Doing all by yourself is never an option, but in particular is not advisable when you want to boost productivity for you and for your team.
Today we will focus on delegation, a fundamental tool available to every manager, whose effectiveness is essential for the achievement of professional and operational objectives: allows you to increase the amount of work that is done by the team and you as a manager to focus on team management and more strategic aspects.
Remember that work we all carry out on a daily basis is not a score to play alone but an orchestra to coordinate, which is only possible if part of the instruments is played by others instead of you.
How do you land to delegate? Let’s say you should do it in advance as part of your work, but if you did not plan for it, just keep an eye on the first symptom of the need for delegation is the fact that you have too much work to do and that you are unable to achieve the assigned objectives not due to inability but due to lack of time.
How to delegate in an optimal way then?
- Focus on goals: Start by clarifying the result you expect to the people you want to produce: knowing what is demanded is the absolute pillar of any delegation action. Assume that you know what you want, whoever receives the delegation to act for you does not necessarily know. You need to spend part of the time to best convey the goal to be achieved. Do it and will be a clean run, don’t do it and will most likely end up in a messy situation: not being clear leads to not understanding each other and to fail objectives.
- Delegating is not forgetting so control and address: Once you have assigned the task(s), establish the controls that allow you to monitor progress and quality you expect and identify the scope limits to be applied: the delegation must by its nature be specific to one or more activities and must be contextualised so as to allow tracking of its progress. Delegate “generically” and you will simply see your project fade away without being able to correct it in time.
- Delegating requires supporting: Provide adequate support to those who receive the delegation but avoid falling into the trap of resuming the activities yourself at the first difficulties: supporting the awareness of the delegated person and the responsibility to obtain the result is a factor and a positive reinforcement of behaviour. Moreover becomes an enabler of future delegation opportunities. Remind your employees that asking for help when you are in difficulty is not a form of weakness but awareness of your limitations and accountability on the final result
- Recognise the results: When the result is achieved, give it due recognition. People behave based on a willingness to see their effort praised, so, once you end where you wanted to be, take time to reinforce the achievment.
