A recipe to avoid delegation breakdowns

By Olwyn Merritt & Alyse Ashton

One of my clients voiced his frustration that one of his team members hadn’t delivered something he expected.  He sighed “Surely it’s basic management  and I should have it under control?” In my view delegation isn’t basic. It is fundamental to leading teams. Over the years I’ve noticed to two particular derailers.   Firstly, you think you both share the same understanding of what is required, but you don’t.  Secondly, you’re not clear if things are progressing well and you start meddling.

So how can you set your team members up to succeed?

One way of tackling it is to use ‘Closed Loop Delegation’.

There are 3 ingredients: Set clear expectations, build shared understanding and communicate progress and performance.

1. Set Clear Expectations

Take time to share & clarify your expectations. This is a two-way conversation where both of you:

·         Clarify what success looks like.  What do you want to achieve?  Why is it important?  Are there any constraints (or non-negotiable aspects) that you need to share?

·         Agree how much detail the person needs – if they are experienced, just share the outcome and give them freedom to tackle the task. Someone less experienced will need more detailed task direction (see our previous post Trinity Rule).

 
2. Build Shared Understanding

Test that you have shared understanding of the outcomes you want and encourage them to share their ideas and thoughts e.g. What is your understanding of the result we need to achieve? What are your thoughts about how we want to tackle this?

3. Communicate Progress and Performance

Create a clear deal so that you can give them space to act.  Without this, you may find yourself checking up on them – a sure way to leave them feeling micro managed and distrusted.

• Ask yourself: what do you need in order to feel confident to leave them to get on with it?
• Explore: How shall we keep in touch on progress? Experienced, confident team members will enjoy taking ownership for keeping you updated. Others may look to you to suggest regular check-ins. 
• Give clear, timely feedback: people like to know what they’ve done well and value specific feedback about what to improve.

It sounds simple and there’s one last tricky ingredient in the mix …. You and your assumptions. The voice that says  “It has to be done my way”, “No one can do it as well as I can”, “I can do it so much more quickly“.

Do you think that’s true? It’s probably true that you can do it faster and maybe better. But, if you don’t delegate, your team won’t grow and you won’t have space to tackle the things that only a leader can tackle?  So what’s stopping you now? Where and with whom will you begin?