Deciding When and How to Delegate Work

Delegation is a crucial skill for effective management.

It empowers your team, frees up your time, and fosters growth.

Here's a breakdown of when and how to delegate effectively:

When to Delegate

• Overload: When you're consistently overwhelmed or unable to keep up with your workload.
• Skill Development: When you want to develop your team's capabilities and give them new challenges.
• Time Management: When you need to focus on higher-level tasks or strategic planning.
• Project Expansion: When a project requires additional resources or expertise.

How to Delegate Effectively

1. Identify the Right Task: Choose tasks that can be delegated without compromising quality or deadlines.
2. Select the Right Person: Consider the employee's skills, workload, and interest in the task.
3. Communicate Clearly: Clearly outline the task, expectations, deadlines, and desired outcomes.
4. Provide Necessary Resources: Ensure the employee has the tools and information needed to succeed.
5. Empower and Trust: Give the employee autonomy and authority to complete the task.
6. Offer Support: Be available for questions and guidance but avoid micromanaging.
7. Provide Feedback: Offer constructive feedback on the completed task.

Overcoming Delegation Challenges

• Fear of Losing Control: Trust your team's abilities and focus on the big picture.
• Lack of Time: Prioritize tasks and delegate effectively to create more time.
• Resistance from Employees: Clearly communicate the benefits of delegation and provide necessary training.
• Unclear Expectations: Be specific and provide clear guidelines.

Remember: Effective delegation is a skill that improves with practice. Start small and gradually increase the complexity of delegated tasks.

The Trim Tab Concept in Leadership

There have been many articles written over the years, on the “trim tab” affect in leadership, and how it can transform your organization.

Peter Senge talks about it in his book The Fifth Discipline but it is widely known that Buckminster Fuller coined the term, when it relates to leadership, many years before.

As written in Wikipedia, “Trim tabs are small surfaces connected to the trailing edge of a larger control surface on a boat or aircraft, used to control the trim of the controls, i.e. to counteract hydro- or aerodynamic forces and stabilise the boat or aircraft in a particular desired attitude without the need for the operator to constantly apply a control force. This is done by adjusting the angle of the tab relative to the larger surface.”

The bottom line, and my translation, small well focused actions you take can make a big difference in your chambers.

Think about an entire ship being moved by 1% of its mass.  The small trim tab on a ship can make it turn completely in the opposite direction while maintaining a stable environment.

Or said another way, change can be implemented by small step/s.

For more information on the trim tabs metaphor in leadership go to the Buckminster Fuller Institute HERE or HERE.

Intentional Leadership

One of the best speakers I've ever heard, over my 25 years in association management, was Carla Harris, a Keppler Speakers presenter on Intentional Leadership at the ACCE Annual Meeting in Long Beach.

She started by giving one of her pearls.

"Currency comes in the form of performance and relationships.  You need a sponsor within the organization, which is not your mentor."

Once you perform, you now get to relationship currency.  You need to build relationship currency with everyone you touch in the organization.

Yes, it’s office politics!  She defines that as you must invest in relationships in your professional environment.

She then went on to talk about the 8 things that defines Intentional Leadership!

• Authenticity - your competitive advantage.  You can only be you!  The ability to meet people where you are, what you live and understand who you are.

• Building trust - go to territory’s unknown.  You must deliver, that’s how you lead, that’s trust.  They will follow you!

• Clarity - you must build clarity around something (quarter, month, week, day).  Explain that here’s where we’re going and you can help.  Today, we’re just trying to do this!  Define the goal.

• Create other leaders - to help you execute your program of work. Allow your team to shine.  You must be willing to let go!

• Diversity - you need diversity in your teams.  It’s a way of thinking.  Lot’s of ideas are needed from different perspectives.  Perspectives are born from experiences.  You need to start with a lot of perspectives (generational, cultural, etc.).

• Innovation - you must be intentional on innovation and teach your team to fail.  Push the envelope.  Celebrate the failures.  You learn from failures and you build on that for your next successful endeavor.

• Inclusion - solicit people voices.  You need to get their input.  Look at all sides of an issue.  People want to be heard, I hear you, I see you!  

• Voice - you must exercise your voice.  When it’s not right, call a thing a thing.  You must speak to the pink elephant in the room.

Success does not just happen.  You must be intentional on creating and defining your own scorecard and over deliver on it.

Carla's final statement, "you must own you!"

Productivity: Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Day

I had the opportunity to attend an educational session led by Chris Bailey on productivity.  He states there are lots of books on the subject, good and bad!

The following is a recap of his session from my notes.

What is Productivity?  They mean different things to different people.

It has changed over the past 50 years from repetition of work (think working with your hands vs the brain) to knowledge-based work.  Factory vs Knowledge!

He goes on to state that there are 3 keys to productivity: Time Management; Attention; and Energy. Accomplishing what we intended to do is what productivity is all about.

He talked about the following 3 tactics that if we're aware of, that if we manage, it will make us more productive.

1. The Rule of 3
2. Procrastination
3. Taming the distractions/interruptions

The Rule of 3

Set better intentions, what 3 things to I want to accomplish each day or week.  Our brains are ingrained to do things in 3.  So what are your 3 daily intentions?

Procrastination

The research states that there are 7 reasons we procrastinate because the work is boring, frustrating, difficult, lacks personal meaning, lacks intrinsic rewards, ambiguous and unstructured.

How to beat it, think of your future self, list the costs, shrink your resistance, define the very next thing and do it and finally notice mindless busywork.

Taming the distractions/interruptions

Research tells us that we have 40 seconds of focus before we're distracted/interrupted.  Which translates into 26 minutes of lost productivity from each distraction/interruption.

He goes on to say there are four types of distractions/interruptions - control/no control, annoying/fun.  The key is to deal with these things ahead of time.

Give 3 goals to your staff for the day, week, month or quarter.  Your team, like all teams, can understand when you keep it to three.

As a manager, do you have a list of 3 things you want to do? Time management, attention and energy are the keys to productivity and where those three circles come together is productivity.

At the end of the day, we need to be our own traffic cop to increase our productivity.

For more information about Chris Bailey and his productivity project go HERE.