ON LEADERSHIP || What Most Leaders Get Wrong About Delegating
Learning from my wins and losses from starting several companies, here are three qualities to look for when you assign a delegate to make decisions on your behalf:
They are action-oriented and have a history of being able to make tough calls
They have the common sense to assess a situation and its real versus perceived impact on the business when it doesn’t fall within your guidelines or playbook
They don’t care about being liked by others on the team
MAKE THE TOUGH CALLS
If you delegate responsibility and authority to someone to handle issues for you, but they never exercise this power, you never really delegate anything. The decision will inevitably fall back on your shoulders because even with the autonomy to make the call, most people shy away from sharing bad news or reprimanding others on the team. They say it’s bad for team morale. What’s worse for team morale is a rotting issue you allow to fester. I would bet money that other team members can quickly identify an underperformer, and resentment builds as they continue to carry the under pe’s responsibilities and clean up their mess, all in the name of ‘let’s not damage team morale’. Left long enough, the A players on the team see this as forgivable and acceptable behaviour because there are no consequences for poor behaviour. Sometimes, the A players stop tolerating playing with underperformers and leave the company.
You lost your star because your trusted delegate was too afraid to fix a problem. The lesson? Pick someone who isn’t opposed to making the tough calls and doesn’t care if other people like them to be your second-in-command. Delegate to people who aren’t afraid to use their power. If you give a soldier a weapon to fight in a war, you expect them to use it to cover you, the general. You don’t expect them to stand there and do nothing. Delegating to the wrong person results in the latter scenario and tells you you made a bad call. You’re the idiot. The fault doesn’t rest with the person you delegated to; you must look in the mirror to assign blame.
COMMON SENSE RULES
The other thing with delegating responsibility is to choose someone who has a balance of being able to follow guidelines and enough common sense to fill the gap when unforeseen circumstances arise. Let’s face it, you won’t always be in the office when situations arise, and sometimes they need to decide before they can get a hold of you. If you think of this person on your team, do you trust them to do the right thing? If the answer isn’t at least 90% of the time, you should go back to the drawing board and look for more candidates.
Which one of the following sounds like the person on your team?
Person 1:
“This isn’t in the guidelines the boss left me, so I better not make the call and wait for them to return in case it’s wrong.”
Person 2:
“There isn’t an exact guideline for this, but I’ve seen my boss handle it this way with this client; here’s the call I can make to resolve the situation.”
Person 3:
“There is a guideline for this, but it’s not the same scenario; I think I’ll take this in a new direction because I believe in it. If it doesn't work out, I’ll have to ask for forgiveness later.”
Never delegate to person 1 because you will end up having to do the work anyway. Person 3 should go and start their own business if they want to do things their way. You want Person 2 to be your next in command, or else you’ll be picking up every call on vacation from Person 1, worrying about whether Person 3 did an entire overhaul of your company or if there are lurking problems people have swept under the rug while you were gone.
DON’T PICK THE PEOPLE PLEASER
When someone refers to you as ‘management’ in a small or large company, it usually carries a negative connotation. Who has ever wanted to talk to management? Unfortunately, management isn’t the most loved group in a company because their decisions affect everyone. Some will like your direction, and others won’t, so someone doesn't like you at any given point and on any given day; if you can’t live with that, don’t aim for a management job. If you end up choosing someone who is a people pleaser as your second-in-command, expect always to be the bad cop. This defeats the main reason entrepreneurs bring on other people to the team, which is to have them excel at their roles so the entrepreneur does not need to do the things they’re not good at or don’t want to do.
Pick an action-oriented individual who has common sense and isn’t a people pleaser. Easy to say, hard to do. If you’re a business owner reading this, hopefully, the lessons I’ve learned can shed insight on how you could pick a better delegate to help you build your company. Don’t lose hope, there are plenty of good people out there, hopefully you come across the ideal candidate this year!
