Stop Drowning, Start Leading with Effective Leadership Development
An alarming number of leaders feel they are losing ground each day, unable to keep up with the wave of overburdening workloads, deadlines, and expectations. The toll on productivity, morale, and health often goes unrecognized until a crisis hits. Equally alarming is that, in some cases, it is self-induced. Many leaders take on assignments, unnecessarily retain work, or fail to delegate when opportunities exist. Granted, in this do-more-with-less culture, leaders may have fewer leadership development resources, but overworked managers often fail to understand what true delegation is and cannot delegate even when they do.
Leaders who don’t delegate cannot manage, as desperation becomes the norm. The added stress and anxiety flow from the leader’s desk to the staff and set the entire organization on edge. Conditions around the team worsen as attitudes, engagement, efficiency, and profitability degrade.
Many leaders view delegation as a sign of weakness, an inability to handle the job, or something done out of desperation. However, delegation is a strategic tool leaders use to make the most of the available manpower to clear tough obstacles. Leadership development can help leaders learn to delegate, offering them relief and equipping them to manage at their best, ultimately best for everyone.
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Categorizing Work to Delegate
If piles of work are spilling over on your desk, your last thought might be how to redistribute some of the work, but this is exactly the thing to do. Do it while you still have clarity of mind and grasp of the projects. Skillful delegation builds team unity and accountability as people pull together to achieve a goal and help each other improve.
The baffling issue may be where to begin. The pile of work looks overwhelming. The first step is categorizing and separating it into two groups: one that cannot be delegated and another that can. As a leader, you certainly have assignments or tasks that must be handled at your level with your experience, connections, or authority.
However, many leaders are surprised by the amount of work on their desks that lower levels can handle. Some of it may be busy work, manual work, revising work that has already been done, or tasks that can be done with the experience and skills of a staff member. This is the group of tasks that are candidates for delegation. Will it take a sizeable investment to sort through your piles to make these determinations? Of course, but you will find the investment well worth making.
Workload priorities must also be taken into account. As Jayson DeMers, CEO of AudienceBloom, writes in an article for Inc.com, develop a priority system for tasks. What is essential, and what can wait? Delegating hotter projects may give you enough time to catch your breath and resume a more normal routine sooner than you think. Another tactic is delegating simpler, quick work and allowing yourself to tackle the more complex with better focus.
Seasonal businesses offer experienced leaders some predictability to periods of higher expected workload, so it pays to make other staff members available for delegated tasks based on a calendar. Plan for those before the rush hits.
Releasing Control
Some leaders misunderstand the nature of delegation. They believe they can abdicate responsibilities when staff members are handed assignments originally on the leader’s desk. The employee is now on their own to deal with the favorable or unfavorable outcome. This abdication is not what delegation is about.
An organization still holds the leader responsible, regardless of whose hands actually performed the work. Leaders who try to dodge responsibility by pitching work to others soon experience many negative consequences, including distrust and disloyalty from their people.
Most delegation hesitancy occurs on the other side of the control spectrum, where leaders are unwilling to relinquish control. As Jesse Sostrin, PhD, describes in HBR, overextension fuels an instinctive reaction to “protect” work. Leaders who keep the workload to themselves often believe that somehow, delegating work reduces their importance, or at least how superiors perceive it.
Ironically, delegating work puts a leader’s control into action through decision-making, task coordination, and goal achievement. The more work is reserved for leaders, the less it actually gets done, which doesn’t reflect well on a leader’s state of control. Leadership development can help leaders see they can break their control-clutching behavior.
Another control-related reason leaders choose not to delegate is the perceived time and effort needed to train or bring employees up to speed. It seems too inconvenient or remedial for someone at their level to do, and it feels too much like a sacrifice of control. Leaders who can deemphasize their sense of control and turn their attention to solving problems resist delegating less.
Learning to Trust
When a leader delegates a task, they risk the assignment not getting done exactly as expected. This frightens some managers into thinking the employee’s results won’t meet their personal criteria, and the simple way to avoid this is not to delegate.
Bordering on the control theme, this concern stems from a leader’s lack of trust in the employee’s abilities. Leaders who doubt anyone can perform a specific task as well as they can severely limit what their team can accomplish. A leadership coach focusing on leadership development can help mitigate this mindset with one that empowers employees to prove themselves.
If the employee’s skills aren’t fully understood, the leader must correct this. Fortunately, this is relatively simple to address. If the leader does not believe in a specific employee, they may find delegating easier if they monitor the employee’s progress.
However, monitoring doesn’t mean smothering or micromanaging someone. People need the freedom to work and use their skills and benefit from leaders who only occasionally verify how they’re doing. Periodically inquiring about their progress is a fair tradeoff for debilitating, pestering distrust.
Keeping knowledge to oneself is not the job security anchor many seem to think it is. Knowledge is not power. Rather, power is harnessing the staff’s collective knowledge. Leaders succeed by teaching and trusting people and allowing them to contribute in ways they couldn’t before. Encourage growth and suggest ways to make improvements.
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Following Up with Feedback
A critical aspect of delegating is what occurs after the task is finished. This is the delegation follow-up stage, which includes feedback.
Whether delegated or not, the project assignment should come with a clearly communicated set of expectations. The feedback should focus on how the employee met those expectations. Employees who meet expectations deserve appropriate praise for their success. Giving people recognition and thanks for their efforts keeps them engaged and willing to do more.
Conversely, when expectations are not met, constructive feedback is necessary. This is a considerate discussion of the improvements needed while pointing out the positive things that took place. Leaders who can give instructive feedback while expressing consideration and thanks earn employees’ trust and guide them to improvement.
Nothing causes your people to dread delegation more than your unfortunate response. When they dread it, the result of their work suffers accordingly. This, in turn, causes you to dread it, and the cycle spirals down.
As an expression of humility and openness, ask your people for their feedback on your delegation methods. Can your style be better? Leadership development helps improve dialogue in the delegation relationship and makes you a better leader. Remember that each employee may have a slightly different approach to feedback and discussion. Knowing them personally gives you the best advantage.
Your goal is to have a staff that welcomes delegated tasks so they can be better contributors. Many leaders find this the most free way to be better delegators; when the process yields two-way success, the organization is better suited to manage high workload situations. Make delegation a welcomed tool in your arsenal and raise the production level for you and your staff.
Creator of the KASHBOX: Knowledge, Attitude, Skills, Habits
Helping You Realize Your Potential
I help people discover their potential, expand and develop the skills and attitudes necessary to achieve a higher degree of personal and professional success and create a plan that enables them to balance the profit motives of their business with the personal motives of their lives.
