Perry Maddox reflects on the opportunity wasted when people delegate like a boss and shares the plan, do, check, review model for delegation.
“Delegate like a boss,” roared a social media post I read recently.
It went on to explain how to treat delegation like a military exercise. Be precise with the instructions. Give clear commands. Explain out the desired process in detail. Present this to the person who will do the job.
Follow my approach, claimed the influencer, and your team will get the results you expect every time. Perfect results, every time? I doubt it.
Delegate like a boss and what you’ll get every time is a demotivated team.
Don’t Delegate Like a Boss, Delegate Like a Leader.
Somebody has a control problem.
If you need to dictate every detail and tell people exactly what to do, why are you delegating?
If something must be executed perfectly, that’s the kind of task you should hold on to. Delegation involves risk. If you’re not willing to risk someone doing a task in a different way, or even failing, don’t delegate it. Not every task should be delegated.
Delegation involves trust. It means letting go. When we delegate, we entrust someone else to do a job, the way they see fit. That’s why control freaks and micromanagers struggle to delegate. It’s also why their teams are suffocated, stifled and demotivated.
What a shame. Delegation is not only a way to share the load and to work more efficiently. It’s also a great way to develop talent.
This isn’t just about getting work off your plate. This is about helping your people to grow.
Plan, Do, Check, Review.
To truly ‘delegate like a boss’, stop bossing people around.
Instead, delegate through this four-step process:
- Plan. Begin by defining success, agreeing what the desired result will be. If you aren’t on the same page about the end goal, things will go poorly. Make sure everyone knows, and agrees what success will looks like when the job is complete.
- Do. Now, get to work… not. When you delegate, trust the person to do the job how they want to. Leave them alone to do the work.
- Check. Monitor progress and keep an eye on performance. Beware micromanagement here, but if you’ve delegate a huge job that will take months, it’s good to check in regularly along the way. This reduces the risk of failure at the end or of the person struggling in silence. For small or simple tasks, resist checking in.
- Review. Once the job has finished, assess how it went with the person who did the work. Don’t just tell them what you think. Success or failure, guide them through the process of reflecting on how it went. Help them to draw out what can be learned and applied to plan, check and do better the next time.
Delegate to Develop Talent.
This model draws inspiration from the Deming Cycle, a continual improvement process. It gets interesting when we treat delegation as a form of experiential learning.
Delegation should be so much more than asking someone to do work for us. It is a powerful vehicle for continual learning and growing talent when we:
- Plan with people, not for them. Teaching our standards for success.
- Trust people to do it their way, to succeed and to fail. Experience is the best teacher.
- Check in so that the job doesn’t overwhelm them. Well executed, checking in helps people to release stress and to build confidence in their progress.
- Review to create the space for someone to reflect on a process, generalise lessons from the experience, and apply that learning to the next time.
Understanding delegation as talent development is game-changing. Using this model transforms a common occurrence into a daily opportunity to develop people and teams.
Plus, it rhymes.
Want to Delegate like a Boss for Real?
Show your trust in your people and teams when you delegate.
When the results come in, remember:
A real ‘boss’ gives the credit and takes the blame.
If the delegated job goes well, celebrate and praise your team member who made it happen. You trusted them to do the job, so shine the light on their success.
If the team member fails, don’t hang them out to dry. Take responsibility as a leader and own the failure.
Then reflect on where you went wrong. Maybe a clearer plan was needed or maybe you chose the wrong person for the job. Perhaps it wasn’t a good task to delegate. Maybe you checked in too much or too little. Figure out what when wrong, and then apply that learning to the next time you delegate.
See what I did there?
