ARE YOU STILL DOING OTHER PEOPLES WORK?

Making the Leadership Lift from manager to leader is a bit of a conundrum. Of course you still have management issues, they’re a reality of any organisation. Even in large hierarchical companies senior leaders ‘roll their sleeves up’, ‘get on the tools’ and find themselves ‘stuck in the weeds’ of being operational...

Sound familiar? What level are you working at?

Let's not ignore flatter organisational structures either, where responsibilities can be less clearly defined. There's a  giant clusterf**k of possibilities for not working at level there.

In case you’re new here - I bang on a lot about everyone being a leader. Never miss an opportunity to lead up, across, wherever. It’s about the mindset your mindset rather than your job title. 

Let’s think about the importance of delegation and collaboration

Put simply, a leader who isn't also an effective delegator, and collaborator will never be effective. 

Drive-by delegation fails. Every time. So does micro-managing. And collaboration is as much about decision-making as ‘working together’. 

It’s another tightrope that leaders have to walk. Oh, the joys!!! Add to that the different needs of individuals, and delegation is even more complex. It’s also crucial in getting shit done and being successful. You didn’t miss the memo, from the amount of interest this gets in my Leadership Lift course, I know that delegation and collaboration are general assumptions with many different meanings. Don’t worry about it now - I got you.

Why collaborate and delegate? 

You’re not meant to be doing everything, nor is that even possible.

I mean obvs!! That’s just common sense. And there’s so much more to it than that. 

Here are the top 3

1. Saving time. This is the above super apparent reason. Flip that over though and consider the time wasted through shitty delegation and collaboration. Re-working, double-ups, misunderstandings and strained relationships can all be avoided.

2. Developing capability. Also obvs. But not considered often enough, or strategically enough. This is where the drive-by delegation will do a real nasty. Who are you developing and how does that fit into your strategic priorities? There are two sides to this - technical skills will be increased, as will the leadership behaviours you’re modelling.

3. Fuelling innovation. Delegation and collaboration are different from assigning a task, or training where you show the way you want something done and step aside. Rather than trying to clone your performance, a good leader is prepared not to be the expert and open the door to different ways of getting shit done.

So why don’t more leaders delegate and collaborate well?

If I had a dollar for… the number of times that I hear leaders reluctant to delegate because their people are already overwhelmed or too busy. So the leader becomes more overwhelmed, busy, and dragged into managerial and operational weeds. It's an organisational effort vampire, where a cycle of not making the changes needed to deal with the workload isn’t addressed and nothing changes. 

Even with all of the will in the world, especially from leaders wanting to be visionary, strategic and to get out of management mindsets, it can be a challenge to slow down and delegate well. To be fair, there may be more obstacles than opportunities. 

Let’s remove some obstacles to delegation and collaboration

Starting with organisational obstacles, coz there’s a whole catalogue of those.

• Being under-resourced

• Timezone, hybrid working and getting access to people

• Procedures locking down new ways of working

• Lack of context

• Access to information

• Job descriptions, and organisational structure

• Silos

• Approval processes, actually lots of set processes

• Leadership teams acting as supervisors and gate-keepers

To move past these,  ask this question.

 ‘When does this circumstance become an excuse, rather than just a reality that 

you build into your plan?’ 

That’s a biggy.

Then there are the more personal reasons for not delegating

• It’s easier and quicker to do it myself

• No one does it as well as I do (low trust)

• I don’t have time to delegate (how ironic)

• These managerial and operational tasks are ones I understand and feel safe in

• Someone else may do it better than me (ouch)

So, with all of that Leadershittery out of the way, here comes the how

Importantly - how do you lead through this process? Managers will tell. Leaders will invite questions and explore, leading to more decisions, innovation and organisational magic!

1. Zoom way out. Think about the context of the task/activity/thing you want to delegate. These will establish boundaries and give safety.

• What’s the purpose of it?

• What’s the intent?

• What other stakeholders are involved?

• What are the constraints?

• What are the freedoms?

• What does ‘done’ look like in its absolute glorious fullness?

  2. Decide who you want to delegate to, or collaborate with

• What’s the opportunity

• Share ‘why them’

• Share, discuss and decide on the details of the context from Step 1

• Get crystal clear on what done looks like

• Allocate authority and accountability

  3. Agree on check-ins. This helps avoid micro-management or abandonment and manages risks

• Consider what the trigger is for these

• Consider what timing might be useful (whether the triggers have triggered or not)

Then get out of the way and get on with being fabulous elsewhere. Trust the process, and that your brilliant leadership (up, across, wherever) has done its job.