Effective leadership is about inspiring people to do the things you may have once done yourself when you were an individual contributor. It is about helping people understand how what they do everyday contributes to moving the organization forward in accomplishing key goals and objectives. It is about thinking at a more strategic level.
How does a leader accomplish this?
In an average week, a leader should carve out a good chunk of time to have meaningful conversations with their people. They should give regular feedback, developing people for success in their current role and helping set them up for future opportunities. In many organizations, these key leadership responsibilities get the least amount of time. It often gets put to the bottom of the to-do list. Calendars are packed like they have never been before and people are unable to take ownership of their own time. They may also not understand the significance of the leader-as-coach role and they still spend more time than they should executing tasks better done by others they lead.
We regularly talk to leaders we coach about how to be more proactive and intentional in how they spend their time. We first help them understand how their time is currently being spent by capturing a snapshot of a typical week/two week period. This helps get a visual allocation of time to key buckets of work. Once that step is completed, we work with them to determine the tasks/projects, etc. they spend time on that they should be delegating. Then we are very intentional in developing and implementing a plan to delegate even a subset of those tasks to both give somebody on their team an opportunity to have some increased visibility/responsibility, as well as to free up time on the leader’s calendar for more people leadership.
Why don’t leaders delegate more? There are a few key reasons:
Loss of control. It can be challenging to delegate tasks you excel at, especially when your reputation is built on your ability to execute them flawlessly. You might hesitate to hand over responsibility to someone else, fearing that it could elevate their reputation at the expense of your own. However, effective leadership recognizes that success is intrinsically linked to the success of your team.
Too time consuming. It takes time and focused attention to successfully delegate something to somebody on your team. Delegation is a true skill that is hard to master. It is more than just letting somebody know they will now be working on a particular task or project. It is about analyzing both the specifics of the task to be delegated, along with the individual and their skill set, to effectively delegate in a way that will set that individual up for success. Many people say it is easier, and more time effective, to maintain ownership. It is, however, easy to see how the short term investment of time yields long-term gain for the leader as well as the team member.
Limited capacity and/or skillset of those you lead. Delegating tasks can be a challenge when we, as leaders, are concerned that employees lack the necessary skills. However, retaining ownership to ensure smooth execution hinders growth. Effective leaders prioritize training and coaching to equip their team with the skills needed for successful execution of a delegated responsibility. This approach not only frees up valuable leadership time but also fosters employee engagement by expanding the knowledge and skillset of your employees.
Delegate more, empower people, dedicate more time to being leader as coach and watch the impact it has on your team and your organization.
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