Tag: delegation

Having a reputation as a finisher is a great option to build your influence in an organisation. It’s all about making great commitments and then following them through to the end.

Not everyone is a finisher, especially those who are visionaries, focused on generating ideas rather than getting in to the execution. Even so, visionaries need to find some finishers to work with, to build trust that their ideas will actually come to fruition.

As always, it’s important to recognise the role that suits you, and to make sure you are filling it well.

Finishers make sure that things get done. They either do it themselves, or more likely they divert resources, people and focus on to getting something over the line.

The reputation gets built by finishing things that aren’t easy. Innovation, changes to practices or processes and complex projects where other people have failed are all rich areas to get some big wins and build a history of success.

A really important area to work on is not taking on too much. Finishers fail when they are chasing too many projects at once. Recognise your capacity to achieve great outcomes, and practice saying no to things you can’t commit to completing.

This gets harder as you become more successful and where your reputation starts to spread. More people will ask for your support, and want you to get things done for them. You need to step up to higher impact efforts, and find some people earlier in the finisher journey who you can delegate on to.

Finishers are highly valued in an org. Ideas are nothing without execution. If you want to take this role, figure out your capacity. Say ‘yes’ to important things and deliver on them every time. Say ‘no’ to things you can’t fit in, and get comfortable delegating as you grow.

Effective delegation is a vital skill to scale your efforts as a leader.

As with any skill, it takes practice to get right, and it’s certainly something you can get wrong. Bad delegation is an abrogation of responsibility, it leaves people confused and uncertain, and it’s a super quick way to confirm any rumours that management is ‘out of touch’.

Good delegation is a powerful way to develop people in your organisation, and to get them ready to take on aspects of your role, so you can step up to the next level yourself.

Look out for opportunities that align to the development needs of the person you wish to delegate to. That could be their strengths to take to the next level, or it could be a gap where they need to show stronger competencies on a wider stage.

Early on, it can be hard to let go. Use the 70% rule. If you think the person is going to be at least 70% as effective as you, then they are ready to take on the delegation. Don’t wait until they are 100% ready, especially if you lean towards perfectionism. This is because your judgement is going to be somewhat off, if you think 70%, it’s more likely they are just about there, and if you think they are 100%, then it’s likely they were really ready a long time ago.

Also, start small. Don’t delegate a year long project, start with something that runs for a few weeks at most. It’ll be easier to track progress, and failure here is likely to be less than catastrophic.

To ensure a good delegation experience, you need to set solid expectations, you need to show trust and you need to verify what’s going on. It’ll be rocky the first few times, so check-in on these as you go, and don’t be afraid to reflect and correct.

• Expectation – This sets clear boundaries, you explain what the goals are, what the parameter are and especially what success and failure looks like.
• Trust – You then need to give space to the person to achieve the outcome. They won’t do it like you would, so don’t micromanage
• Verify – Trust the process, check-in on the progress. Agree when you’ll do this as part of the expectation setting, and scale it based on the importance and duration of the task. Daily check-ins on a yearlong project are probably too often, but might not be for a week long effort. Make sure it’s close enough together to enable easy course correction, but far enough apart to avoid constraining creativity.

Use these techniques, and you are much more likely to turn delegation into a great development opportunity rather than an abrogation of responsibility.