My last article I discussed how to use delegation specifically as a learning tool and why it is useful as one. I want to cover a few more benefits of delegation and give an outline on how to implement it and make it work for you. Its not an easy or comfortable thing to do at times but learning to do it well will improve your interaction with others as a leader and in any group where teamwork is important. And in additional to the learning capacity of delegation, it provides other benefits as well.

• Increase your productivity and that of the people you work with
• Provide motivation and opportunities to others
• Increase your own time available on a smaller focused set of tasks

Roadblocks to Delegation

A number of things are regular roadblocks to delegation and are important to eliminate before you can ever master delegation.

I can do it faster myself

This thinking and attitude is a major roadblock for delegation. Just because you may be able to do it faster yourself one time, doesn’t mean that you will always be faster at it, nor have time to do it every time. It often seems that delegation may be an option for something that at first seems like a one time event, but it almost always crops up again where you end up in the same situation, thinking that you will just have to do it yourself again. Getting past this mindset and looking at ways to delegate things out to others gives you more options when it comes up again and frees some of your time even when it is first delegated. It may very well take longer for someone else to do, but only the first or second time, they will get faster and then there are two of you able to do the same task, or to do it twice as fast. It definitely increases productivity so take note of anything you think you can do faster yourself and explore options to delegate that out without whatever help and training you need to provide to make it happen.

If I teach someone to do my job, I won’t have one!

This is wrong in so many ways. Not only is it generally a career limiting move to try to protect your own position but its obvious to others. Anything you are not willing to let go and you hold onto yourself is a risk in your bosses eye. No one wants to have a single person the only person able to do something, and when those people exist, they are the greatest threat to the organization, not asset. Once you start using delegation effectively, you will be using the time, skills and experience from other people, not just yourself! The fear of loosing your job by delegating and training portions of it is completely unjust. This provides you more time to do planning, problem solving and training that will allow you advance in an organization. If you have trained others to do your job, you open doors for promotion since there is someone to transition into your old role. This is opposite what most think and so changing your thinking and attitude about delegation will kill this common roadblock.

Effective Delegation Steps

I had this list of steps in my last article, but I wanted to show them again and elaborate on a couple of them in particular.

1. Identify something that someone else could do that you currently do yourself
2. Pick someone who is able to take on that new delegation
3. Discuss and make clear that you need that persons help and give them the reasons you picked them
4. Describe what you would like them to do and what the benefits are
5. Have them paraphrase and repeat in there own words to ensure they understand
6. Brainstorm and discuss any resources or training needed and who can provide that
7. Plan some actions to get started
8. Agree on how to report back on the delegation

Step 1 – Identify something to delegate

To accomplish step 1, list your activities in your role and critique them as to if they must be done , should be done or could be eliminated . Focus your time on the must be done items and look at the should be done items to delegate, leaving the could be eliminated to be eliminated. Of those items, determine which you must do personally, which ones someone else could do and what items can be simplified or broken down into smaller pieces to delegate.

Step 2 – Pick someone who can take it on

This would generally be a person who will be best at the job but it never needs to be limited to that. Since delegation is such a great learning tool, its often someone who isn’t yet good for the task and the delegation will be an opportunity for them to learn and improve in that area. Don’t limit your options here, there is room to delegate to almost anyone, you simply need to look at how to break down the tasks to something manageable for that individual. More on this in Step 8.

Step 3 and 4 – Discuss why you need it and what you need in detail

Be honest with your reasons here and explain why you are asking them. If your reason is based on that person being best for job, tell them that. It helps them to accept the task when its complimentary and a way to prove themselves. If its not complimentary and perhaps just a normal part of the job, its still important to relay the reasons why it is important and what benefits it has. You should always have some more details about the task when you ask for help. If they say yes, then you can go into those details. If they say no or want to know more, you have more to add instead of a dead end. You want to be able to convince them and get them agree to help before you are out of benefits and reasons why you are delegating to them.

Step 5 – Have them paraphrase your expectations

Telling someone what you expect isn’t very valuable unless you know they understood you. This goes without saying for all communication so make a habit of having them paraphrase it ALL back to you to ensure they understand what they need to do for the delegated task. Remember that delegation is a transfer of responsibility, so ensure they are accepting it themselves. They should be using phrases like, "I will do…" and "I’ll complete this by…" and never the word we. You should not be included in the responsibility so listen for this when they are paraphrasing back to you. If you skip this paraphrase, you can never tell if they have really accepted the responsibility.

Step 6 and 7 – Brainstorm and generate some plans

This step is what you do with the person to help them transition and take on the new tasks. Be careful you don’t get other resources involved and owning any responsibilities, they need to stay as resources to the person being delegated to. Help suggest people and other sources of help, perhaps the same ways you learned it, or techniques and tricks you’ve learned with experience that can save them headaches in taking on these new responsibilities. Another important point here is to not tell them what resources to use, let them decide for themselves. Everyone learns best in different ways and their style will likely not match your preferred style to don’t force them into your style of learning. Give them options and let them decide how to proceed with it. You can offer your opinion if they ask or let them know that you have a suggestion if they want it, but leave it to them as much as possible. This is an important coaching tool to ensure that the actions of picked by the person responsible for them.

Step 8 – Define reporting

I think this is the most crucial step in using delegation effectively and is most often ignored or done poorly. If you don’t have the appropriate level of reporting in place with delegation you will quickly find yourself disappointed or the new tasks dropped with no attention put to them. The ability of the person you delegate to will determine the level of reporting you need. This varies hugely and is why most times delegation doesn’t work as people usually wrongly assume that everyone will take a task and that’s the end of it. That is definitely not the case most of the time. I learned these degrees in freedom with reporting in a supervisory course I’ve done and I think they are the key to effective delegation.

1. Act and report routinely – Completely independent work with reporting included with existing reporting practice, no additional frequency required. You can completely trust a person to own and deliver on a delegated task at this level.
2. Act and report immediately – Provide only coaching help to improve them or when they are struggling with anything. Expect that the person will be reporting regularly and immediately for any problems that arise.
3. Seek approval, then act – Support with training and have them report back, get approval and then act on that before returning for more. At this level, the person is learning to take things on and make some decisions themselves.
4. Wait until told – Provide the direction for the person and all decisions. Have them do the tasks and return when completed to learn what is involved and begin understanding what you expect at each step.

You start at the bottom and work your way up to level one reporting. In any team that has delegation, the more team members there are higher up the list, the more productive they will be and the better results you will get. You need to use ensure, however, that you are starting people at level 4 and moving up the list. Delegation will fail if you let or expect someone to report at level 1, but are only capable or familiar enough to do this at level 3. To make delegation work and to get better and better at it, you need to learn how to recognize where the best level of reporting is and work with people using feedback, coaching and training to move them up to higher levels.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 6 Comments »

Author: David Vise

The Google Story is a great story and covers everything Google has done to be where they are today. Its covers a wide range of everything Google without getting into too much technical detail and at the same time, not focusing entirely on the business or financial side. If you are looking for only one or the other in great detail, you won’t find it here, this book covers everything. Its written by a journalist and he obviously had some insider access to develop the story and tell many things from the perspective of the founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The book demonstrates how consistent the founders have been to develop the search giant by building upon their vision of delivering a product focused on solving the problem of search, as globally as it gets. The attitudes and mantra of “Don’t Be Evil” is carried well through the book as well and evidence is seen in the many decisions made by Brin and Page to grow Google in a particular way.

While the story covers some of the problems that Google has faced and reasons why some people don’t like it, ultimately this book is a success story about Google. Come to think about it, it doesn’t really matter how you want to criticize Google, they are still extremely successful! So, don’t expect to read a bunch of insider info to help tear down or bash Google. They have done a lot of things right and also done a lot of things some people don’t like, every company has that. Now, I personally like Google very much and use it all the time, but I’m not a fan just to be a fan. The book was rather interesting as I’ve never looked into the full story of Google or kept up with all of its related news over the years and I certainly didn’t know half of the things in the book about the Google culture and how it became what it is today. I thought that was the most interesting and hopefully something that I can take a piece of and have more impact with in my own company.

So I think the book is well worth reading and many things can be learned from it about driving a company towards a vision with a unshakable attitude and mindset about HOW that can be done. If you’re a die hard Google fan and read every story published about them, you probably won’t learn that much, but if your interested and expect to learn great lessons about business, marketing and entrepreneurship, then the Google Story is well worth it!

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 1 Comment »

Author: Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, and Ron McMillan

From the authors of Crucial Conversations (another highly recommended book), Influencer is another brilliant guide book to day to day things that have a massive impact on people’s lives. This book in particular focuses on a specific set of strategies that anyone can use to influence people in difficult situations. It is not a motivational only type book or a set of vague principles, it has specific steps and real world examples from some of the world’s best influencers which help guide you to learning an effective approach. This book is also NOT a guide to getting people to say yes, its much deeper and longer laster than that, where you want to influence and change people’s lasting behavior!

The book is written in 2 parts, each worth the price of the book on its own!

Part 1 – The Power to Change Anything

The premise of the book is based on learning from the best influencers in the world and everything is presented clearly based on various real life studies that demonstrate each of the author’s findings perfectly. The reader is encouraged to learn more by seeking out and studying the best examples in the areas of interest and the author’s have certainly put that into practice throughout the book as well. Doing this helps to identify areas of influence in a situation, this is something I particularly liked. I’ve always believed that if you have something to learn, its most effective to seek out and learn from the best. Another major premise of the book is looking at behaviors of people and how that can be used with influence. This behavior based analysis is also very dear to me and reinforced with specific techniques well in the early chapters of the book. The last section of Part 1 is about various methods of changing people’s minds. I really like this section as well with regards to using story telling to influence others and change their minds. I’ve always been a good story teller which I now recognize as one of the reasons why I’ve had as much influence in my life as I’ve had. By this point in the book (only about 1/4 of the way through) I figured this is by far one of the best books I’ve EVER read. The rest of the book easily holds up to this as well. This is a book with so much actionable content and techniques, you could easily have to re-read this book each year to really practice and implement all the principles outlined.

Part 2 – Make Change Inevitable

The second part of the book focuses on the strategic model that works to master influence. Its outlined with great clarity using specific real life examples of each of the 6 sources of influence. The sources are categorized as follows:

All of these 6 sources are areas to overcome to be a great influencer. Its important to learn to recognize each of these 6 sources and learn to address all of them, not just one or two. Having a lasting influence requires major work and needs each of these areas to be recognized and addressed before a significant difference can ever be made. Learning to see these is the first step and the book’s examples show how difficult, yet effective it is to see each one. Putting effort into several of these sources (or all) will result in significantly more influence than if they are acted on individually.

I found the stories used as examples to be captivating and impressive since they are areas that most consider the toughest situations to deal with. One illustration of these techniques comes in stories about annihilating the nasty Guinea worm from villages in Nigeria. Another example throughout the book is in studying what Dr. Silbert has done at Delancey with transforming lifelong felons into productive citizens. There are other examples as well used throughout the book.

Overall, I think this is a fantastic book, but it is also not an easy take it and apply it kind of guide book. The data used to come to the conclusions is obviously massive and the work it takes in the stories of influence presented in the book are also huge. However, the book challenges you to change your thinking and to look outside your normal view when wanting to have more influence. I think scaling the steps and the model from the book into day to day life is fairly easy, since simply knowing what to look for helps in how you choose to respond. The difficulty is in how far you take the influence strategies presented. So, its a great book and I highly recommend it if you have ever wished to have more power to change things.

Note: If you’re interested, one of the author’s, David Maxfield, posted a short comment and summary about this book from another review here.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 3 Comments »

Well, it feels like I’m constantly playing catch up with the books on my list that I want to read and that list just got a whole lot longer. I’m a regular listener of the podcast, “The Cranky Middle Manager” and the latest episode #125 is a great discussion with Jack Covert about the best business books list of 2007 by 800 CEO Read.com. I’ve only read a couple from this year’s list but many are already on my list to read for next year after hearing about them on this podcast or from other’s recommendations. Most of the books I’ve read are recommended books and books from previous years “best of” lists so you can view more of them here with a book review search.

There are a lot of great books in this list as well this year, each with a short description and obviously very high rankings so no need to hunt for reviews for individual titles at the bookstore or online. I absolutely love these types of recommended lists since there are books for just about everyone, which gives me a lot of knowledge as a manager to make an easy recommendation for any particular topic even if I haven’t read it myself, yet still trusting it will be a great book.

Just for quick reference, here were the top four books listed:

The Dream Manager Matthew Kelly

The Last Tycoons William D. Cohan

Made to Stick Chip and Dan Heath

Strengths Finder 2.0 Tom Rath

I hope others will get as much value out of this list as I know I will next year!

Posted by Mike King under Business | 2 Comments »