THE ART OF DELEGATION

THE ART OF DELEGATION

CHAPTER 13

THE ART OF DELEGATION:

-“It’s not my job.”-

Wisdom demands of us to focus on those things that matter most to us and for the betterment o of humanity. That has been the central theme in this book, “to keep the main thing the main thing” as Covey would put it in his” First things First book.” To a matured character, keeping focus and aligning your life around the main things may not be the problem. To some other individuals, aligning their lives around the most important priorities is the main problem.

The ART of delegation demands that we master our sound philosophy in life and develop a culture that enables us to do that which matters most. Delegation is an art that requires perfecting as we ascend to our highest self. If you are to have dominion and to command respect at your craft, putting the hours to training, perfecting and producing your best is critical to how you turn out in the industry. This kind of commitment may be possible only when you develop a monomaniac focus on your priorities. I know that you have limited hours, and so does everyone grapples with limited time. Freeing up your exact time delegation serves well that you may work efficiently on your most valued deliverables..

In today’s’ environment marked by technological disruption, noise, and high demands on your time by others, it is a noble objective to pursue and master how you spend your time. As a time manager, you then appropriate your resources well to free up more hours and give concentrated focus on that which matters most. There may be a lot of tasks you’re doing right now that are not your job, such as things you should delegate or something that should never have been charged to you. Delegating isn’t limited only to executives, managers, and others with “power.” This chapter offers insights on how to upscale your time management and to value your time resources on the high end in financial and nonfinancial terms.

To Whom Can You Delegate?

The obvious answer is that delegation is meant for those you manage and supervise. When you have full authority over the person to whom you’re delegating, it is referred to as downward delegation. A critical rule about delegation is this: whenever possible, delegate tasks to the person who is paid the least yet has the necessary skills and training to perform the job adequately.

Most often, when someone is paid to do a job that someone who earns less could do as well, money is wasted. The most economical use of an employee’s time is in performing tasks that are at the high end of his or her ability and training.  When you fail to delegate a job that others could do as efficiently at a lower cost than you do, it means you are diminishing your value to the self and the organization you partner with

Effectiveness is achieved where there is an optimization of your valued resources. Effectiveness is best achieved when an individual succeeds if assigned responsibilities to where there is an optimization of his competences.  However, for convenience or because of limited options, we are sometimes forced to delegate to someone inappropriate for the task, the single most significant cause of failure today.

Inappropriate delegation may lead to unsatisfactory results or delays in meeting company deliverables.  Targeting the right person for the job should be your main priority. And if there’s no appropriate person, you may have to hire one.

Delegation isn’t always downward; it can be lateral. Lateral delegation occurs in situations where you and the person to whom you are delegating are more or less equal in rank or level of authority.

Outsourcing

Another form of delegating is outsourcing—hiring vendors for a fee to do specific jobs instead of assigning them to staff employees. Corporate downsizing has made outsourcing an increasingly powerful management tool. Many self-employed professionals offer their services, including such skills as clerical, computer programming, graphic design, and technical or management consulting. Often, firms will hire consultants to head a specific project or to create a new product.

Temporary and part-time workers are easy to locate through agencies that specialize in their services. If a time-consuming task will take valuable time to complete and will be worthless to your company than warranted by your salary, perhaps it’s time to consider outsourcing the project.

What should You Delegate?

What types of tasks should you delegate? Two categories come to mind:

1. Jobs you don’t want but that others might.
2. Functions for which someone else might be better qualified.

An excellent place to begin exploring delegating possibilities is with a list of daily tasks. Of particular interest are routines that have little value, as described in the two categories above. If you can find even one or two routine tasks that you might be able to delegate, you’ll free up time to do those things you simply cannot delegate.

Don’t Waste Your Time

Most tasks that cost more for you to do than for someone else are a waste of your time. Your value as an employee, manager, business owner, or officer consists of those special skills that you alone bring to your job.

A quick assessment of the tasks you should be delegating or outsourcing as an individual or corporate

• Database management
• Filing or clerical activities
• Driving and office messenger
• sorting emails
• Proofreading
• Telephone calls and messaging
• Making appointments
• cleaning services
• Sales and marketing

There are many other kinds of duties or tasks that you may find efficiently done with delegation. Anything that can be done by someone who may be paid less than you is a prime task for delegating or outsourcing. Think of housekeeping, home care, gardening, and daily routine activities that waste time unless it is a hobby or an obligation you must attend to personally. However, culture may also be a hindrance for you in realizing the nobility of time given to us in the universe. There is value in assessing the roles and responsibilities assigned to us by gender, age, marital status, etc. These roles seem to dictate how we should spend our time. Developing a consciousness on these imposed roles serve to liberate you to become more intentional with what you do and why you do it.

Let Go!

Most frequently, the reluctance to delegate is an expression of the need to retain control. As we pointed out earlier, attaining and holding control of situations is a necessary element of proper time management. The necessity for control is because it’s impossible to make efficient use of time when you’re at the mercy of people and situations outside your control. However, if you insist on retaining control of every detail of the jobs you’re responsible for, you’re failing to understand the real nature and benefits of control.

An important measure of your influence may be how well you can exert your authority in a way that allows you to extend that authority. Unless you can relinquish control of little things, you have little hope of reaching your command over the big stuff. Sometimes, paradoxically, the only way to take control is by relinquishing control over details that take up your precious time.

 Steps to masterful delegation

1. Identify the task to be delegated. As a master at your craft, you need to determine deliberately to keep off things that do not increase your net worth. Go through your to-do lists, roles responsibilities, and your time planner. Most likely, some activities add no value and only serve to drain your energy and resourcefulness. These are the activities that you may delegate. Once you have freed your mind from thoughts that engage your mind by delegating, you gain access to focusing on more critical work that has a higher contribution to your uniqueness.
2. Develop a project’s flow. When a task is complex, you may need to deploy a system similar to that described earlier on the tools provided for planning and organizing. As an added help to you, the necessary steps of delegation should be flowcharts to see the means and the end.

If you assign work to several employees, be sure to track your task assignments. Keep a record of the task delegated and the date you made the assignment, as well as dates for status review and task completion.

3. Find the right person. Once you are done with flowcharting the job, you should be in a better position to assign tasks to the right person. You may assess their skill, competence, experience, and cost t determine the most suitable candidates for each role.

It’ is equally important to know the unique talents and aptitudes of the people you work with and who work for you. Very often, people are capable of performing tasks and would enjoy being asked to perform them that no one has ever asked them to do. The better you are at assessing the talents of those you manage, the more effective your job will I through delegation.

4. Explain the assignment. Imagine trying to do something that you have no full knowledge of/ most likely; the task will fail from inception. It is for these reasons that you take adequate time to explain to be understood. You begin by clarifying expectations, setting standards, and agreeing on the terms of operation. I encourage that you sit down with the person to whom you are delegating to and walk him/her through your flowchart step by step. Encourage questions, clarifications, and consultation to assure a full understanding of the task at hand.
5. Explain the benefits. Everyone is concerned with their take away, and this is an effective motivator for the work. If you want to defuse resistance to the

task you are delegating, make liberal use of benefits.

6. Specify your standards.

Quality and accountability are two concepts that should guide how you delegate to optimize your value deliverables. Just like when you sit down to set goals, you must convince the person to whom you delegate that you hold high expectations. Clarify expectations as much as possible and set clear yardsticks for evaluating the performance. Since you’re sharing responsibility with him or her, you expect the best effort. It is worthy that you make it clear from the onset that Until his or her performance meets your standards, the task will remain incomplete.

7. Discuss deadlines. Has anyone ever given you a job to do without a completion date? Did it somehow feel less important? I advocate using written contracts as opposed to the informal oral agreement. Written agreements will save you a lot of time and money. “When it is not written, it is not done” is a common English saying. Spelling out the tasks serves to psychologically contract and engage the individual in the task at hand. The written contract may come in different formats, but the basis is to have a reference point of the work, expectations, deadlines, and deliverables. The terms of payment should be clear as a basis for evaluating performance.

Communicate benefits to those assigned the tasks

The following axiom is as fundamental to almost all sales: don’t sell the features, sell the benefits. It applies to the delegation, too. Don’t just outline the aspects of a task without giving reasons that motivate. Maybe you have the authority to delegate the job, but selling it through the benefits to the person means that he or she is likely to consider it less an imposition and more an opportunity.

Great managers know the difference that makes in motivation and performance. Deadlines help to firm up prioritization when you delegate, always set deadlines, including intermediary status review dates.

Consider encouraging input from those you delegate work. If you empower the person in the process, by sharing responsibility from the start, you’ll reinforce his or her motivation.

8. Establish a reporting method. When you leave reporting procedures to be vague and hanging, it becomes challenging to enhance deadlines. The possibility of not meeting your deliverables increases when you lack the authority to reinforce performance. Articulate your expectations to the person you delegate. Doing so will assure professional, responsible, and orderly feedback. The essential advantage that comes with written reports is that they can be easily shared with others and build accountability into the work structures.
9. Encourage questions. At the end of your explanation, encourage the person to ask any issues that may still be unvoiced. If none are forthcoming, do a comprehension check; have the person summarize the assignment as he or she understands it. You’ll almost certainly need to clarify some details.

You may, at times, wish to “walk” the person through the task. Mentoring is a powerful, hands-on method for testing his or her comprehension of the job. Finally, summarize the steps the person is to go through to deliver results.  To seal the deal, you may want to write a memo to the person and, if appropriate, send a copy to your boss.

10. Providing Resources

When you delegate a task, you need to make sure the person has everything necessary to perform the task:

• Sufficient authority to make necessary decisions. If a certain amount of autonomy saves you time, a reasonable level of independence will save time for the person you’re delegating. If the person needs to come to you for decisions, how much effort and time are you saving by delegating?
• Access to all resources necessary for the task. The person should not have to ask for access, one item at a time. That is a waste of time for both of you and not a smart way to delegating.

11. Conduct unscheduled status checks.

Relying solely on official status reviews can discourage flexibility as a project unfolds. Feel free to drop in on anyone to whom you’ve delegated informally. Be prepared to adjust procedures and goals as necessary. Impromptu reviews have always worked effectively for me as they allow you to make adjustments required to stay ahead on your key performance indicators. Assuming that your team has the maturity to handle tasks as spelled out is an oversight that can be costly for you. When the work is below the expected performance standards, you may sometimes have to pull the project and find a new person to do it or do it yourself. No matter how well you plot things out, there are unexpected things that happen.

12. Evaluate the results. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Did the person meet the deadline? If not, was it because it was unreasonable?
• Did the person achieve all goals?
• Did the person meet, exceed, or fall short of your expectations?
• Were there any surprises?
• Did the person realize the promised benefits?
• Was this the right person for this task? Would you delegate to this person again?
• Was the final report thorough?
• Was your emotional reluctance to delegate extinguished? If not, why not?

Set meetings during delegation zones

When delegating large projects, it may be a good idea to have periodic meetings to assess progress. Careful consideration should be given not to micromanage via meetings or committees.  Any gathering should provide those to whom you’ve delegated a project with the opportunity to get a feeling for wherein the process everyone is and to be sure that communication lines remain open.

Meetings should provide a sense of how well the project is progressing and clarifying any aspect. They should not be an excuse for individuals to reassert control. Therefore, as leaders, you should resist the impulse to take back more control over the project but empower others to apply their intelligence in meeting expectations.

13. Praise and Suggest Improvements. Physically, it’s not easy to pat yourself on the back. Emotionally, it’s effortless. Delegating was an achievement for you. If you succeeded, congratulate yourself.

Remember also give credit where credit is due—to the people to whom you delegated. Their success doesn’t diminish yours; it enhances it. If your boss is wise, he or she will instantly recognize that. What if things didn’t turn out as well as you wanted? At least appreciate the effort, suggest improvements for next time, and transform the whole process into a learning experience for you and for the person to whom you delegated.

Delegating is a subtle art. It requires careful thought and wisdom. Each solution to a delegating problem must match the needs of the people involved. Effective delegation is a key concept in time management.

CHAPTER 13

DEALING WITH MEETINGS AND COMMITTEES

Research indicates that up to 60% of our time is spent in meetings at the workplace. It is important to mention at this point that meetings greatly appeal to our deepest needs as a human, that of social association. Additionally, meetings provide us with a sense of belonging, and this serves to validate our being.

While meetings provide an excellent opportunity to leverage shared learning in an organizational setup, many among individuals who organize these meetings lack the skill and competence to organize and execute them.

The chapter aims to equip you with the skill to ensure you successfully plan and execute meetings. The benefits you will accrue from the methodology adopted in this chapter are dependent on your appropriate preparation, maximum involvement of, understanding of group dynamics, and effective chairing as well as follow up after the meeting. The chapter goes further to explore the use of electronic and virtual meetings to reflect today’s’ technological environment for efficient firm operations.

Meetings play a central role at the heart of organizational interaction, connection, and collaboration to achieve specified intents. I say with confidence that a poorly managed meeting may cause more harm, can breed frustration, and cause confusion as well as dissolve employees’ morale that may be worse than a canceled meeting.

A checklist that you may consider to establish the authenticity and relevance of the meeting is provided for your reflection:

1. How necessary is the meeting? Can it be done any other way?
2. What value will be derived from the meeting? Does it serve to fulfill a personal agenda?
3. What is the precise objective of the meeting?
4. Do you have the right team composition for your meeting?
5. Have you clarified on the controls for the meeting? (Time management, agenda, moderating the discussion and managing conflict)
6. Do you have an appropriate venue/ environment?

As a leader, it is essential to remember that every meeting is unique in its setting. Additionally, meetings are often judged by the actions that result after and, therefore, the need to maintain credibility for every meeting held.

Preparing for the meeting: steps to consider in preparation

1. Clarify objectives: it is appropriate to begin by clarifying goals for the meeting. First, establish the purpose of the meeting in writing. A key question to answer is “ what is the meeting going to achieve?” this question keeps the meeting focused on execution.
2. Define the team composition: when you begin by defining the team composition and your role in the meeting, this serves to clarify expectations and to set responsibility for easier accountability. Roles in the team include but are not limited to chairing, facilitating, members, and administration. When you forecast and reflect on other people who will be present in the meeting, it is equally important to think and define the contribution that every participant is expected to make. Ideally, a group should contain a balance of four roles, including the idea givers, action people, experts, and administrators. To make any adjustments concerning roles in the group, members need to strike a balance by requesting someone else to play a specific role more strongly than usual. It is characteristic for meetings that lack a balance of functions to fail more often, given the dominance of one or two roles. A summary of the characteristics of individuals in different roles is highlighted below. The roles help to make sense of the need to balance various roles for the team to achieve its goal effectively.

In summary, the meeting chair manages the process while participants focus on task responsibilities and the content of the meeting.

Checklist for a productive meeting based on key roles

Chair: He or She is the director in executing the meeting. To this effect, he manages and controls communication within the team. He/she is in charge of time management. He ensures that the agenda for the meeting is accomplished. The chair is also charged with the social objectives of bringing participants together in different capacities to work on a common goal. The chair equally oversees the structuring of the meeting and additionally controls the conversation. While chairing, you have to take a firm position to lead the team to the direction intended. However, interpersonal skills will play a critical role to carry everyone on board and to maintain a good working relationship.

Participants: They are the task owners as well as the valuable think tanks. Participants, therefore, set objectives of the meeting and present information, ideas, and expertise. They state when the task is complete and help in solving problems. Participants are consultants who execute and evaluate the success of the outcome.

Administrators: They are charged with recording the proceedings of the meeting, managing resources including time as appointed, and maintaining order as well as clarity of purpose on the agenda. Sometimes, administrators may play the role of summarizing and ending the agenda.

Setting an environment for productive meetings

Careful consideration should be given to how the meeting will be conducted. Some of the critical questions worth reflecting on as you plan for the meeting are listed below

1. How do I intend to capitalize on the talents at my disposal?
2. Which procedural style would be most appropriate?
3. Are there any policy/ legal foundations worth consideration?
4. How do I expect participants to contribute?
5. Who will direct the conversation?
6. Will everyone address their remarks formally through the chair?
7. Will you opt for minimal control?
8. Will you summarize the discussion?
9. Will you call for a formal decision?
10. Will you keep time?

Briefing papers for participants

Briefing papers provide a foundation for productive conversations. They may give a highlight of key issues to be discussed and also serve to indicate the direction for the task owner. Briefing papers also serve as a basis for formal presentations. It is useful to summarize these materials to help sustain attention among participants. The documents ought to be readable, highlighting explicitly key points. A commonly used tool for organizing ideas on briefing papers is provided below

1. The governing idea
2. The key points
3. Information that fills out thoughts in detail

Key questions to consider when developing briefing papers include and are not limited to:

1. What is the purpose of the briefing paper?
2. Who is your audience?
3. What is your key message?
4. Which key points will support the message?
5. Are there supportive documents or information required?

Agenda

The most effective agenda for a meeting should be accessible publicly and may be provided in advance for participants to go through conveniently.

An agenda serves three purposes: it aids in preparation for the proceedings, serves to control the progress of the meeting and helps to quantify the success of the meeting.

To help put together a compelling agenda, I have provided a checklist below to help you remember all the details for the meeting

1. Title of the meeting
2. The date, time and venue for the meeting
3. Previous meetings’ minutes
4. Matters arising from the last meeting
5. Other items to be discussed and decided
6. Motions
7. Reports from sub-committees
8. Contributions from guests
9. Any other business

A checklist on how to reduce time wastage in a meeting

1. Announce finish time
2. Limit the number of items on the agenda
3. Allocate a task owner to each item
4. Impose a limit on time for each agenda
5. Prepare procedures for each unresolved matter
6. Purpose to end on time

In summary, it is essential that as a leader, you manage the agenda effect