To delegate successfully means you are substituting your own judgment for theirs. It means that you’re willing to give up control and accept that the task may be done in a different way to how you’d do it. It means that they don’t have to ask you first before making their own decisions as to how the work should be done, and it means that you will not override their decisions, even if you disagree. Delegation means delegating the authority to make decisions. Without the authority there is no delegation.

When delegation is done right it builds upon the environment of trust where your organization and all those within it will thrive. Importantly, when done right it creates the leaders of the future, people who have been allowed to make decisions early in their career, and not just as they reach the senior levels when all of sudden they went from having no authority to all authority. That situation is a path to disaster.

But how do you delegate successfully? How do you ensure that you provide enough information as to how you foresee the project going without micromanaging the outcome? Here is quick snapshot…

You provide guidance and delegate the task/project etc. using something that I’ve called the 4 P’s: Purpose, Project definition, Phases, and Picture.

Purpose  – What is the purpose of this project/task

Project definition – This is the actual project/task/assignment that you are giving your team. You should focus on 3 W’s; What, When, Why.

Phases – The key steps/stages you envision within the task.

Picture – paint a picture of the end state. Describe what you see and envisage in your mind.

After you’ve provided guidance using these key headings, you then need to add any coordinating details

Coordinating details give more clarity, and can include things such as:

Resources – this is probably the most important. It can include budget or other resources required to get the task done.

Team make-up – what expertise will the team be able to use? Will they have some people moved into their team for this project? How can they access this expertise?

Key timelines – these should link into the phases you described before. You may also want to include more, such as a time window for back briefs/check-ins etc.

Constraints – these are things that must happen.

Restraints – these are things that must not happen.

And that’s it. Now step back and avoid trying to add your ‘two cents’, along with these other common pitfalls:

Common pitfalls of delegating

• You haven’t taken the time to fully understand the problem your asking your team to solve:

Often during discussions we talk about problems as though they are commonly understood, yet the definition of the problem is likely different for everyone, very different in some cases. So it’s always a good idea to stop and make sure the team collectively define the problem. This often ends up a much better, and wider understanding.

• The information you provide lacks clarity:

Providing a lack of information and clarity is without a doubt the biggest pitfall you can make as a leader, and the reason so many end up micromanaging. Giving the correct guidance takes time and effort from you. It means you have to sit down and reflect upon what it is you’re asking your team to do. What is the actual problem that they need to solve? The time invested now is not only crucial, it is an investment that will save you time and energy later.

• You’ve started to provide the how.

• You haven’t taken the time early on for a check-in/back brief.

• You don’t have subsequent, periodic check-ins.

And remember…

With this delegation, are you giving them the authority required to make decisions without having to ask you first? Only when you can answer yes to this question do you know that you have effectively delegated.

I remember when I was in Afghanistan, ‘living’ in the vast expanse of deserts and valleys surrounding what few rivers existed. It was our life for over 6 months. We were in a different world, one that wasn’t connected with all the technology that we are and were used to. We’d gone back in time, and there were periods where the only connection I had with my home-life was a letter flown in on a helicopter. I remember one time I went weeks without receiving a letter. And when I did receive one, the joy was simply indescribable. The same could almost be said for fresh food. We ate rations, with no fresh food, for weeks and weeks on end. When ‘they’ managed to get us some fresh food, it was like all of our Christmas’s had arrived at once.

‘They’, the point of this blog…

‘They’. The folks who were back in our large, safe base, where they had fresh coffee and even a Pizza Hut. ‘They’, our administrative teams, serving in the same war and with the same organisation, yet living a very different experience. They were what we call ‘Corporate Services’ in the normal world. Their role was to support us; to try and enable us to conduct our operations. ‘They’ were serving in the same war, but living a different experience, and yet, without a doubt, ‘they’ and ‘us’ were equal.

I’m not sure at what point in some organisations we decide that corporate services are not an equal partner at the table, but it happens, we’ve all witnessed it, and its effects are absolutely detrimental.

When I was serving overseas, there was never a moment when I didn’t respect the work our corporate services folks did, when I didn’t instill on my team the importance of making sure they felt equal, making sure we understood their business and not just expecting them to understand ours, often asking them the question – what do you need from us to be able to support us better? It’s such a key question, that I’ve rarely seen asked since I left the British Army.

Corporate and administrative services form a crucial part of any organisation. They may not be the big, shiny part of it, but they’re a cog in the big system, and if they aren’t functioning the system will fail.

I think we get this, but what we don’t get is the fact that they are equal to everyone else. They are not sub servant to the other branches or divisions that exist. Those leaders who think they are have never waited in the sweltering desert, under constant danger, waiting scared for them to be able to deliver that letter. They’ve never realised the tangible importance of what they do, and they’ve never taken the time to ask what they need from them to make their role easier.

So if you’re a leader, instill in your team the value that everyone is equal, and that the administration and corporate folks who support you are as equal and as important to your organisation as your own division. I’ve seen the opposite happen, and all it does is produce a disjointed, segmented organisation where individuals and branches can succeed, even if the organisation as a whole is losing. It’s like having the best game of your career, and celebrating like you won the championship, yet your team has just lost at the first hurdle.

All teams should all be treated as equal, not matter what role they play…

And that’s the ironic thing about all of this. There are so many organizations that talk creativity and innovation, challenging their teams to become leaders within their industries, and yet at the same time they have all these unnecessary rules that must be followed.

It’s like pouring water over a small flame; If you want to encourage innovation and creativity, then you have to get rid of the unnecessary rules. Because you cannot have both.

I witnessed a great example of this recently. Not at work, but at home. My son was playing with his Lego. This was not one of your expensive sets of Lego, but a very small and inexpensive one. But for over an hour he just played and played, creating this imaginary world around him, where the characters in the game either didn’t exist in reality or if they did, they did things they weren’t designed to do. His imagination and creativity were what you would expect from a 6-year-old; they’re where no boundaries and he had no rules.

So I sat there and watched and then wondered what would happen if I introduced some rules. If I said that he had to keep the Lego on the table and couldn’t use the floor and all the kitchen utensils he’d brought along? What if I said that the piece without wings couldn’t fly? What if I’d said that he couldn’t interchange the bodies and the legs? What if I’d given him a box to play in and rules to abide by? Would he have been as creative? As imaginary? No.

But this is the exact problem we have in the workplace. We do need creativity and innovation, but for some reason, we’ve come to think we can have it whilst mandating a whole host of unnecessary rules. We know that children are creative, but we’ve forgotten it’s often because there are few things limiting their imagination. It’s clear we’ve forgotten because a lot of organizations seek creativity but limit imagination through rules.

So before you drive your new ‘innovative vision’ and push the need for creativity and initiative within your organization, even adding these words to employee work objectives, ask yourself (and even better – ask them): have we created a box with rules that limit the best ideas? Or are we certain we’re going to let the flames grow without them getting put out?

Because you cannot have both – you can’t be ‘comfortable’ whilst stretching the limits. It doesn’t work. You have to choose.

Knee jerk reactions, a lack of trust across the organization, fear of failure/getting it wrong, too much micro-management, and all of a sudden you have the ‘doers’ operating in crisis mode. And not just this time, because the workplace is full of these short-term tasks and deadlines. So what do you get; you get an environment where everything is urgent and the people who do a lot of the real work are not given the right time to do it. You get anxiety, stress, and resentment. More than anything else you get a mediocre organization that’s killing its staff!

The fix is easy. And it starts with the one-third/two-thirds rule; a key principle that’s been proven to give those who need to do the work the most time possible to do it. But it’s extremely hard to implement, as for it to be effective you need a leadership culture of trust.

Your boss wants your team to present something to her in 10 days. Easy. Give your team 7 days. Review it on day 8, day 9 is your flex and then your good to go. The one-third/two-thirds rule.

And don’t let people or organizations make excuses as to why they can’t do this:…this won’t work here….you don’t understand our organization…we have very complex issues that need lots of different levels of reviews… I don’t buy any of it. They’ve created all those levels of reviews. They’ve created an environment where people fear when they don’t perfect everything, an environment where leadership makes so many changes that the final product ends up very close to the first draft that was handed in (we’ve all been there…). They’re part of the system that doesn’t define what they expect the end product to look like. So I don’t buy that this can’t be done, because I’ve seen it be done.

I’ve been part of organizations that had some of the most complex and risky projects and decisions imaginable; lives at stake. And I can tell you that when you combine this approach with clear tasks that have transparent expectations of what the final product needs to achieve, then the one-third/two-thirds rule works. But it takes trust. Oh, trust.

Followership is about understanding what your leaders want – understanding the vision for the organization and where it is going. Your job as a leader is to transfer that onto your team and move them in the same direction. That’s the ideal situation.

The person who follows their supervisors blindly, the ‘yes’ person, is well known. There are pitfalls, mainly for those that are under the ‘yes’s’ leadership. But what is talked about less, is the leader who is a ‘yes’ person to the team they are leading. They think leadership is about pleasing their team and making sure the team is supported in the direction they want to go.

So you’ve got a leader solely looking down at their team. They stand in their team’s corner, often viewing it as us vs. them type situation with senior leadership. The team they lead, love them. That makes the leader think they’ve got it down, and the friction that they usually have with their own supervisor is put down to that person’s incompetence, lack of understanding, micro-management etc.

Yet the irony of it all is that the leader who always says yes to their team isn’t leading at all; they are following, and unfortunately in the wrong direction. They are following their team, and they’re allowing their team to move in the direction they wish to go.

They believe this is the epitome of being a good leader, but what they’re actually doing is letting their team drift away from the organization and everyone around them. The team becomes ‘that team’, that no one really wants to work with and who have a reputation of just doing what they wish. This leader lacks what they think they have the most of; courage. Courage to say no. Courage to have difficult conversations. Courage to not be ‘liked’. Courage.

The team drifts away so much so that the pressure in the chain and the system, the link that is the leader and the link that they must nourish, is at risk of failing. And when it fails it almost exclusively fails in the direction of the leader who was a follower to the team they were supposed to be leading.

So, next time you think you’re being a good leader by doing what your team wants and letting them go in their own direction, ask yourself if that’s the direction of the organization. If it’s not, then you’re failing your team and the organization. And it’s your team that will ultimately end up the losers.

So stop being the leader who just says yes to your team, and start to realize that to be an effective leader you have to be a great follower.

Don’t be the leader your team wants. Be the leader your team needs.

Up until recently, I’d always been part of very dynamic and fluid teams. In those environments, almost everyone rotates in and out of jobs every two or three years, so writing things down, creating Coles notes and 101 guides, or what the military would call Standard Operating Procedures is second nature. Those organizations become experts at handing over roles and responsibilities so that someone could just come in tomorrow and in theory, carry on where you left off. They are designed and built around system driven processes. They are not rigid, and there’s lots of room for flex, initiative, and change. But the foundation is built on an accessible and easily understood system. It’s not buried in someone’s head.

But unfortunately, many organizations aren’t. And in a lot of cases, the pendulum has swung way too much and organizations survive exclusively on people-driven processes, relying on a select few who have all the corporate knowledge and historical background. When they’re not available to answer questions the system stalls. That is a huge risk and not sustainable. It doesn’t matter how good you are, one day you’ll not be there or here…

So here’s what we need to do:

Create a Knowledge Library.

A collection of the key documents that someone needs to do their job. In it’s simplest, and arguably most effective form, it is a list with links to documents and a brief summary of what they contain and why they’re important to do the job. The key part here is that this isn’t something that should be done as people close in on retirement. It should be done as routine, updated monthly and managed just like a library is. Different sections that anyone can look up. For specific issues or topics you should create short ‘discussion papers’ that cover all the key factors and detail the analysis that has happened in the past. These topics should be derived from a thorough brainstorming session with your team that asks the question – what are the top 10 major issues we have faced over the past decade and how did we deal with them.

Create transfer of knowledge documents.

These are your handover notes and explain clearly and succinctly how you carried out the key areas of your job. Who did you need to speak to, what procedures did you need to follow etc. As people begin their transition and handing over their positions, the incumbent will use this as a guide. Again, this is a document that should be done as routine, even if there isn’t a handover expected in the near future. It allows processes to continue when you’re not there. A good place to start is a stakeholder identification chart and a power/interest analysis. This should be a common document within any team. This helps develop outreach strategies for leaders and teams at all levels, and importantly answers the question – who do I need to talk to when faced with problem x.  If you have that answer, solutions are always possible.

Simple steps that take resources, discipline and time to implement. But balancing system driven processes with corporate knowledge is the best and only way to ensure a long-term sustainable future.

It’s like suggesting that experience gained by someone who moves from project to project, challenge to challenge, working with a multitude of different people (and personalities…), developing a breadth of knowledge and expertise can be counted the same as someone who has done the same project, year in, year out, for the last ten years. It’s not the same, so let’s not count it as such.

It’s OK to suggest that experience will be taken into consideration during a hiring process, but it’s not OK to suggest it can be counted equally and that our primary (and often only) means of ‘measuring’ experience is by time.

But that’s exactly what happens when we request a minimum number of years’ experience. If you’re an organization that has strict HR policies and someone doesn’t meet this minimum, then you can’t screen them in; irrelevant of how much potential they may have.

We’ve come to realize that everyone learns at a different pace, depending upon many factors, including the individual and the environment.  So we need to stop pretending that we can count years of experience the same.

I might have been married for eight years, you two. Does that make me a better spouse? Of course, it doesn’t. But isn’t that what we’re saying when we ask for ‘x’ number of years? We’ve assumed that there is a direct correlation between time spent in a role (or industry etc.) and the depth and quality of competencies developed (i.e. pace of learning).  Even worse is that we’ve convinced ourselves that we can apply this assumption universally. We’re wrong.

Yes, there is a relationship, but it’s not as strong as our policies have convinced us. It’s not linear, and should not be used as one of the main tools to assess the quality of candidates at initial screening. We lose so many great candidates to this.

Instead of using the number of years as a measurement, what we should do is ask ourselves why do we want the minimum? I’m sure it’s not because we actually want ‘x’ amount of years. Instead, I believe it’s because we want a candidate who has developed a depth of competency in certain areas.

So let’s take the time to really dig deep and figure out what depth and breadth we’re looking for and then define that on our advertisement. Almost like a statement of requirement in a procurement process. Then let the candidates do their job and convince you that they meet these competencies enough to move along in your hiring process.

Yes this does take more time, and yes, it does make it more subjective, but guess what – we’re humans and whoever decided that we can rank/rate humans objectively is wrong. Utterly wrong.

So get rid of the minimum number of years requirement, replace it with your own definition of the depth of competencies you’re looking for and start to hire these alongside character; those intrinsic values that also can’t be measured as well as your policies would probably like them to be.

I don’t care if you’ve never managed a budget for more than two years. In fact, I genuinely don’t care if you’ve ever managed a budget at all. But I absolutely do care that your character allows you to be humble enough to admit this and ask for help.

Right now, as an executive with another 20 years to work, looking towards my future path of longer hours and more stress is not a bright one. The ball and chain technology has created seems daunting to say the least. Society has changed, organizations have changed, but many incentive and compensation models appear to be struggling to keep pace.

Perhaps it was manageable to put up with the stress and workload prior to the changing technology that makes it too easy for us to always to be ‘on’.  Perhaps people really took on the increased responsibility in the last stretch of their career, with the goal of retirement at a not too distant future and with a family that was more independent than that of a young family. But times have changed, and as the baby boomers retire, the new generation of leaders will want something more than being chained to emails for their next 20 years.

The repetitive model of working harder, getting a better profile, and earning more challenging projects does not look bright.  Society convinced us that more power, more influence and more money was all worth it. Not only do we now realize that this idea is flawed and none of it actually brings fulfillment, but the former is also limited at best in most bureaucratic organizations and the latter we know deep down we don’t need.

The traditional incentives are not going to keep the new generation of leaders going for the next 20 years, and if they do, they’re not the people you want. Society has placed too much value on career success versus life success, and the pendulum is ready to swing back – and you need to be ready for it.

Allow us to be the people we are capable of being – make the incentive autonomy and freedom to live our Why and you may be onto something. You may actually promote creativity and develop inspiring teams and products.

Dr. David Rock coined the term ‘Neuroleadership’ and describes autonomy as one of the key motivators of the brain.

This term can mean different things to different people, so we shouldn’t create a cookie cutter solution. For some, autonomy may mean freedom to lead their team and projects the way they see fit in order to achieve organizational goals, outside of the unnecessary constraints that stifle creativity.

For me, I think it really aligns with results based employment. Give me the vision, give me the endstate and give me the broad boundaries. But don’t constrain me and tell me the direction I need to take to get there; thinking that collecting some money every time I pass Go is going to keep me motivated. Make my incentive autonomy and freedom, hire me for my Why and let me thrive by living it. Most importantly, give me the trust required to do my job.

So, if the incentive you offer has a foundation based on money or power then you’re going to lose. We’ve seen the future and it’s not bright. Dare to trust and make the incentive autonomy and freedom – give us the space to lead and live our Why, and you may have better odds.

Such policies should exist to provide very broad guidelines on how the organization should operate and are necessary to ensure an organizational culture and brand can be established.

Yet many internal policy makers within organizations have drifted away from using policies as guidelines, and instead, use them to lay out strict rules and procedures for how the organization should be led. In doing so they’ve created organizations that are micro-managers. They’ve taken away the freedom that great leaders need to make great teams. They’ve taken away their freedom to lead.

I’m not suggesting that there shouldn’t be checks and balances, and my focus is not on program management, which often needs strict guidelines. My focus is on how leaders lead their teams in order to manage these programs.

So, if you have limiting policies on what a leader can do, then don’t be fooled into thinking you need great leaders. You don’t, because once in your organization they’ll not have the freedom to lead. Great leaders don’t follow the norm, they don’t lead how others lead, and they certainly don’t follow a strict A to Z route when building an engaged team. They create their own way and their own route. Great organizations hire leaders and give them people and programs to lead. Average organizations hire leaders and give them policies to manage. Which are you?

Yes, strict policies do succeed in minimizing the impact bad leaders or decisions can have on an organization. However, this risk should always be present and can be mitigated other ways such as hiring leaders with great character, not great technical competence. The bad leaders should then be dealt with individually and separately, not as a blanket punishment to every other leader.

The risk that should never be accepted is the risk of limiting the freedom and impact great leaders can have on the organization. It’s like buying a top of the line sports car, restricting its high-end and low-end speeds, and entering in a race hoping that it will do well. It might not lose, but it definitely won’t win.

So look at the policies within your organization. Are they broad guidelines, or are they strict rules. Do they lay out the spirit of the policy and offer some guidelines and tools, allowing the rest to the judgment of the leader, or do they lay out strict rules that must be followed with very little thought or initiative, just frustration and obedience?

So let’s not be fooled: being micro-managed doesn’t always mean being micro-managed by a boss, but sometimes by the system that has way more power than any boss has.

We all know the changes technology has brought society over the last 10 years; as individuals if we hadn’t kept pace with these changes we would have struggled. Change is inevitable and most realize that.

The organizations we work for, which are naturally an extension of society, must continuously change in order to remain relevant. This is why there has been such a push towards change management training within many organizations. The problem is, if we don’t have the ability to use the tools this training teaches, then they won’t get us to where we need to go.

So more important than any change management training, is a growth mindset for leaders in the modern workplace.

“In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.” (https://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/)

Leaders with a fixed mindset will struggle to be the leaders of the future. A fixed mindset fears change and naturally resists it. As all leaders are responsible for implementing organizational change, fostering a growth mindset is crucial.

So before we provide everyone with the tools, let’s make sure the leaders in our organizations have the right mindset to use them.

• Provide awareness and training for existing leaders on the different mindsets. This is crucial, and can’t be done in a few hours ‘PowerPoint’ session. It should be an ongoing process, and must take the time required. It will require critical reflection and thinking, and everyone’s learning journey will be different. One size fits one. For some that won’t be long, for others it will. It all depends on their start point. If a leader already has a growth mindset then start to give them the tools to help drive the change. But one thing is for sure, if you don’t take time to develop a growth mindset within all your leaders, then your change management training is futile.

• Use growth mindset as a key attribute when hiring your leaders. Yes, that means carrying out some subjective assessments and seeing what the results are. Look at the candidates holistically, and ask yourself where they’ll be in the spectrum between driving the change or resisting it. As a leader there is nothing more frustrating than trying to coax other leaders to drive change as opposed to resisting it. Place a priority on this attribute, and start hiring for character.

If you have an organization with leaders resisting change then you will never move forward at the pace you need to.