Most people inherently know that they should delegate more, and delegate better, but one big obstacle keeps them from doing it…

It might not come out right

…so I better jump in and make sure
it is going OK or just do it myself.

Who’s at fault?

It it doesn’t come out right, the uncomfortable question this raises is -
did this person fail to do a good job because:

1. They are not good enough at the job? or
2. I am not good enough at delegating?

It’s not about getting comfortable with worry

The real secret of successful delegating is not to learn how to deal with the emotional discomfort of letting go, and learning to live with being worried about the outcome, or accepting bad outcomes…

It’s about preventing reasons to worry

Your job is to delegate, let go, NOT micromanage… AND create structure, support and processes so you ensure that it is going to get done right.

You don’t deal with the worrying, you ensure it’s not necessary.

Ways to build comfort and insurance into the project
without micro-managing

1. Let the person create the timeline, define the deliverables and how you will measure them.  The encouragement and trust goes a long way, and you either get the pleasant surprise of a better plan than you would have come up with, or you get an early warning that this person needs more support.

2. Tighten the Outcomes.  If you are concerned that the person is not capable enough to run with the project, Instead of a 6 month outcome, discuss outcomes that occur every two weeks.

3. Focus on the outcome, not the activity. No two humans will do a task exactly the same way.  If they deliver the outcome, it shouldn’t matter how they do it.  Let them worry about how and what.  You worry about WHY, and what needs to be true when it is done.

4. Create an actual process and tracking system for long term or repetitive tasks – a software development lifecycle with checkpoints is a good example.  But why not define a project lifecycle with checkpoints for a quarterly analyst presentation, a press release, or a marketing campaign?

5. Third party reviews. Get yourself out of the position of always being the one to judge whether a deliverable is good enough or not.  Get the actual consumers of the deliverable to review and provide feedback.  Your employees will learn far more this way.

6. Don’t forget to inspect and measure things along the way.  If you set up a timeline with review steps along the way, you must follow up.  A great deal of your comfort comes from the fact that people take you seriously and actually do the committed work.  A long time mentor of mine always put it “You get what you INspect, not what you EXpect”.

7. Teach. When you are delegating things you are personally good at, always think of delegating as a teaching opportunity. If you need to sometimes jump down and do the work yourself, make sure someone is watching and learning.
See also Let People Fail.

Bottom line…

You need to delegate effectively if you want to get anything significant done, get anywhere in your career, and save yourself from an un-doable workload.

If you are either doing the work yourself, or worried about the work not getting done, you need to change your strategy.

You can delegate and feel comfortable that the work is getting done as long as you do the higher level work of setting up the systems, processes and measures that ensure the right things are happening along the way.

Note to the micromanaged…

I will write another post on this because many people suffer from this.

But the short answer is, you need make your boss comfortable that he will get what he wants in some way other than by micromanaging.   Some of the techniques above can be useful with your boss too.

Category Note: I filed this post under “CONNECT Better” because it is critical to always be building a broad base of support. Getting your team and others to accomplish work that you need done is a critical element of business effectiveness and career success.

Very early in my career (I emphasize “very early” as this is not an incident I am proud of and didn’t want you to think this was last week!).

I was in a sales training session and we had to do a lifeboat exercise.

The Lifeboat…

You are probably familiar with this.

You imagine you are lost at sea in a lifeboat with others, and you have set of items in your emergency kit.

But you can’t keep them all, and you need to decide which few items to keep (while you pursue or await rescue) and which to throw overboard.  It’s stuff like a flare, a rope, a mirror, a flashlight, food, a compass, drinking water, matches, etc.

What’s supposed to happen…

The way the exercise goes is that you first create your list of must-keep items individually, and then you discuss it as a team and build a team-generated list.

This is an exercise where there are, in fact, correct answers, so you get a score on how well you did as an individual, and as a team.

The point of the exercise is to show how no individual scores come out higher than the team score, and to demonstrate the value of teamwork.

OK, So our team was pathetic.

This was an international meeting, and on our team we had 7 English-as-a-first-language people, and one French guy.  Although he spoke English, (loads better than any one of us spoke French!), the language issue was difficult and distracting to the team.

Every time he advocated for his choices we basically ignored him because it was just too slow and difficult to get what he was saying, and it didn’t sound that smart to us anyway.

You can guess the outcome here

1) Our team not only lost, but failed spectacularly, in an unprecedented way…
2) Our team score was lower than ALL of our individual scores…
3) AND the French guy not only had the highest individual score on our team, but of all the individuals, and all the teams!

OK, so what are the lessons?

He was the smartest guy in the room.  He tried to share his good ideas with us – over and over again.  We basically threw him overboard.

So for me, although miles from the lesson intended about teamwork, this provided a good slap in the face, and some real lessons about communicating.

I think about this tragically “American” moment in my career very often when I am working internationally.  And it serves as a reminder to be a better human!

1. Modify your expectations of communicating

When there is a language issue, treat is as YOUR issue.

They are speaking your language as a favor to you.  You don’t speak THEIR language.  So remember you are putting the other person in a difficult position.

If you have never tried – just try to learn another language.  Appreciate the great chasm that you would need to cross to speak as well in your colleague’s language as they do in yours.

Don’t just accept a weak meeting outcome, and blame it on the other person.

Take responsibility to get the necessary business outcome and give the person a chance to communicate on their terms.  It’s up to you to make sure you get their best thinking.

2. Don’t equate capability with ability to speak your language

I recall from one of Jack Welch’s books that even he made this mistake when he first started hiring people in Japan.  He hired the Japanese people that spoke English best because they seemed more capable to him.

He later let native Japanese leaders choose talent in Japan and got much better hires.

If something is critical, let people work in their native language and make it your problem to process and understand it.

3. Revert to writing

Writing can be much easier to understand because both parties get to communicate at their own pace.  Nothing gets lost as the conversation goes by.

I have had meetings where we literally wrote out, in sentences, our conversation, decisions and agreements on the white board.

The discussion moves slower, but the communication moves much faster.  Writing can often be much more easily understood than talking, and it is very easily translated.

Use writing in parallel with social media

I also heard a brilliant idea from Suzanne Pherigo.  (You may know Suzanne from Azzarello Group Webinar fame, as my Co-Host).  Suzanne runs an international R&D organization.

On all of their multi-country conference calls they use an additional IM window where people in each country type out the key points being made, translate any jargon, highlight questions and decisions, and clarify areas in the discussion that were moving fast, or unclear.

They also use blog updates which capture the key ideas and decisions from the conference call in writing, to re-inforce the key outcomes and have a record for later review and understanding.

This improved both productivity and relationships dramatically.  Brilliant, Suzanne!

UPGRADING YOUR TEAM WEBINAR

10 IDEAS

Download the PODCAST to learn more about:

It’s your job to build capability

1. A strong team. There is almost nothing more important in the “DO Better” category, which is about over achieving on the right few things that have the biggest impact on the business, than building a really strong team that can grow.

2. It is your job as a manager and leader to make your team more capable, not just manage their work.

3. You build capability in two ways: 1 – Develop people to become more capable over time, and 2 – Make people changes when current team members can’t live up to future requirements.

Start with Business Outcomes

4. Start with Business Outcomes. What does the business need? Draw a blank-sheet ideal org chart at your roadmap for your team, based on what the business requires.

5. Define NEW roles based on short term deliverables and longer term desired outcomes.  Include skill levels around judgment, leadership, communication, and personal support as well as technical/content skills.

6. People Moves. Once you have an ideal org chart, you will find some people on your current team will fit, but you will need to deal fairly with empty boxes and extra people.

Guilt, Change, & Difficulties

7. It is human nature to feel guilt when you eliminate jobs, but you need to realize that this is business driven and not personal.  You are creating roles to deliver business outcomes and then filling those roles with the most capable people.

8. You need to sell your plan and the value of the business outcomes your improved team will drive with your boss and HR early in the process.  This support is critical to getting it done and will make you feel more confident as you go through the process.

9. Don’t forget to keep momentum with high performers while you are diving change.

The Payoff

10. Building a stronger team is good for you, your team, and your business.  And don’t forget that taking people out of jobs they are struggling in is also good for them.  They deserve to be in a job where they can thrive.

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UPGRADING YOUR TEAM

Members:
Download the Podcast for FREE

Non Members:
Purchase this single podcast or Become a Member

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My big point about delegating is that it as not just assigning work.

Effective delegating is about making sure the right work gets done at the right level, and making your team more capable.

Building capability requires learning

And there is no learning as great as that which comes after failing.

Many managers treat delegating exactly the opposite – that their role is to prevent failure — to watch closely, to jump in and take over, fix, or modify — if it is not going well.

If you think about this from a learning perspective, what you have just done is to ensure that no real learning occurs.

Think about the alternative.  Throwing someone in the deep end…

Don’t take away the motivation to learn

When you fail it feels bad.  It is embarrassing, it causes business problems, it causes trouble for other people.  So it becomes a big personal motivator to fix it!

Real learning occurs when you not only see what you did wrong, but need to live with, and deal with the consequences of what you did wrong.  If you take away the pain of failing, you also take away the big, highly personal, motivator to get it right.

Don’t take away the lesson of how to succeed

By creating the safety net, and filling in all the hard parts for them, they never really experience what it means to succeed.

But if you let a smart person fail, they will figure it out.

Isn’t that how you got good at what you do?  By doing it.  Trial and error.  Feedback. Tying again?   They will learn how to really do it if you give them a chance.

If they never learn, you never build capability, and you get stuck working evening and weekends to “cover” for the fact that your team is not capable of the work it needs to deliver.

Don’t put limits on learning

Also, if you always step in you are ensuring that they will never get any better at the task then you are.

You are putting an artificial cap on their development.

I have often delegated things that I thought I was pretty good at, and had my employee blow me away with their ability to exceed my capabilities. 

This to me is one of the best parts of management.  When you can say, Wow, that’s amazing. You did that better than I ever imagined it could be done.  Bravo. Thank You.  Look at this new capability my team now has!!

If you are threatened by the thought of your employees being better than you, don’t be.  You will get more points for breeding star performers than you will ever get for work you do personally.  Read this.

Fail Small or Fail Big

OK. so admittedly this is a bit of a paradox — how do you succeed when your people are failing?

Think ahead to the desired outcome.  Today your team can’t do the work as well as you can, so you have two choices.  Do it yourself and prevent your team from growing, or take some risk in the short term, and in a year from now have a team that can do more than you ever imagined.

Pick your battles

Don’t pick the most business critical deliverable and put it with the most junior person.  But do pick a meaty task and let a smart person who can learn something run with it.  Always be on the lookout for opportunities to let people own outcomes and learn in the process.

Not everything important is mission critical.

It is your job to manage all the outcomes so that you create the space and opportunity for people to fail, learn, succeed and grow, while at the same time managing the overall outcome to create success. 

Here are some ideas.

Trust People

You will be amazed at how far some trust and encouragement goes.  (as compared to micromanaging).  Set a really clear desired outcome for the task, and then ask them to give you a plan which includes checkpoints and what you will measure them on to ensure progress.

This encouragement and trust gives them huge ownership in making it happen. They will be personally motivated to try harder than if you try and control everything along the way.

Create judges and review boards

If you are concerned that the deliverables are not going to be good enough, arrange some review boards instead of always picking apart people’s work personally.  If someone is creating a marketing campaign, have one of the measures be that 3 of the most cranky, difficult sales people have to say it’s OK before they bring it to you. 

That is a very practical, contained failure opportunity, which will help the person learn way more than you saying, it’s not good enough, let me fix it.

Create smaller, intermediate outcomes

If you are too concerned that a failure will be too big, pick a smaller objective and a target closer in so that you can see if things are on track or not.  Giving someone a set of sequential outcomes and challenges to pursue is far more motivating than spelling out every activity and packing their lunch every day.  Let them fly solo on shorter flights then help pick up the pieces only when necessary.

Always teach

You may think that letting someone fail is more discouraging and de-motivating than preventing it.  But just think about yourself.  How do you feel when your manager starts doing your job for you? or tells you that you’re not doing it right?   Is that more motivating than being given the space to figure things out for yourself, and really learn.

When someone fails — offer to answer questions and provide support, but have them own the learning process.

You can re-iterate the goals and continue to clarify the outcome.  You can answer questions about or even comment on the fact that there is a gap between what they produced and the agreed desired outcome.  But make their job to fix it and get it right.

If you are the one to fix it — you will always be the one to fix it. 

You will be stuck and you will have failed BIG by not leading a team capable of the work that needs to get done.

Next Up on Delegating…

In a couple of weeks I will post another article on creating more ways to feel comfortable that delegating (and letting go) will create a successful outcome.  You own the outcome.

Delegating better is not about being willing to be uncomfortable about a successful outcome –  it is about creating a system to let go of the detail, yet stay comfortable that the outcome will be achieved.

More Resources on Delegating:

Delegate or Die: 10 Ideas (plus webinar/podcast)
Addiction to Detail
Building Capacity

Collecting a stack of business cards from people you met once at a networking event is not adding any real value to your network. Skip it if you hate it.

I often talk about this, but realized that I have not written about this on my blog, so I wanted to share a few thoughts on growing your network.

Meeting new people

This is the part of networking that many people find difficult, if not paralyzing.  Enjoying the challenge of meeting new people is a strength that the vast majority of people don’t have!

And to make matters worse, many people in addition to being generally uncomfortable with meeting people, feel like building a network is a selfish, shallow, or disingenuous activity.

Sincerity not Numbers

Instead of thinking about networking success in terms of the number of people you meet at networking events, or getting big numbers on LinkedIn or twitter, think about Authentic Networking as making real connections with people that you would actually like to meet.

Then stay in touch with them because you share a real reason to be connected.  This is the way to both grow and build real value into your network.

What do you actually care about?

Set out to meet just one person based on something that genuinely interests or inspires you.  Then you have an authentic connection, and you already have a built-in topic for the discussion.

You won’t get that uncomfortable feeling of engaging a stranger in small talk, or feel like it is shallow or hollow.  And, more importantly, you leave with a real connection that you can build on over time.

I have grown my network significantly over the years, a few people a year, in a very authentic and high value way, by reaching out only to people who have done something that has genuinely interested, impressed, or inpired me, and telling them that they had done so as my way of contacting them.

Here’s how this goes…

You contact them and say:

I [read an article, saw a panel discussion, listened to a webcast]  where you [did something, said something].
I was very interested in [a comment about something you were actually interested in].
The reason I was so impressed was [insert a real reason].
I thought I would connect with you and let you know you had [some sort of positive impact on me]. If there is ever anything I can do to be of service to you, please let me know.

Then once you make a genuine connection, make sure you stay in touch.   Staying in touch with people is the most important part of neworking.  That is how you put value into your network.  Meeting someone new has no value if you then don’t stay in touch!

This is the aspect of networking that I talk most about.  You can read some prior posts on staying in touch:

• The Power of Weak Connections
• 10 things to give your network
• High Value Online Behaviors

A note on networking events

This authentic networking approach also can work well at networking events.  Instead of just showing up, figure out ahead of time who is going to be there, do some research, and then set out to meet specific people for specific reasons that actually interest you.

You will be way more comfortable at the event because you will have a sense of purpose, some goals (find and meet these three specific people), and will be armed with something to talk about once you meet them.

More Resources on Networking

Browse Webinars on Building Your Network

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The big trick is to refuse to let most of your time get used up by things that are not so important.  Take control of your time back.

1. Primetime

When are you brilliant?

Primetime is that time of the day when you are most brilliant.

It is when you are most creative, focused, energetic – when you can think really clearly and make things happen.

Figure out when your prime time is, and then don’t waste it doing email or going to bad meetings!  Schedule it for yourself, protect it, and get real work done.

You get important stuff done more quickly when you do it in prime time.  So you make even more time than if you try do important work with less horsepower, when you are not at your best.

2. Hide

Just take it.

If you are over-booked you just need to take some time back. Schedule it.  And HIDE.  The hiding is the crucial part.  It doesn’t work if you don’t hide.  The activity knows where to find you.

Stay home, sit in your car, go to a different building.  Do your important thinking and planning work in peace.  You’ll get more done and you’ll probably think of ways to save even more time.

3. Fail More

If you have 100 things to do, you are only going to do 70 of them, so instead of failing at 30, why not fail at 40?  Is there a big difference?  Since you are not going to get everything done anyway, set the bar a little lower!   And give yourself more breathing room to do the most important stuff.

4. In-between Time

In-between time is those times where you might have a meeting or phone call scheduled every hour on the hour, but they don’t all last an hour.  So you end up with  9, or 12, minutes before your next meeting.

Most people fall into the trap of thinking that the work they need to do is bigger than will fit into that small amount of time, so it’s not worth it to get started.

Oops. I really did have more time.

Many times, after you have browsed the internet or doodled for 12 minutes waiting for a phone call, the other person is late or cancels.  Damn! you actually could have had 30 minutes, but now you’ve wasted the first 12!

This didn’t take as long as I thought

You’ll be surprised at what you can finish in 7 minutes if you just get started.  Recently I started what I thought was a 15-20 minute task when I had 4 minutes before a phone call just to prove the point to myself that it’s worth getting started.  I actually finished it.

What were those quick things I needed to do?

There are worthwhile things you can do that only take a few minutes. Keep your task list handy for when you get some in-between time, highlight the quickies, and address one each time you get a few minutes.

Or get started on a bigger task.  Even small amounts of time are well used if you work on something important.

5. Quick Networking

People often tell me that they wish they did more networking but they just don’t have time.  Here is a challenge to that.

How many emails can you send in 5 minutes?

When you have a 5 minute block of time before a meeting, send as many emails as you can to people on your list.  It might be one, it might be 5. It helps to keep your networking contact list handy.

It’s been a long time.  I was thinking about you and wanted to say Hi.  Things are good here. I am in the same job.  My daughter just starting school at NYU, and I’m taking surfing lessons.  How are you?

How long does that take?  Don’t you smile when you get one of these?

None vs. 500

If you did this twice a day with two five minute “in between time” windows, and sent two emails each time, that would be 20 emails per week where you could be reaching out, saying hello, and generally connecting with your network.

That’s about 80 emails per month.  Even if you cut that in half, how much better is 40 emails per month – almost 500 per year –  than “not having any time for networking”?

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