Getting a grip on delegation

The first in a series on time management by ‘Time Queen’ Robyn Pearce. Learn the four stages of delegation in order to free up your valuable time to better manage your business.

One of the biggest complaints you’ll probably hear when people talk about their staff is “it’s quicker to do it myself.” And that’s true. However, if we don’t work out how to get past that stage we’ll be doing ‘it’ until we’re old and wrinkly.
The problem is that very few folk have formal training in delegation and management. Many lurch along, doing their best, often overwhelmed. If they’ve got staff it’s easy to feel resentful of the time it takes to train others. And another layer of complexity is added in small businesses (89.7 percent of New Zealand businesses employ five or less staff*) where many times the business is the owner’s ‘baby’. Letting go, sharing the workload and the responsibility can be as challenging as bringing up children!
The thing is, while you’re doing work that someone else can do at a lower pay rate than you want to pay yourself, you’re effectively paying yourself that low rate. Or, it’s a task you don’t enjoy, you struggle to do the work, and take three times as long as someone who has that competency. Think of what else you could be doing in that time, instead of sweating over something you find difficult.
A common example for SMEs is bookkeeping. If you don’t have a finance brain, a skilled bookkeeper will do in minutes what you’d take hours over when it comes to preparing your monthly accounts, doing your invoices and keeping track of all the financial data you need to manage. Don’t say you can’t afford to pay someone else – actually, you can’t afford not to.
Perhaps you’ve hired young staff fresh from school or university, thinking you’d get them young before they’ve learnt bad habits from someone else. Or you’ve taken on a mature employee, but they don’t want to listen to you telling them how to do something they believe they have good skills in already. You’ve tried to utilise what you understand is delegation but – it doesn’t seem to work.
Stick in there – delegation is a skill worth mastering. Once you’ve learnt some of the core skills you’ll free up time, be able to focus on the work you do best, increase profitability and get home earlier. It is a (reasonably) easily-learnt high-performance leadership style that produces long-term results and far higher profits.
Good delegators give their subordinates as much responsibility and authority as they are able to accept but at the same time maintain control. Paradoxically, good delegators increase their own power by sharing it with others.
And communication is key. A Harvard management specialist, after much research, came to the conclusion that all good managers know intuitively: that the ability to communicate clear expectations was a manager’s most important leadership and motivational tool.
One of the most powerful skills of a good delegator is the ability to ask good questions, instead of supplying all the answers.
A common problem for would-be delegators is that they don’t realise it’s a four-stage train journey, not a one-stop destination. If you don’t step through each phase with the person you’re delegating to, at some point you’ll almost certainly have to backtrack. Master these four steps, learn to be patient in the initial stages, and you’ll achieve better results faster. Yes, you could have done the job faster – at the beginning. But, that’s a sure path to limiting your growth and success. Once you’ve trained someone up properly you’re free to move on to new challenges and opportunities.
The four stages of delegation:

1. Direction –
High Direction, Low Support
Initially a new person needs instruction, not the opportunity to use their initiative. You’ll give them heaps of directions, and only a low amount of support in making decisions. They don’t yet know enough to need much support.

2. Coaching –
High Direction, High Support
They are starting to understand the process. You encourage them to come with questions; you give plenty of explanations, continue to instruct, and also support them in learning and applying new skills and knowledge. You set regular review times, and check constantly that they understand. This is the stage that takes more of your time but if you don’t invest time here you’ll never get beyond the ‘it’s faster to do it myself’ stage.

3. Support –
Low Direction, High Support
Now your employee is getting a good grip on the process. You’re weaning both you and them off lots of ‘telling’. You now support them in making the decisions. Your role is to help where needed, review their actions and oversee results as they ramp up their level of responsibility.
If you’ve got someone who keeps asking for help when they really should be able to make the decisions, require them to come with two solutions when they come with a query. If they’re forced to do the thinking for themselves, pretty soon you’ll find they don’t come for that extra reassurance and you’re not interrupted unnecessarily.

4. Delegation –
Low Direction, Low Support
Only now does true delegation happen. Your delegatee not only has an excellent understanding of the task, but they have the confidence to get on with the job. They can still come for help if they need it, but that’s a rare occurrence. And the big benefit? You’re free to get on with other higher-level activities that will make a long-term difference in your business.

*www.med.govt.nz/business/business-growth-internationalisation/pdf-docs-library/small-and-medium-sized-enterprises/structure-and-dynamics-2011.pdf
Further reading:
• Kenneth Blanchard’s excellent little book ‘Leadership and the One Minute Manager’, where he expands on the 4-stage process
• Robyn Pearce & LaVonn Steiner: ‘Getting A Grip On Leadership’
• Michael Gerber: ‘The E-myth revisited’