daftandbarmy
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Delegate well, do well, be well, and not necessarily in that order...
“Delegation is not a binary thing. There are shades of grey between a dictatorship and an anarchy.”
― Jurgen Appelo
To executive level leaders, time is like fresh air to a foundering swimmer: they can’t get enough of it. As noted in this landmark study CEOs routinely described managing time as one of their greatest challenges... https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-leaders-calendar
The consequences of this lack of time are all too familiar to most people in just about every workplace: a higher risk of organizational under performance and senior executive, and staff, burnout. So what is the best way for senior executives to, literally, find the time they feel they need to do an even better job, individually and corporately, while having a life?
One well known approach is to delegate work to others. Senior leaders who can, or do, not delegate run the risk of creating a dictatorship at their own expense, as well as at the expense of others. On the other hand, those who delegate too much, or unwisely, risk anarchy. Regardless, even those open to delegating sometimes discover the hard way that delegation is far from a time winning panacea. In short: it can be tricky to figure out what tasks can, and cannot, be delegated.
I’ve noticed that many of my clients view delegation through dynamic of staff experience levels and task complexity. For example, most know intuitively that when their staff are less experienced and the task is more complex, they are less likely to delegate.
But what if there was some kind of simple tool that a decision maker could use to quickly and effectively make delegation decisions on a more consistent basis while avoiding ‘dictatorship and anarchy’? Below is a simple matrix, which I’ve used successfully during coaching sessions with executive level clients, which might help you to make that tough call to delegate, or not. It rests upon the two key questions most executives ask before delegating:
1. How complex is the task?, and
2. How experienced are my staff?
To Delegate or Not to Delegate, that is the Question…
The matrix provided below can help you determine, first of all, if you should delegate a task or not. If the answer is ‘yes’, it can also help you determine the levels of preparation that might be required before you delegate. It can also help clarify who might need more support during the task completion process:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/delegate-well-do-richard-h-eaton/
“Delegation is not a binary thing. There are shades of grey between a dictatorship and an anarchy.”
― Jurgen Appelo
To executive level leaders, time is like fresh air to a foundering swimmer: they can’t get enough of it. As noted in this landmark study CEOs routinely described managing time as one of their greatest challenges... https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-leaders-calendar
The consequences of this lack of time are all too familiar to most people in just about every workplace: a higher risk of organizational under performance and senior executive, and staff, burnout. So what is the best way for senior executives to, literally, find the time they feel they need to do an even better job, individually and corporately, while having a life?
One well known approach is to delegate work to others. Senior leaders who can, or do, not delegate run the risk of creating a dictatorship at their own expense, as well as at the expense of others. On the other hand, those who delegate too much, or unwisely, risk anarchy. Regardless, even those open to delegating sometimes discover the hard way that delegation is far from a time winning panacea. In short: it can be tricky to figure out what tasks can, and cannot, be delegated.
I’ve noticed that many of my clients view delegation through dynamic of staff experience levels and task complexity. For example, most know intuitively that when their staff are less experienced and the task is more complex, they are less likely to delegate.
But what if there was some kind of simple tool that a decision maker could use to quickly and effectively make delegation decisions on a more consistent basis while avoiding ‘dictatorship and anarchy’? Below is a simple matrix, which I’ve used successfully during coaching sessions with executive level clients, which might help you to make that tough call to delegate, or not. It rests upon the two key questions most executives ask before delegating:
1. How complex is the task?, and
2. How experienced are my staff?
To Delegate or Not to Delegate, that is the Question…
The matrix provided below can help you determine, first of all, if you should delegate a task or not. If the answer is ‘yes’, it can also help you determine the levels of preparation that might be required before you delegate. It can also help clarify who might need more support during the task completion process:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/delegate-well-do-richard-h-eaton/