Delegation Skills

You CANNOT Manage Well, Until You Can Delegate Effectively

Delegation

by Chris Wesley

Why Delegation is Key

Most people get to be made a manager by being a good individual contributor. Sounds reasonable enough, except the skills and techniques required are utterly different. Excellence in individual contribution may be about programming, serving phone customers, waiting tables, or whatever your company does - but managing those activities is always about understanding people, dealing with conflict, aligning interests, incentivisation, team building and leadership - with some table waiting, phone support etc. thrown in. Most od all, it's about effective delegation.

As an excellent individual employee, you now have people reporting to you. You expect them to be like you, to do what needs doing, to work hard, to be smart - but they aren't like you. So maybe you bully, maybe you avoid the conflict and do it all yourself. That can work up to a point, but it's not a nice way to live, and you'll burn out, and it won't scale - you'll never climb high.

Eventually, you will be a failed manager.

Here are some common characteristics of a failing delegator:

You work long hard hours - more than your staff do
Your staff often miss deadline
Your staff often don't do exactly what was asked for
Staff disagree about what you asked them to do
Some members of your team are being carried by others
You harbour grudges against some of them
You check everyone's work and make it right yourself
You prefer being popular to being right

Many supervisors were dropped in at the deep end with no management or delegation training, no resources and no let-up in their existing work-load - oh, and no pay rise either. They're left to struggle. Suddenly they're accountable for the work of others, but they have little control or understanding of how to make it work. This isn't smart for them, their reports, or their company - but there it is. It's the norm.

Managing people involves a whole host of skills and techniques. Leading and Motivating people is an art. These things don't come naturally to most of us, but all of us can learn them.

In my consulting work, I find that effective delegation is a key ingredient missing from many organisations.

People cannot be relied upon to get things done. They may not do it at all - or do it late or incompletely. This one is easily fixed by effective delegation.
Staff resist direction - forcing you to choose between conflict or manipulation.
Most of us are conflict-averse and fear confrontation, and we may not understand the difference between "assertive" and "aggressive". This is another delegation issue. I can straighten this out for you and tell you how to use it in the work place.
Staff may just "tow the line" but may not be internally-motivated to succeed.
I've never been a lip-service man, and I won't be telling you how to be one either. Staff BUY IN with their hearts when you remove the crud, treat them fairly and give them a mission that doesn't smell bad. It's another delegation issue. I'll tell you how to do it right.
People don't manage their own efficiency well - they waste time and resources.
Management is about developing your staff more than it is about controlling them. I'll show you how correct delegation can deliver what your boss wants from your team without crushing the team or yourself.
Most bosses are stuck in fire-fighting mode, never able to find the time or resources to install the sprinklers. If this is you, you're in a "level 1 organisation". I'll show you how to climb out to level 2 and beyond - and it's all about delegation correctly.
Often there is tension or worse between a supervisor and their reports, and it can make things GRIM - not to mention inefficient. Alignment is the process of pointing all the brains in the same direction - and that's not even difficult, when the direction is common sense and honourable.
Flavour of the Month - your new ideas are resisted or lip-service is paid to them, but things don't change. It's like swimming through porridge.
Boss Burnout is very common. Their lives and their health are bent out of shape by the burden of responsibility without control. And when organisations run a sink-or-swim staff development strategy it can be hard to succeed. I'll show you how to share the load fairly and how to use the rhetoric of the company thumb screw to put you back on top.

Effective Delegation

How would it feel if each of your staff happily and sincerely liked and respected you? If they came in each day and were independently self-motivated to get on with the job, would things go better for you? If you liked and respected them too - without resentments or compromise? That's a great way to earn a living and I can help you to make it a reality.

When you delegate correctly, you will have a happy, positive, productive, effective, creative team around you. They'll like you, and you'll like them, and you'll all like coming to work. Your boss will like you all, too. You'll be going home earlier and having more energy to enjoy life when you get there.

There are about ten central concepts in effective delegation. The techniques are not difficult to understand but they can sometimes be difficult to apply. Often a manager's existing behaviours - the ones that got them promoted - need to be dismantled for management. Then workload can make it difficult to invest the effort needed to change the way things work. And the details of specific situations means that the implementation can need tweaking to make it fit.

Delegation Workshops

i call our phone sessions Delegation Workshops. They'll be relaxed, fun and highly productive. We'll take some time to learn about your situation and what you want to change. I'll give you the techniques one at a time, in an order determined by your specifics.

Between sessions, you'll practice those techniques - either across the board, or in specific areas, and we'll deal with the issues arising.

Very quickly, you'll see concrete change happening before your eyes. Your staff will seem like different people; you'll be telling me about things that never happened before, and you'll be loving what you see as you look forward to more and better.

Often four sessions is all that's needed to sow the seeds of massive, life-altering change. Sometimes, clients come back for top-ups or to deal with specific issues arising, or for phase two delegation skills to take the next step up.

What qualifies me to do that? Well (let the trumpets sound!)...

I spent 17 years successfully managing international teams in the IT industry. I've also been consulting to all kinds of businesses - large and small - since then, so I know in a practical real-world "been there - fixed that" way - the things that go wrong, why, and how to put them straight. Then there's my distinction qualification in life coaching. I have also lectured for Europe's largest coach training organisation - The Coaching Academy - teaching their coaches how to coach leaders. You can learn from all these skills and all this expertise, and use those lessons to make your working life far happier and more successful.

To read what people say about my coaching, read client testimonials:

My new Delegation Skills Workshop will put you on the fast track to effective, popular staff management. In intensive 45-minute phone mentoring sessions, we'll look at your specific situation and the challenges you face. We'll explore options and choose concrete, proven strategies to put into practice, and then we'll get back together and talk about what worked, what didn't - and why. In practical, clear ways, we'll move you to the position of Happy Boss - in a happy team of productive, mutually respectful, grown-up people who like to come in every morning.

Your team your boss, and your partner - will love you for it!

Phone mentoring sessions are £60 each - £55 when you book four in advance. It may be that your company will pay this for you, but even if they don't - the improvement in your life will be dramatic - and well worth the investment.

You can book one session at a time, if you like, and there's a money-back guarantee on every session, so you really can't lose, and you've got a great deal to gain.