale it for the future?
In addition we have invested a lot of leadership development capital in this leader. They need to hear what they did well and just as importantly how can they continue to improve their leadership capacity.
Delegation is a great leadership tool and everyday you as a leader should be asking yourself: What am I doing that someone else should be doing for me and even more important how am I intentionally developing new leaders?