Are you swamped? It’s easy these days to get overloaded since so many organizations are trimming back and focusing on doing more with less. That doesn’t mean you have to do it all. You might think you’re effective at juggling a ton of tasks, keeping your projects straight with a board full of sticky notes that cite status and completion data. But the truth is you’re probably not. And on top of that, if you’re doing it all what are your team members doing?

To be an effective team leader, it’s important you have strong delegation skills — not only to save your sanity, but to achieve the goals of the organization and help grow your team members’ skills. But you can’t jump on the delegation bandwagon without some proper planning no matter how much you have to do or you’ll end up with a disaster. So heed these guidelines for delegating properly and you’ll end up with less stress and plenty of successes under your belt.

First, let’s be clear what delegation means so we’re all on the same page. Wikipedia describes delegation as:

…the assignment of authority and responsibility to another person to carry out specific activities. However the person who delegated the work remains accountable for the outcome of the delegated work. Delegation empowers a subordinate to make decisions, i.e. it is a shift of decision-making authority from one organizational level to a lower one. Delegation, if properly done, is not abdication.

I agree with that definition except that delegation doesn’t always have to occur from a higher level employee to a lower level one. It can occur laterally or you can even delegate up a level — but those are topics for another day. Let’s get a good handle on the delegation skill before you tackle those.

There are some real advantages to delegating properly. The biggest benefit is that it frees up your time so you can spend it doing what you should be doing — leading your team. Also key is ensuring your team members are willing and able to take on tasks in your absence along with providing them with opportunities to stretch and grow.

So here’s what you need to do.

Determine what to delegate – You can’t just grab something off your desk and give it to someone else to do. Take some time to define what you do. Start by making a list and then determine what you are willing to let go. You can delegate anything — easy tasks, tough tasks, tasks you hate to do, tasks that are better suited to other people.

Pick the right team member for the job — Assess the skills and abilities of each team member. What are their strengths? Are they willing to grow? Do they have the time to take on a new task and be successful accomplishing it?

Focus on outcomes, not steps — None of your team members will do a task exactly as you would. But that’s okay. What’s important is for you to define the end result in clear terms and then get out of the way.

Delegate responsibility and authority — Clearly explain the scope and boundaries for the task. Ensure that you have identified the who, what, when and why behind the work that is to be done. Give the person the authority to make decisions and do what is necessary to be successful.

Follow up — This is probably the most important step in successful delegation. Don’t just turn a team member loose with a new task. At the beginning set a follow up schedule so you can determine progress towards the goal and address any issues or road blocks that are getting in the way.

It may be tough at first to delegate tasks to others. You might have a tendency to want to micromanage by providing too much direction and review. It will be a delicate balancing act for you until you get used to it. But the benefits to you and your team members will be worth it.

What do you think? Have you tried making delegation an important part of your team leadership? Let’s talk about it.

I have a team leader that likes to bark orders in a rough voice. What can we do?

The Team Doc Says…

Oh my goodness! A barking team leader is never a good thing. And coaching the boss is tough for many people. Your best bet would be to provide your team leader with feedback about how he (assumption on gender!) comes across. It’s possible he just doesn’t realize it.

If you or another team member are willing to do this, you should use the feedback model as a guide. That means you will frame your feedback in the “When you ________, I feel ________” format. Here’s an example. “When you use your current method of screaming orders at team members, they (I) have a tendency to get defensive and shut down. It would be better for you to be directive without being so rough.”

Then have a dialogue around the topic. Try this and let me know how it goes.

What about you reader? Do you have other suggestions? Please leave a comment.

I am a team leader of 10 people and have a group of 6 of them who stick together and disagee with me on most issues. Always looking for me to do something wrong to report to my supervisor. Even the smallest thing. The bad part is our new supervisor believes them. This is a very stressful situation for me. Any advice?

The Team Doc Says…

Yes. Get another job. Okay so that’s not the best option in this day and time, so try a couple other things first.

1. Set up a meeting with your supervisor. You want to make sure you focus on facts, not emotion during this discussion so do some preplanning. Here is a process you can use:

Open —-> Clarify —-> Develop —-> Agree —-> Close

Open: Initiate the discussion by focusing on the problem not the person.
Clarify: Define the problem in neutral terms.
Develop: Identify alternatives and solutions.
Agree: Evaluate the alternatives to determine a “win-win” outcome.
Close: Verify commitment. Create an action plan to implement the solution.

I would think your solution would be support from your supervisor. At the very least, you’ll want to get agreement that when your staff goes to her, she doesn’t get in the middle of the discussion.

2. Once you have things squared away with your supervisor, it’s time to talk with your staff. I’d talk with them one-on-one. Use the same process to get clarification of the issue and to help you figure out why they are going behind your back. Use a lot of “help me understand…” and “when you do this, it causes this…” type language. Be ready for some frank feedback and be prepared to take action on that feedback.

Set up a plan to communicate on a regular basis with your team and your boss to help build your credibility.

What else reader? Please leave a comment.

I was wondering if you had any information, or know of any sources that would have information on how long a team leader should remain in that position on high performance teams. I’ve found answers from 1 month to forever, but would really like to nail down a best practice for a Team leader handbook I’m taking part in.

The Team Doc Says…

As long as that person is being effective. I would not place any hard and fast rules or even identify best practices for how long a team leader should remain in that role. As soon as you give it a number, people are going to start using that as a measuring stick and that’s the wrong direction to go.

What you do want to do to determine when is the right time for a team leader to move on is ask questions. Here are a few to start with.

• Is the team leader guiding the team where it needs to go?
• Does the team leader aspire to something different?
• Would the team leader, the team and the company get a better “win” if the team leader were leading a different team?
• Has the team transitioned from one stage to another (e.g., idea stage to implementation) where the team leader is less suited to guiding the team?
• Are the strengths of the team leader the right ones to continue leading the team?

This should get you started. What you can do for your best practice guide is develop a series of questions like the ones above to help drive the decision making for the best time to move a team leader.

What do you think reader? Do you have additional suggestions? Please leave a comment.

I work with a boss that I really like and she is fairly new to our department. When she came in she looked at our job duties and confirmed them for each of us. However, I have noticed that she regularly performs one of my tasks. I believe that my tasks are really meant to make her life easier and I am very conscious of covering my tasks to the best of my ability. Recently, I talked to her about how it makes me feel when she performs one of my job duties. I told her that I could not help but wonder if my boss thinks I am doing a good job or that she trusts me. She jumped right in and began explaining and defending herself and then told me that she is a “doer.” I was left with the perception that she was not listening and feels justified jumping in at any time. I have found that she does this to other members of the department too.

The Team Doc Says…

Hmmm. Doer or not, she is wasting the company’s time and money by doing your work. They hired her to be your supervisor, not to do your work. Since it’s happening to everyone, I wouldn’t worry too much about her not trusting you to do your job. But the listening issue is definitely a concern.

Since she’s your boss, and you’ve already gone the discussion route, I’m not seeing much additional action you can take unless you can get the entire team together and talk about team roles. This could help you get agreement from everyone on who does what when but she still may not have a clue how much it bugs you and your team members. It may just be something you’ll have to live with as long as you stay at this company.

Sorry, not the best advice as frankly, this one has me a bit stumped. Readers, can you add your thoughts to the mix and give us some help here by leaving a comment? Thank you.