Are you too busy doing to take time to Lead?

Leaders need the time to lead; delegating tasks and activities to our people can create that time.  Yet we don’t put as much thought in the opportunity for our people to grow and learn from the jobs we assign them.  Skillful delegation allows us a forum to sell our message of excellence, team building and an opportunity to develop their skills valuable to our teams.  If you have been following the other ISIQTM Coaching Tips, you may have been wondering how to use some of the data learned through the ISI interview questions. Here is a good chance to align your charges to take on more responsibilities with your need for more time to reflect and lead. It makes it a lot easier to assign the grunt work when your charges truly feel you are teaching them to grow, learn and up-its-game while you are upping yours (sorry, couldn’t resist).    So much for the background, since these are condensed tips we will attempt to distill this skill to its essence.

Suggested strategy:

The six cornerstones to delegation are:

1. Determine which tasks can be delegated.
2. Identifying the best person to whom to delegate.
3. Determine how to delegate the task.
4. Determine the amount of authority to delegate within the task.
5. Determine the most appropriate method of monitoring.
6. Determine how much direction and support to give.

Cornerstone 1. Now honestly assess everything that you do.  Literally write down all you are responsible for.  Your task is to take 3 items that you currently do not delegate or delegate a portion of and put them in a new list.

Cornerstone 2. It is the systemizing (Science) of these steps coupled with your intuition (Art) that insures that your assigning of tasks is true coaching. Next time you identify a delegation/development opportunity grab a piece of paper and write the names of the people you would like to develop.  Then on a scale of 1-5 rate each person on the following criteria:

1. Competence: their knowledge and skill to perform this task.
2. Motivation: their interest in task or activity.
3. Self Confidence:  Do they believe they can do it?
4. Developmental Opportunity: Does task/activity support their developmental goals or your goals for them?  (This might be the most important)
5. Capacity:  Do they have the time to do this right?

When you add your scores, you now have a better idea of how to proceed. You may consider “weighting” one of the scores to reflect your own beliefs or ideas of what is most important.

Take a deep breath and assign the jobs to the person best suited to them or their growth.


QUOTE:  True delegation means giving up what we like to hold on to- the authority… and holding on to what we’d like to give up- the responsibility.