Join Jed and Bob as they discuss why, how and what managers should delegate.
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Delegate Effectively
Download the ‘Delegate Effectively’ Cheat Sheet, Video, Audio, and Slides
Delegate Effectively
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Effective Delegation is core managerial skill that almost all managers can improve upon. Below we talk about:
- Why Managers Don’t Delegate
- Why Managers Should Delegate
- What Managers Should Delegate
- How to Delegate
Why Managers Don’t Delegate
If Effective Delegation is such a good idea, why do some managers not bother to do it? There are several impediments to Effective Delegation:
- Delegating takes some up front work so it seems easier just to do it yourself.
- Some managers are control freaks. (What if it doesn’t get done the way I would do it?)
- Some managers see it as asking for help — which they perceive as weak.
- Some managers feel badly about passing on their work to others.
Why Managers Should Delegate
Regardless of the reasons why managers don’t delegate, there are several compelling reasons to practice Effective Delegation:
- It helps develop the skills and abilities of the people you are delegating to.
- It frees you up to do the work that only you can/should do.
- It makes the business more capable if they were to lose a manager for any reason.
What Managers Should Delegate
The first step of Effective Delegation is deciding what tasks should be passed off to someone else:
- Tasks that someone else could do.
- Who on your team has the knowledge, skills and abilities to do the work?
- Tasks that would contribute to building your team.
- Who would benefit from the development opportunity?
- Tasks that are organizationally appropriate to delegate.
- Be careful about delegating tasks for which you are ultimately accountable for completing. This is not about passing the buck
- If you are unsure, get alignment with your boss.
How to Delegate
Now that you have decided what tasks to delegate and considered to whom to assign them, you must communicate appropriately to those people:
- Context
- What the work is that you are delegating
- Why are you delegating this work
- How this work is important to the bigger picture
- Clarify
- Clarify the desired outcomes and expectations
- Clarify constraints, boundaries and resources
- Create
- Where possible empower the individual to contribute their ideas as to how the work will get done.
- Create the plan together
- Commit
- Get commitment and alignment to specific timelines, due dates, reviews, follow up meetings, measures of success etc.
- Close
- Wrap it up and express support and confidence in the individual.
3 Things to Remember About Effective Delegation:
- Do it! Good Managers get work done. Great Managers get work done through and with others.
- Make smart decisions about what to delegate and who to delegate to.
- Leverage the Wily Manager Coaching Model (Context, Clarify, Create, Commit, Close) to delegate effectively.
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Delegate – Unless You’d Rather Be a Martyr
Are you a martyr…or are you using delegation to get more work done with less effort?
The ‘Delegate Effectively and Get More Done‘ Video and Cheat Sheet was just added to the website. In it, we lead you through the exact 5-step process you need to follow to delegate effectively. Get Instant Access Today.
Everyone knows an Office Martyr.
These are the people that absolutely refuse to let go of any of their tasks, thinking that no one can do them as well as they can. This refusal to delegate makes about as much sense as taking your summer vacation in Damascus.
Yet this kind of self-destructive behavior is actually encouraged. As a society, we’ve decided that many other behaviors that were acceptable only a few decades ago, are now completely out of the question. A careful viewing of any episode of Mad Men will confirm how much has changed in a relatively short time. Gone are the days of getting completely plastered at lunch, and then driving back to the office to finish up your day. Same goes for smoking, recreational drug use, gambling, gluttony, and virtually all other forms of excessive, self-destructive behavior.
The one glaring exception is workoholism. How many times have you been bombarded on Monday mornings with tales of alleged heroism about how someone successfully avoided their family all weekend, so they could work right through to finish some insignificant office project? The same people will drone on about how they get to the office before 7.00am, and work past 6.00pm on a regular basis.
This refusal to delegate is something to be embarrassed about, not something one brags about. Not many people entertain people at the water cooler boasting about their other vices:
- “I spent the weekend gambling away my kids’ tuition money!
- “I ate 12 boxes of Krispy-Kreme’s in one sitting on Saturday. Then I purged, and did it again.”
- “I keep a bottle of vodka, along with a toothbrush and mouthwash in my purse for mid-day emergencies.”
All of these sound as ridiculous to me as, “I work 80 hours per week on a regular basis”. Congratulations – you’re completely dysfunctional, and probably need to see a mental health professional – top speed.
There are only two situations that I could envision someone working an 80-hour week:
- The exceptional project, event or occurrence that will quickly pass to return to a more reasonable way of working, or
- You are a farmer – in which case you have my gratitude and respect.
If you’re consistently overworked (and you’re not a farmer), then there’s a good chance you should be delegating more of your responsibilities.
In the ‘Delegate Effectively and Get More Done‘ Video and Cheat Sheet, we explain why many managers don’t delegate (and why they should), which tasks are appropriate for delegation, and the exact 5-step process you can follow to delegate effectively.
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Unless, of course, you don’t want to ruin your reputation as the office martyr.
Team Motivation Activities
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It’s not about silly games, but rather Team Motivation Activities should be about how you manage your business and lead your people. Below we talk about 5 Team Motivation Activities that can make a difference with your team.
This topic was inspired by a question from Matt, a Wily Manager member:
“Hey Wily Manager Team,
Thank you very much for the podcasts. I know how to motivate one person at a time, but my question would be, how do you motivate a whole team that has no career aspirations and hardly any motivation to achieve their goals.”
Well, Matt – thanks for your question on Team Motivation Activities, and here’s some food for thought.
5 Team Motivation Activities
- Figure out what makes your people tick
- Set and communicate clear expectations
- Administer consistent reinforcement and consequences
- Promote healthy competition
- As a last resort, change out team members
These five team motivation activities may not be as much fun as a day-long high-ropes course, but they are much less expensive, and these activities have tangible outcomes.
Figure Out What Makes Them Tick
Your very first team motivation activity is to recognize that every person is different. You need to determine why your team members may not be motivated.
- Remember that everyone’s behavior makes sense to her. You need to ask, “why would people behave or react in this way?”
- How has the team historically been led? If people have not been adequately led, they may have no historical incentive to go above and beyond.
- What has been reinforced and rewarded? If people have no career aspirations and are generally lazy, then this is what has historically been reinforced.
- Has poor performance been dealt with? If problem performers have not been addressed, then people will withdraw their discretionary effort.
Create Clear Expectations
Before a manager can bemoan his people’s inability to get things done, he needs to ensure those people have been provided with clear expectations.
- Is there initiative overload? Is effort diffused by dozens of different issues all demanding your people’s attention? If this is the case, they end up doing all of these things poorly.
- Overwhelmed by HQ? If you work in a large bureaucracy, it is quite possible for multiple (and sometimes competing) directions are coming from head office. Much like initiative overload, it diffuses people’s energy and ensures nothing will be done well.
- Are there 4 – 7 key team goals for the year? If there are 50 or 60 goals, your team will become frustrated and give up. The most motivated teams are those who can rally around a limited number of achievable goals.
- Is there one overarching objective or a clear vision? For example: “Be top 5 sales team in the country in 2012?”
Consistent Reinforcement and Consequences
Managers need to reinforce the behaviors they want to see, and respond appropriately to behaviors and performance that does not meet their expectations. Unfortunately, many leaders believe that reinforcement and rewards are the responsibility of the HR group.
- Look beyond variable compensation (or any other HR initiative).
- Consistently reward desired performance in a way meaningful to the recipient.
- Deal with poor performance swiftly and decisively
Promote Healthy Competition
- Don’t pit people against each other, but encourage healthy competition:
- Reward top performers on a regular basis
- Public accountability where appropriate
Change Out Team Members
In some cases, when everything else has been tried, a manager must make the decision to terminate an employee’s employment.
- You need to give everyone every opportunity to be successful.
- When people choose not to be successful, make changes
BEWARE: If you go overboard (and fire too many people), it will be obvious to all, that the problem is you, and NOT your people.
Three Things to Remember about Team Motivation Activities
- Treat people as individuals – all of your efforts must be motivating in the eyes of the recipient – not you as the manager.
- Be consistent — you need to reward people regularly, and deal with poor performance consistently, without bias, and quickly.
- Don’t abdicate leadership to HR or anyone else. As a manager, it is your job to lead your people, not HR’s. Use HR as a resource where you can to better lead your people.
Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about Team Motivation Activities (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):
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5 Reasons Performance Reviews Suck
In the past fifteen years, I’ve been in and out of dozens of organizations, all of which had some process for conducting Performance Reviews. Of all of them, only one organization did them consistently, and did them well. The rest of them conducted performance reviews that ranged between ineffective, and highly offensive.
This got me to thinking what all these organizations have in common when it comes to Performance Reviews, so here are the top five (of several dozen) reasons why Performance Reviews usually suck:
1) Everybody wants more feedback – as long as it’s good. Yep… as much as your Gen Y types tell you they crave feedback, they really only want it if it confirms their worldview that they are beyond fantastic. Any suggestions for improvement are usually met with a thud. It is only the most elite of corporate cultures that have overcome this aspect of human nature. These organizations train and encourage people to constantly seek out feedback that will make them better – which sometimes requires facing up to the fact you don’t do some things well.
2) Performance Reviews are non-specific. They often contain broad sweeping statements about someone being “good with customers”, or “needing improvement on follow through”. These observations are about as useful as a chocolate teapot. If it’s not specific, don’t bother. Bring data or specific behavioral observations.
3) People are too polite. Most supervisors hate performance reviews more than the employees. So they try to get through them as quickly as possible, without hurting anyone’s feelings. Great organizations, and great leaders use performance appraisals as catalyst for improvement. This actually requires giving people feedback on how they can improve – rather than just trying to keep the peace.
4) Performance reviews are structured too much like report cards. If the performance review is simply “the year in review” without any mention of the future, or developmental opportunities, then it is a waste of time. Even more of a waste of time is a 4 or 5 point rating system that employees are graded on with little thought or explanation. No wonder people hate them.
5) They are disconnected with what people do every day. The big problem with performance reviews is that they are designed by HR people, or external consultants who have absolutely no idea what people in a particular role do everyday. Hence people are assessed on things they rarely or never do, and the bulk of their efforts are not captured by the criteria or format used.
Employees don’t have any accountability for the Performance Review process. OK… I said five reasons, so this one is a bonus. In most organizations, the employee merely shows up for a performance review meeting, having lent no thought or effort to outcome. Great organizations and great managers insist that employees complete some form of self-assessment in advance of the meeting so that the success of the process is shared.
Conducting a Mid Year Performance Review
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Why Conduct a Mid Year Performance Review?
- Most organizations set their objectives at the beginning of the year, but much can change in six months time. You need to keep objectives aligned with business changes.
- The Mid Year Performance Review acts as a formal “check in” with the employee. If you are only formally reviewing performance at the end of the year, you run the risk of surprising the employee with a poor review. A Mid Year Performance Review gives the employee the opportunity to take corrective action before the formal end of year review.
- It can solidify the actions you need the employee to take for the balance of the year. It is an excellent opportunity to clarify and review specific goals and actions to be achieved by the end of the year.
Steps to Conducting a Mid Year Performance Review
- Employee provides self-assessment. Employees should have as much responsibility in the performance review process as the supervisor does. The best way to ensure this accountability is shared is to insist that the employee conducts his/her own self-assessment using the same criteria and format as the supervisor will to assess performance. The differences between ratings provides a fertile ground for discussion.
- Manager collects performance data and feedback. The manager should use data wherever possible, and at the very least list specific behavioral examples. To use vague or non-specific statements when assessing performance is neither professional, nor useful.
- Review assessment and write review. Review the employee’s self-assessment, and write your own review as to the employee’s performance. Incorporate all the data and examples you gathered in step 2, above.
- Conduct the Mid-Year Performance Review discussion. After both employee and supervisor have done their preparation, they need to meet to formally discuss performance.
The Mid Year Performance Review Discussion
- This is the most important aspect of the Mid Year Performance Review.
- Conduct a quick retention interview along with the performance discussion. For example, you may simply want to ask how the employee perceives his/her work environment, and how challenged and satisfied they feel working there. Too often, organizations wait until the Exit Interview to gather this feedback.
- The employee should be given the opportunity to describe their deliverables against each objective and other projects. They should be able to articulate what they’ve done in the first half of the year, and how that has contributed to their stated goals and objectives.
- During the Mid Year Performance Review meeting, discuss feedback grounded in multiple perspectives from the organization. In other words, how are the efforts of this employee important to the larger organization.
- Ensure that key priorities are clear, and alignment is obtained on balance of year objectives. This is an opportunity for both the employee and the supervisor to discuss changes or “course corrections” to ensure the employee is successful for her end of year review.
Three Things to Remember about Mid Year Performance Reviews
- This is a listening exercise for the supervisor. Listen carefully to both the content and context of the message being delivered.
- Be candid and balanced in your feedback. Both parties will get much more out of the discussion if they are honest and forthright with each other. Being too polite will not drive performance. Nor will berating and humiliating the employee.
- Clarify how you will support the employee. It is important for the supervisor to commit to what she will do to enable the success of the employee.
Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about Conducting a Mid Year Performance Review (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):
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How to Set Goals and Objectives
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Below we discuss the following aspects of How to Set Goals and Objectives:
- Goals and Objectives in the larger context of Performance Management
- Why managers should bother with Goals and Objectives
- Three Steps on how to Set Goals and Objectives
How to Set Goals and Objectives in the Larger Context of Managing Performance:
Every organization should have an infrastructure for managing employee performance. Below is a simple model that shows how to Set Goals and Objectives in a broader context:
Goals Versus Objectives:
There are many different definitions of “Goals” and “Objectives”. Here is how we delineate the two:
- Goals are higher level than objectives
- Goals have longer time frames than objectives
- Objectives are more specific than goals
- Several objectives may contribute toward a single goal.
Why Bother to Set Goals and Objectives
- To Set Goals and Objectives closes the gap between Strategy and Execution. Goals and objectives are needed to translate high-level strategies into more manageable behaviours that need to occur on a daily basis.
- Without well-written goals and objectives, evaluating performance becomes unnecessarily more difficult. Goals and objectives translate into tangible actions that are observable and often measureable.
- Setting Goals and Objectives drives focus and alignment through the organization. When Goals and Objectives are clear, and cascade through an organization, alignment is assured.
- By setting Goals and Objectives, you help define and drive performance.
- Goals and Objectives clarify the employee’s priorities and allow them to allocate their time and resources effectively.
Cascading Goals and Objectives
When you set Goals and Objectives, you need to ensure alignment between different levels of the organization. Starting at the most basic functions of a company, the Goals and Objectives must contribute or “roll up” to the Goals and Objectives of the next level up in the organization. In situations where there are many layers, this alignment must be carried on until the very highest level of the organization.
Three Steps to Set Goals and Objectives:
- Align the organization’s and team goals. Regardless of where you are in an organization’s hierarchy, you need to look above you, and ensure that you understand those higher-level goals, and ensure your goals will contribute to those.
- Draft your goals and objectives. After you’ve looked up the hierarchy, sit down with your team and draft your team objectives, and personal goals and objectives accordingly.
- Meet to discuss and finalize. You need to meet with your boss to discuss and finalize your Goals and Objectives. You then need to meet with your team to ensure that all Goals and Objectives are fully aligned.
Drafting Clear Goals and Objectives
The SMART acronym is instructional when refining Goals and Objectives:
- Specific: Well written Goals and Objectives state a clear end result. The objective names the end result, output or intent, so there is no room for misinterpretation. When writing Goals and Objectives, use concise verbs, such as:
- “to establish,”
- “to increase,”
- “to reduce”
- Measurable:Your Goals and Objectives must be quantifiable in some way. Some general categories and examples associated with measuring objectives include:
- Quantity number of units produced, items processed, calls taken, contacts made, etc.
- Quality number of specs met, percentage error rates, percent waste rates, number of complaints received, accuracy of reports, etc.
- Cost dollars spent, percentage within budget, dollars spent on overtime, etc.
- Time in Use percentage of target dates met, number of deadlines met, number of units shipped on time, etc.
- Attainable: there must be a reasonable chance that the objective can be achieved; some people suggest an 80% probability is effective as a motivator. If you set Goals and Objectives that are too much of a stretch, people won’t take them seriously.
- Relevant: Goals and Objectives must be related directly to the individual’s sphere of influence and key job accountabilities.
- Timebound: states a time frame, target dates, and/or milestones during the year that are expected to be met.
If you struggle with writing performance objectives, here is a formula to get you started:
- I will ( action )
- so that ( outcome ).
- by ( date )
For example:
I will work with my team to develop performance objectives so that 100% of my direct reports will have documented objectives by January 31.
3 Things to Remember About How to Set Goals and Objectives:
- Involve your team when establishing Goals and Objectives. These should not be done in isolation.
- Meet often to discuss progress. Do not allow the setting of Goals and Objectives to become an academic exercise that is visited only once per year.
- Include Business/Operational and Leadership objectives. Most people establish their business or operational Goals and Objectives, and fail to define Leadership ones. If you are a leader of other people you need to set Goals and Objectives that pertain to that function. For example:
a) The number and quality of one on one meetings
b) % compliance on performance appraisals
c) measure of employee development activity
Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about How to Set Goals and Objectives (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):
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Laundry Lists and Diffused Focus
The fun part about our job is being exposed to a number of different industries and organizations. One of my favorite things to say is, “I’ve worked in Nuclear Power Stations, and in grocery stores, and 90% of the management issues are the same.” I usually get significant pushback from the Nuclear Engineers on this one, but it’s true.
Often the response I get from this statement is a question about the most common thread that weaves organizations and their performance together. The answer, quite simply, is “Focus”. The great performing organizations define and continually refine the limited number of things they need to do well, and then execute those things.
The reason people lose focus is because they get so busy managing tasks, they forget to look up every now and then and make sure they are doing the right things. Or, as I like to say, “They are so busy doing their jobs, they forget to do their jobs.”
As a busy manager, the next time you feel more overwhelmed with work than the bartender on the Kennedy Compound, spend a couple of minutes to review what your top 3 to 7 objectives for the year are. What are you doing to achieve those objectives this week? Better yet, review your top objectives every day before you start diving into tasks.
If you find yourself involved in meetings and activities that have nothing to do with those 3 to 7 objectives, then you need to question what you’re doing. Worse yet, if find yourself with 25 or 30 objectives, you need to go back to drawing board, and transform your laundry list into a more manageable, critical action list.
Achieving focus is conceptually very easy, but requires a lot of discipline to do well.
How to Make Sure People Don’t Care
There is so much stuff out there telling managers what they should do to be more effective, and how they can be better leaders of their people. This week, I thought I’d take a different approach, and suggest to managers how they might make sure that none of their people care.
It seems that many leaders will read an article or attend a seminar and them come back to the office and do the same thing they were doing before. They then find themselves stressed-out and miserable, as they can never seem to get a grip on their jobs or on leading their people. It seems something is lost in the transfer between reading or hearing something, and applying it to our own circumstances.
As for the people those managers are leading: they all start out with a different level of giving a crap, and they are then pushed towards the mean (or average) of “giving-a-crap-edness” of the culture around them. The great managers push that average line up, and inspire people to come along for the ride. Bad leaders, push the line down, and tacitly encourage people to give a crap about far fewer things, and at far lower a level.
So here are some things bad leaders do to ensure no one cares:
- Enable unnecessary bureaucracy. This is why many public sector organizations suffer with poor morale.
- Not dealing with performance issues. I’m not going to work all that hard for you if I know my peer is doing nothing, and not getting called on it.
- Not administering consequences. People need to know that both good and poor performance will be recognized and “rewarded” as such.
- Micro-managing. If you are going to redo all my work anyway, I’m not going to put much effort into it.
- Playing favorites. OK… maybe a meritocracy only exists in a University Professor’s textbook, but you’ve got to at least try to give the appearance of fairness.
- Reinforce a blame culture. People’s best work comes from taking risks, which they will not do, if they get crucified every time a small error is made.
There are lots of other ones, too, but leaders should start with these ones, and determine to what degree they do these things. The further away you are from these things, the more likely you are to be pushing that mean line of discretionary effort upwards.
Measure Your Measures
Last time I wrote about measurement in the workplace, I got quite a bit of hate mail. I could tell you the exact quantity and relative quality of that hate mail, but suffice it to say, that people seem to have very definite ideas about how things ought to be measured (or not measured) in their workplace.
So I’ve beefed up my security detail, and put on my protective cup, and I’ll tackle business metrics again – this time for service oriented businesses.
Let me describe the two opposite ends of the continuum on this silly debate. Way over on the far left hand side, are those people who say, “I’m a lawyer (graphic designer, LR negotiator, marketing specialist, etc.), you can’t measure what I do.” Sorry – I can, and I will.
On the extreme right hand side of the scale are those people (mostly consultants, who’ve never actually worked in any of these jobs), who say, “Measuring service businesses is exactly the same as measuring production-based businesses.” You should throw such people out of your office quickly, before any more of their ignorance wears off on your people.
As with many things, the truth lies somewhere between these extremes — in the less comfortable grey area. You can and should measure service business functions, but it often much harder than simply counting widgets.
In some cases, there are very repeatable and transactional things that occur within a service function, that should be counted like widgets. If you work as a recruiter, you should be prepared to disclose how many resumes were screened, how many people were shortlisted, how many interviewed, and your time to fill the position.
You should also have a quality ranking as to how well those positions were filled that will only become clear after some time has passed. For example, how many of your new recruits quit or are terminated within the first 18 months is a quality indicator of the recruiting process. So are the upward mobility of new hires, and their scores on performance appraisals, in the first couple of years after they come onboard
That wasn’t so hard, was it?
So rather than fire-bombing my office, perhaps you could measure the effectiveness of your current measurements – but we’ll leave that for another day.