Common Mistakes Made In Delegating
Posted on 30. Jul, 2010 by Guest in Management
Leadership Workshop (4 of 12) – Lead Through Others
Leading at Light Speed is a must-have leadership book by Eric Douglas highlighting the 10 Quantum Leaps to build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization. Chapter 3 is all about how to Lead Through Others.
Your style of delegation speaks volumes about your leadership. If you skimp on delegating, trust plummets and the organization’s progress is sorely impeded. When there’s an overabundance of delegation, people will point fingers of blame at you. Let’s look at some of the common mistakes made in delegating:
Being unclear about outcomes: As part of delegating, it’s your responsibility to tie your expectations to the company’s core values, vision, and goals. A strong strategic focus and plan will assist you. If you tell a manager: “We need to cut your budget by 10 percent,” she’ll have no idea where to begin. What if she unwittingly chops a program that is critical to another department? Without knowing the priorities and long-term outcomes, it’s nearly impossible to make the right call.
Being unclear about quality: It’s not fair to ask for a Rolls Royce on an Escort budget. Effective leaders need to point to concrete examples of what they want. Is this a report?
Then follow up by showing them an example. Is it a new product roll-out? Refer to a success from the past. The time you spend clarifying your expectations will be returned ten-fold in time saved putting out fires later on.
Being unclear about the level of input needed: You need to provide guidance about how much input to gather.
Here are three factors to weigh:
• How important is this decision – relative to other change initiatives in our organization?
• Respective to our clients, how many people will it affect?
• Relative to our employees, how many people will be affected?
Using these three criteria, you can assess how much input is needed. The table here shows how one manager assessed the impact of a decision about opening a new office in another state. In this case, the score indicated to her that she needed to invest in high levels of input gathering.
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