Welcome to the Ivory Tower, Part II

In a Tarot deck, the Tower card represents chaos and disaster. Historically, it may have been interpreted as disaster striking "those whose fortunes come from abuse of the land and its residents." In another story of the history of this card, The Fool helped build the Tower "back when the most important thing to him was making his mark on the world and proving himself better than other men. Inside the Tower, at the top, arrogant men still live, convinced of their rightness."

Kinda makes you wonder who coined the phrase "Ivory Tower" to represent corporate leaders, and how s/he came up with it, doesn't it?

Well, don't fret. Just because you're a manager doesn't mean you have to build - or live in - the Ivory Tower. You can instead build a leadership home base that's planted firmly on the ground. And if you play your cards right (pun intended), your employees will help you build it.

Okay, that's enough new age metaphors for one post; let's talk about what you need to do:

In Part I of this series, I listed several key management skills. Today we're going to delve into one of the most difficult skills to master: delegating. Webster's Dictionary defines "delegate" as "to entrust to another." This is no small feat for a new manager, and it's especially difficult for a highly-productive doer. But delegate you must, if you're going to become a good leader.

Many managers think that they're delegating when they're really just assigning tasks. It may seem like semantics, but there is a difference between the two. Let's say that you're having issues with your department's TPS reports; specifically, the reports aren't being delivered to your customers in a timely manner, and the reports are often inaccurate. You spend some time analyzing the situation, and decide that the reports need to be streamlined. You call in your team of business analysts for a meeting.

In the meeting, you start delegating: you ask Rob to work with Finance to correct the data entry issues moving forward. You ask Karen to get with IT to correct the existing records. You task Bill with modifying the report format. Finally, you direct Suzanne to automate the report delivery. You give everyone their target dates, and they're off and running. You're proud of yourself, because you think you've delegated. Well, you can stop patting yourself on the back now, because you haven't delegated anything. You've assigned discrete tasks to a bunch of people.

Let's back up, and rethink this situation: You're having problems with your TPS reports. You know exactly what you can do to correct the problem, and you could do it yourself (and assign out the components that your employees can handle). But remember, your job isn't to do; your job is to develop the skills of your employees. So you decide to delegate the project. In order to delegate effectively, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

• Is this something that only I can do and that's both business- and time-critical? If so, then you probably can't delegate it; however, you should get one of your team members involved in the project to bring him up to speed so that you aren't the only one who can do it next time.
• Who on my team has 80% of the skills needed to complete this project? I use 80% for a reason: you may have someone who's all the way there, and if so, that's terrific. But you don't want to punish that superstar by giving her all the "problem" work, do you? (hint: no, you don't). Instead, take the opportunity to develop someone who's nearly ready for prime time.
• What support am I going to have to provide to this person in order to pick up that other 20%?

Once you've established that you can delegate, it's time to get the process rolling:

1. Meet with the employee who's getting ownership of the project (for our purposes, we'll give it to Bill).
2. Explain the goal of the project; explain how you will define success vs. failure.
3. Ask Bill to communicate back to you his understanding of the goal - this ensures that Bill really gets it, and allows you to clarify if he doesn't (this is key: if you aren't both in agreement as to the goal, Bill is likely to fail).
4. Ask Bill for a tangible deliverable (in our example, you might ask Bill to document an analysis of the problem and provide three possible solutions - along with his recommendation as to which solution is best).
5. Set a target date for that deliverable.
6. Between now and the target date, check in with Bill periodically to ensure he's making progress. I don't mean hound him, either. I mean ask him if he's having any problems that require your input or assistance.
7. Let go. The project now belongs to Bill. On the first due date, he'll provide you with the analysis (but if he doesn't, you'll want to check back in next week for the post on managing performance issues). At that point, you'll go with his recommendation (unless it's completely unreasonable), and ask him what the next step is and when it will be completed.

Do you see the difference? Using the "doer" method, the project gets done, but you own it. By delegating, you transfer ownership to Bill. He is responsible for analyzing, making recommendations, coordinating resources, and executing on the plan. You are now responsible for removing roadblocks, providing guidance and correction as needed, and monitoring progress. You've helped Bill stretch his skills (thereby making him more valuable to you), and you've gained some time to do the strategic thinking and planning that they pay you those big bucks to do.

Now, will Bill do the project as well as you would? Probably not (at least, you won't think so). But that's irrelevant as long as it's done well. And Bill (or one of his resources) might come up with a better solution than the one you had in mind, in which case delegation turns out to be a really big win.

Don't get trapped in that tower, thinking that you have to do everything. Yes, delegating means that you'll have to spend more time coaching than you would spend executing (if you aren't comfortable asking, "well, what do you think we should do next?", then you will be soon). But if you can't or won't delegate, you're limiting yourself and your team.