Delegating to grow your organisation

Delegating is a powerful tool for developing your team. To be effective it:

• is explicit
• builds on the strengths of the team
• requires leaders to do their fair share of the work (see the leadership pipeline)
• requires the leader in authority to maintain responsibility.
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Here are some of the key reasons delegation can make a positive difference to your organisation:

Talent management
Talent management is one of the key capabilities for future-focused leaders. Our world is becoming increasingly complex, our workforces increasingly diverse. Delegation allows you to fulfill your role in developing new and emerging leaders. As you develop the ability of other people to do the work, you not only reduce your work load but build the skills, capabilities and strengths of your team, giving them the opportunity to learn while you’re there to support them. It’s a deliberate act of letting go.

The leadership pipeline
As you move up through different levels of leadership, there are some things that you have to let go. What leaders often do is hang on to those parts of their past role they really enjoyed doing. However, as you move up the pipeline, those roles or jobs may no longer be appropriate. It may take time to remove these from your repertoire – but don’t take too long! Consider what you need to let go and actively begin coaching other people to do that work. This will then allow you to focus on developing the new skills and capabilities needed for your next leadership role and to spend more time in strategic thinking.

Work happening where the work is done
Delegation also helps decisions and actions to happen nearest to where the work is done. This is often where the expert, day-to-day knowledge is held – so allow people working in the organisation to make the decisions without fear. This then allows you to spend your time working on the business.

If you encourage people to take initiative and to do their own thinking, it means you’re not carrying everyone else’s monkeys on your shoulder. They’re doing the work that’s appropriate for them, and in doing so they have a deeper level of ownership and commitment because they have done it themselves.

So why not ask your team today:

“What work am I doing that you could be doing? How can I grow your talents in our organisation?”

For more information on delegation in practice contact: www.thinkbeyond.co.nz