Great delegation habits make leaders and organizations more effective. First and foremost, it’s important to trust your people to do the job their own way. Yet, if you’re telling them what you want done AND how to do it, you’re hindering their efforts and your own. Delegate the "what" and leave the "how" it gets done to the person doing the work. Trusting your people in this way helps them be more engaged, autonomous, and creative—three key ingredients for maximizing your human capital through delegation.
Self-coaching:
Self-coaching:
- Consider the three elements of delegation: 1) trusting people to do the job well, 2) verifying progress, and 3) applying consequences. Which of these areas are stronger for you, and which could use work?
- If the first element, trusting your people to do the job well, is weaker, then is issue one of your own delegation approach, or one of having people you trust in key roles?
- If it’s the former, then practice delegating the “what” and not the “how.” What do you notice?
David Peck
Executive Coach
and President
Leadership
Unleashed
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Based on client experiences / lessons learned, our weekly LeaderTips have been offering self-coaching themes and topics of interest to leaders since 2004. They are often published in BusinessWeek Online, sent weekly to our clients, and hundreds of other corporate leaders worldwide. I invite you to forward them to others, who are also welcome to subscribe using the link below. Note that over 100 of these tips appear in my book, Beyond Effective: Practices in Self-aware Leadership. Click here to subscribe to LeaderTips via email.
