PREFACE:
One reality every leader must come to grips with is the fact that you cannot be everywhere and you cannot do everything. There is just too much to be done. The art of delegating is often a difficult one to master for many leaders because at the core of effective delegation lies the need to trust. If you delegate authority to get certain things done you must relinquish the reins in that matter. If you assign someone the task of completing a function and you never fully give them the authority to become an agile leader in that arena, you haven’t delegated at all. You’ve simply told somebody to do something and you are still taking on that responsibility and leadership role. And, as is the case with most leaders, you can’t be everywhere at the same time.
Trusting others is harder for some people than it is for others. If you are a naturally skeptical person, it will be harder to trust others. It is understandable because trusting others means putting your success into their hands but you really are doing this anyway. How well people on your team work towards the achievement of team objectives will depend on how strongly they want to do this for you or for themselves. If they perceive that they are doing tasks for you, the quality of the work they do will directly relate to how much they trust and value you as a leader.
The trust and value piece will stem from how followers perceive your relationship to them. If they see you as basically unfair and uninterested in their well-being, you will, most likely, not get a very strong effort from them. But if your team members believe that you are rewarding them proportionately with respect to the amount of time, energy, effort, knowledge, skill, ability, and resources they are putting into the task you will be more apt to get better than average efforts and outcomes. Furthermore, if you have been crystal clear in your expectations, progress reporting timelines, and the processes and procedures you expect to be followed, they will reward you with focused attention to the tasks at hand. And finally, if they believe you have taken a personal interest in them and have placed your trust in their intentions and abilities, you will see them achieve excellence in outcomes. At this point you won’t have to monitor the team, they will monitor themselves. When these three steps are taken in combination with shared accountability, each team member knows what to do, how to do it, and how to accurately measure the outcomes of the process.
If you do the ground work beforehand you need to let go and let the team do its work. By stepping back and allowing the team to work as a team what you really do is emancipate them. You give them the total freedom to make things happen. If they have a context in which to do their work and if they are fully aware of what is needed, they will find a way to get it done. For at this point, they are no longer doing it for you; they are doing it for the team and for the client or customer for which the project is intended anyway.
THE ARTICLE:
DELEGATING: Good leaders realize that they have limitations. There are limitations to their time, their skills, their knowledge, their energy, and in many other areas. For that reason alone, the art of delegation is critical for the great leader. Beyond the mere capacity of an individual there is the fact that followers need to feel that they are truly needed. This can only happen when they have the sense that their skills, knowledge, and abilities are appreciated and used by the leader. So in combination, the needs of the leader and the needs of the followers are met. To effectively delegate the leader must know his or her people. It is not OK to guess and it is often not OK to simply go by what people say they can do. There are people who are not very good judges of their own abilities. If you want confirmation of this, simply watch the first few episodes of American Idol.
To delegate with effectiveness a leader must ascertain the abilities of the people. Past performance can be helpful but paying careful attention to what is going on around you is just as important. In the early minutes, hours, and days of a project, what are people doing and how well are they doing it?
At the beginning of this book, we stated that leaders need to learn how to lead based on who they are not what a book tells them they should do. Let’s take a moment to examine some differing approaches to leading. There may be as many as nine different approaches that leaders may use to move a group of people towards a desired outcome.
Some leaders may rely on establishing a common vision, mission and purpose while others may prefer to focus on preparation and tactics. Some leaders might work at building trust and common bond between team members while others might foster innovations and change. There are leaders that will zero in on responsibility and integrity while others will develop strategies and discipline. And then there are leaders that will build team synergy or focus on results or maintain consistency and conformity. And there will combinations of these but no one way is better than any other way. If what works for you is not what works for another person, so be it.
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