Delegating The Right Way As A Leader
Forgive my rant…I going to say that you know about leverage.
I’m even going to say most are trying to ‘leverage’ right now
Well sometimes it’s all wrong!
I’m going to put it into context of a little story. My family and I moved into a house that was two lovely 300 year old properties knocked into one at some stage in its long history and as you would expect in such a house almost everything needs to be done.
The Chimney in the middle is the separation between the (originally) 2 properties
This takes time, which we don’t have (property business, 5 children, packing everything) so we need to sand, prep, paint, gloss and clean. On top of changing all light fittings, curtains, renewing carpets etc etc etc!
Even with 2 decorators working for a week and working all weekend its a tall order.
Think of 16 room – 2 kitchens plus 4 bathrooms and even 2 staircases.
One could in theory write a list of the colours for each room, maybe draw a plan with little arrows and say
“Please paint the walls and woodwork, make sure its a good job*. See you on Friday with the removal truck.”
Then expect to come back the property competed and everything done to your exact requirements.
It won’t!
Never!
Not a chance!
But that is how many people expect things to pan out.
A quick email to a VA in the Philippines and then leave them to get on with it for 3 weeks.
You then find out they haven’t done what you expected or very much at all – more time spent trying to understand what you want than doing what you wanted.
So leverage is great, but people see leverage as delegation and they see delegation as abdication and that is not leverage at all.
How do you prevent falling foul of abdicating your leadership?
1. Understand the task
2. Explain what is required
3. Give an example what what the results will be
4. Give them a small amount to verify.
5. Give time scales to return work – 10 minutes maybe too short, 3 weeks is too long.
6. Give 1 task at a time
Sometimes this may mean you must lead from the front, being first on site and last to leave. Always working and always ready to sort out the ‘should it be the this or should it be that’ and sometimes you have things so well documented and the right team that you can be sitting on a beach, sipping Piña Coladas.
But make sure you don’t abdicate the high-level decisions.
