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Kathy Stoddard Torrey

~ Leadership Coach and Trainer

Kathy Stoddard Torrey

Category Archives: Delegation

Delegation and Exceptional Teams

08 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Delegation, Leadership, Uncategorized

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#delegation, #humor, #LeadershipRules #LeadYourselfFirst #KathySays, #provideresources, #removeobstacles

delegation cropped 1K px

In workshops, I talk a lot about psychological safety, which Project Aristotle identifies as one of the required traits for exceptional teams. However, psychological safety wasn’t the only thing on the list of findings. The entire list is below.

Project Aristotle 650px

Structure and clarity can be a particular challenge for leaders transitioning from a “doing” role to a “delegating” role. However, delegation in alignment with clear roles and goals is a crucial skill to develop.

First-time supervisors are usually promoted because they are very good at what they do. Generally, they were successful employees with a lot of knowledge and ability. Once they become leaders, it can be hard to let go of the “doing” part. It’s difficult to let other people try and maybe not do it quite as well as they could have done it. However, as a leader, it’s important to help employees be successful by not jumping in and doing the tasks for them. It’s a leader’s responsibility to develop employees’ skills and experience.

When we are employees who are responsible for only ourselves, we are judged on our own actions and abilities. We can create our own success by how hard and how well we work. As a leader, we aren’t just judged on what we do alone anymore. Our success is dependent on the success of everyone who works for us. That’s a big difference.

The first step in delegation is to let each employee know what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and what outcome needs to happen for the employee to be considered successful. Essentially, we are saying, “These are your tasks. When you do these tasks like this, you will be successful.” It creates a wonderful environment where everyone knows what they’re responsible for and what they’re supposed to be doing. Clarity on tasks helps employees grasp their roles and stay in their own lanes.

Once everyone has a clear idea of the tasks that they need to perform, it’s important to make sure that they have all the resources that they need to do those tasks. Sometimes employees don’t have the authority or ability to get the resources that they need. It’s our job as leaders to make sure that they have everything that they need to be successful. Resources could mean information for a report or parts to keep a manufacturing line running. Leaders are responsible for securing resources that employees cannot get on their own.

Another responsibility of leaders is to remove obstacles that keep employees from performing their assigned tasks. An obstacle could be a process requirement that slows things down or a person who is being uncooperative. If something is making it difficult for a person to do his or her job, it’s the leader’s responsibility to change the situation.

In summary, the first steps to consider in the delegation of tasks are:

  1. Make sure that everyone knows exactly what tasks they need to perform and why those tasks are important.
  2. Clearly define what success at each task will include.
  3. Ensure employees have the resources that they need to do their assigned tasks successfully.
  4. Remove any obstacles that are hindering employees in the performance of their tasks.

Clear and specific expectations for successful behaviors, along with the proper support, are foundational elements when building an exceptional team or organization.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Delegation and Situational Leadership

01 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Delegation, Leadership, Uncategorized

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#delegation, #LeadershipRules #LeadYourselfFirst #KathySays, #SituationalLeadership

industrial manager 1K px cropped

A supervisor’s level of involvement in an employee’s task is dependent on two things: 1) How important the task is, and 2) How experienced the employee is in performing that particular task. Those two considerations are represented on the graph below, which is a modification of the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Model.

situational leadership 650 px

The left scale of the graph represents the level of importance of the task. At the bottom of the graph are tasks that are not important. Near the top of the graph, the tasks are very important. Important tasks are high-visibility tasks with major consequences if not done successfully. The scale along the bottom of the graph shows how experienced the employee is at the specific task you are delegating. If the person has no experience, he or she would fall on the left side of the graph. If the employee has done the task successfully before, he or she would fall on the right side of the graph.

The terms in the middle of the graph are the same ones that are used in the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Model. Each category represents a different amount of instruction and monitoring of employees.

It is appropriate to coach when the task is not important and the employee doesn’t have experience performing the task. Coaching includes giving a clear and detailed description of the expected outcome. However, we want to give employees some room to try and figure out the details on their own. If they make a mistake, it’s not a big deal because the task isn’t crucial. In coaching, we are creating a learning experience. We will tell them what success looks like and then check in with them periodically to make sure that they have the resources they need and that everything is going okay.

If we move up the page along the Importance of the Task scale but stay to the left on the graph, we’re still talking about employees who are not very experienced. However, they are working on something that’s really important with high visibility. In that situation, we want to direct. We are going to tell them exactly what to do, and then we are going to keep very close tabs on their actions. We would probably establish timelines and benchmarks and ensure that those requirements are met because we want to make sure that they succeed and the organization benefits.

Experienced employees will fall on the right side of the graph. If the task is not very important, we are going to delegate. We know that they can handle whatever task this is. Ultimately, a great supervisor’s goal is to have minimal involvement in the accomplishment of tasks. We want to tell them what success looks like and have them let us know when they are done. Of course, it’s difficult to attain that standard all the time because we get new employees, new tasks, and other changes.

Even experienced, trustworthy employees need support on important tasks. We have a lot of confidence in them, but because the task is important and may be highly visible, we want to make sure that we’re checking in with them to ensure everything is going well. We will provide a timeline for complex tasks and ask for updates. We aren’t directly in the nuts-and-bolts of the task, but we are keeping track of how it’s going.

In summary, our level of involvement with employees doing tasks is dependent on the person’s experience and the importance of the task. As supervisors, we aren’t going to maintain one level of involvement across the board all the time. We are going to gauge the level of involvement that we need based on the specific circumstances.


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Just Pick Up The Books!

24 Tuesday Sep 2019

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Delegation, Leadership, Uncategorized

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#DanPink, #LeadershipRules #LeadYourselfFirst #KathySays, #mastery, #smallsuccessesfirst, #starteasy

child cleaning 1K

When my sons were young, I would tell them to go and clean their room. One could handle his part of the job. The other was completely overwhelmed by the task. He would sit on the floor and become engrossed in the books that he was supposed to be putting on the shelf. Getting him to clean his part of the room was a bit of a battle.

I thought about the appropriateness of the chore. Cleaning one’s room is not an unreasonable expectation. However, a room that has gotten out of hand can be daunting. I find my own room intimidating to clean when I put it off for too long.

One day, I decided to break the task up into manageable bits so he wouldn’t feel overwhelmed. I asked him to put away one category of items for ten minutes. For example, I asked him to just put away books for ten minutes. I wanted to set him up for success.

When we first take on a task or assign one to someone else, we want the experience to be a positive one. If we overwhelm someone with too much information in the beginning, they can lose hope. As leaders, we want to do what we can to ensure success early. It’s easy to increase the difficulty of the actions as a person’s skill and familiarity with a task grows.

Instead of dumping an entire task on someone, we can break it down into pieces. If an employee’s ultimate responsibility is to compile information and create a complex report, we can hand over the requirements in pieces.

For example, we could first have them collect the information from the various people they will collaborate with. It would give them a chance to meet fellow employees and learn why the information is important. They could also ensure the information is in the proper format, and learn what that looks like and why we request the information in that way. Then we move on and have them do another piece of the report.

In the book Drive, Daniel Pink states that mastery is one of the things that motivates people. We want to become good at doing things. We want to do tasks well and with ease. Mastery comes with practice. If we ask too much in the beginning, we can make mastery seem like a far-fetched goal. We want people to experience small successes along the way. Each success builds confidence and motivates us to take on the next level of the task.

Another reason to begin with easy is that we want to create a positive feeling about the task and avoid a bad attitude. My nephew’s teacher is requiring four days of creative writing a week. He is eight years old and faces frustration and anger each evening as he cranks out two pages of creative writing. His attitude toward writing is not good at the moment. My sister is currently advocating on his behalf with the teacher so that he won’t decide that he is not a good writer or that he will never write again.

My son was successful when I set a time limit and had him focus on just one part of the entire job. Gradually, we lengthened the time and broadened the scope of what he would do at one time. Each small win made him feel more confident that he could handle cleaning his room.

The key is to ensure that any job we do ourselves or assign to another never feels hopeless. We can all master our tasks – and have a positive attitude about them – if we create small successes that build up to complete proficiency. It might feel like it takes longer to delegate in this way, but the positive feelings and errors that we avoid far outweigh a little bit of time.


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

 

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