Delegate, Don’t Relegate
If you want to lead others, you have to learn how to delegate with clarity and purpose. It’s harder than it seems. We work with business leaders every day and would say that 65% of the issues they face go back to problems arising from delegation. These include teammates who are incapable of stepping up, new hires who expect more direction than they realized when they hired them, and leaders who take on other people’s work because they feel “it will be easier if I just do it!”
Ah, but it won’t be easier in the long-run. All of these situations can create disharmony and major headaches in your organization. Several years ago, I improvised a little exercise to help me focus on what was important and to use with my senior leadership team whenever they reported feeling “overwhelmed” by all the things they had to do. All you need is a white board or piece of paper.
Here’s how it might work with yourself or a member of your leadership team.
Step 1
Go to the white board and list out bullet points for everything they do during a two-week period. This list often reaches into the dozens and may include phone calls with customers, preparing various reports for me, and sitting in various meetings.
Step 2
Ask the team member to go through the list with a red pen and circle the items only they can do. Examples might include preparing a weekly analysis report for me, submitting a 12-month strategy to me, or talking a major customer off the ledge. Typically, I find that out of 40 items listed in Step 1, only about five or so are circled in red. However, more often than not, it’s the other 35 things that suck time away from the five important things.
Step 3
Switching to a green marker, have them put the initials of somebody else who is better suited to the task by the other 35 things, which may include handling an HR issue, visiting a small account, sitting in on a long, tactical meeting, as well as calendaring and filling out expense reports and so on. As part of this step, I had them fill out a GreenSheet that specified with great clarity the specific level of responsibility and authority delegated for each task, including deadlines, reporting structures and follow-up.
Step 4
Finally, have them schedule the things in red on their calendar as priorities, and only then build the rest of their calendar around these fundamental things that only they can do. They might block out one full day, or an hour at the beginning or end of each day, or whatever works for them and you.
The whole exercise takes 45 minutes, but it needs to be done.
If you spend time on only what you can do, it focuses you like a laser beam on what you need to do to be successful. This is relevant to the sole proprietor or a leader of hundreds. In fact, nothing will fire up your team more than the trust you place in them by delegating the right things to them in a clear, transparent way.
And, of course, we’re here to help.
