Delegating with the Guiding Principles of Fulfilling Performance - Part 2: Be clear.
If this is your first visit, hello and welcome! I write about how to enable a visionary concept called Fulfilling Performance. My first posts explain what that is but you can just jump in here too...
Image credit: Csaba Nagy
Hello fellow Enablers,
There are four Guiding Principles that help enable Fulfilling Performance.
Each of the four principles is designed to strengthen one or more of the four fundamental contributors to Fulfilling Performance: Clarity, Capability, Culture and Purpose.
Last week I shared how to delegate more effectively using the Guiding Principle “Know why”.
Approaching delegation with this principle in mind helps all involved parties have a shared understanding of the reasons for tackling the delegated task.
It can help release handbrakes and unlock a host of benefits including but not limited to increased discretionary effort, resilience and resourcefulness.
It arms the people to whom you're delegating with information they need to make decisions and keep moving forward when you’re not available and engages their motivation to overcome obstacles along the way.
Delegate with Be clear
The second Guiding Principle is “Be clear.”
This week’s post focuses on using this principle to further enhance the quality of our delegation and the likelihood that we achieve the desired outcome.
When we delegate using “Be clear”, we set clear expectations about what a good outcome would look like, we agree how performance against those expectations will be measured and how progress will be fed back.
Where appropriate, we allow those to whom we are delegating the task the freedom to work out for themselves how to deliver the desired outcome.
If you're tempted to dictate the approach, ask yourself:
Are my demands fundamental to a successful outcome, or am I simply enforcing what's merely a personal preference?
If there are good reasons why the outcome must conform to certain standards or guidelines, make sure that they know what they are.
If you need the outcome to mirror exactly a previous iteration, show them that.
If you don't need it to be an exact replica and would rather unleash their creativity to create something new, give them the essential parameters, but don't distract them and potentially curtail that creativity by showing them how it's been done before.
It's harder to come up with an original solution when you have a perfectly good answer to the problem staring you in the face.
Delegation is not abdication
Now that you've handed over the task, remember, as their manager, you still retain responsibility for the outcome. You probably don't just want to walk away and forget about it until the due date.
If you know they struggle with prioritization, don't ignore them until the deadline and then have an awkward situation for both of you. Encourage and coach them during the briefing of the task to build in review milestones along the way.
Coaching them whilst you're briefing them on the objective helps them benefit from your experience without you taking over the task or dictating how it should be done.
Building in review milestones helps break the task down, allows you to measure and manage performance against expectations during the process and gives you peace of mind that you're going to not be faced with any unpleasant surprises when it's too late to do anything about it.
People sometimes ask me:
How do I get them to do it more like how I want it to be done without telling them how to do it?
First, I'll check with whoever's asking that there's a legitimate reason to expect it to be done a certain way and that this isn't just down to their personal preference, then I give them the answer that I was given when I asked the same question during a BMW leadership program years ago:
Rather than teaching them exactly how you would do it, teach them how you think.
I would add to that wisdom, share your paradigms. If they take these on board, their actions and behaviours and the style and quality of their output are much more likely to align with your own.
Check how well you’ve communicated
Another valuable approach I learned to help ensure the quality of work that I’ve delegated, which has saved hours of misguided effort, works as follows:
After you've briefed them on the task, you say this:
Just to make sure that I've explained this well enough, please could you tell me what you think I want?
Notice, I say “to make sure that I have explained this well enough” and not “to make sure that you have understood”. The onus is still on me at this stage to communicate effectively. This is about my communication skills, not their listening skills.
I can't tell you how many times I've used this, and it's immediately flagged up a flaw in my explanation and usually also reminded me of something else I wanted to add.
Agree timelines in advance
When it comes to timelines, if possible, let them tell you when they can do it by and then make a note of that.
It's easier to hold people accountable for commitments they've made themselves.
Bear in mind that not everyone is accurate at estimating how long tasks will take them or at managing their priorities once they're left unsupervised.
Until you've established the individual's level of capability in those areas, you might want to check in with them along the way to ask whether they're still on track.
Coming up in Release the handbrake!
Next week we will look at how to use our Guiding Principle “Equip yourself.” to delegate more effectively and enable Fulfilling Performance.
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Thank you,
Andy
andy@aquilae.co.uk