Do you ever feel like you want to delegate more to your team but you’re not exactly sure how to go about it? Do you ever find that sometimes you feel like you’re micromanaging a bit too much and other times you’re not hands-on enough? I was talking to a client this week who was sharing a very similar experience with me. To help him, I shared my simple four-step delegation process, and I’m going to share that with you today.
Have you ever given somebody something to do and they’ve gone off with the best of intentions and full of enthusiasm and focus, and they come back and they’ve just missed the mark? Well, it is down to you to make sure that they are super clear on what success looks like and why their success is important. Depending on the complexity of the task, you may need to spend a lot of time discussing the outcome. If it’s something relatively simple, just make sure that you explain it clearly and that you help them understand why it is important.
How complicated is the task that you are giving this person? How much risk is involved if something doesn’t go according to plan? And how much skill and experience does the person have with the thing that you are asking them to do? The less experience, the less skill, and the more risk and complexity, the more you are going to have to get involved. This client I was talking to was worried about micromanaging. Now, I don’t like to talk about micromanaging; I like to talk about being directive. If somebody hasn’t done something and it is an important thing to get right, then you do need to get hands-on with them and work through how you want them to do the thing that you want to do. So, step two is for you to set the level of direction that you’re going to give before you move into either step three or step 2A.
If in step two you’ve determined that you need to be quite hands-on, then you need to coach that person through the specific methodology of what they’re going to do. In other words, how are they going to do it? Once you’ve figured that out, get them to think through what resources they will need to do this thing that you’ve asked them to do. Get that all nice and clear so that that person understands what outcome they are expected to achieve, why it’s important, and specifically how they’re going to go about doing it and what resources they need to achieve the goal that you’ve set them.
Have you ever found that you’ve been in a situation where you’ve delegated something to somebody, and you’ve been unsure as to whether those things happened the way that you’ve needed it to happen or even happened at all? If so, insurance is the key to avoiding that situation. Insurance is where you use either act report or report act. Act report works like this: you’re going to say to that person, once you’ve done the thing that you need to do, then come and tell me that you’ve done it. That way, you know that it’s been done. If we’ve used step 2A in the delegation framework, then you might need report act. This is where you are either scheduling some specific critical part of the how, where you need to weigh into critical decisions, or where you need to check in on progress to make sure things are on track. If there are any particular important decisions that you want to be involved in, if there are any particular milestones that you want some visibility of, that’s where you will use report act. Come and tell me what decision you’re thinking of making, and then they can go and act. And then, of course, for extra points, you would then get another act report. So, in other words, yes, Grace, the way that you’re going to approach that task makes sense to me, or I like the way that you’ve made that decision. Go and do it, and then just check in with me and let me know that you’ve done it.
If you set a specific deadline, that person knows clearly what they are supposed to be doing and when they are supposed to be doing it. So many managers get frustrated with their team members because they feel like there’s not enough urgency or things aren’t being completed. And when I check in with clients and managers in those situations, often it’s because they haven’t actually set a specific deadline. So that’s it, my simple four-step delegation framework is as follows: Outcome and why, determine the level of direction. If you need a lot of direction, you have an extra step, 2A, where you agree on the methodology and the resources required. Step three is insurance. Make sure you use act reports, so go and do the thing that you’re going to do, and then tell me you’ve done it, or come tell me what you are going to do and then go and do it, which is report act. And finally, set a specific deadline and make sure that that is clear to you and clear to the person on the receiving end.
I want you to find some opportunities to play around with this framework. It is really simple, but it takes practice.
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