Becoming leader

Dare to delegate

LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES.

Delegate to lead

If your professional agenda already seems to be full, there’s no need to load it up any more. This is counterproductive in the long run. You will no longer have the ability to do critical tasks of quality and this will quickly become detrimental to you.

Your physical, then mental, then emotional energy will drain away as you accumulate responsibilities and tasks. Like a pressure cooker, the internal pressure will rise inexorably and then….

Work overload must be analyzed and can be remedied by several possible means. As a leader you often have a direct or indirect team at your disposal that could perhaps help you.

After analyzing your agenda over the last weeks and months, you should be critical and focus again on the added value you need to bring to your role and function.

Many Leaders will be overworked, sometimes wasting a lot of time on tasks that should not be managed at their level.

The Becoming Leader method is based on 5 phases:

Critical analysis of the agenda
Highlighting the key points of added value of the role
Identification of current activities that should be managed differently
The application of the ECRS method
The delegation that comes last

Of course, when an activity is booming, it is strongly advised to surround yourself with other skills because trying to do everything yourself can lead to a state of permanent stress. This is the time to trust, train and dare to delegate. Even if you dare to delegate, if you just don’t have enough resources to do all the tasks of the department, you must also and above all, adjust this first balance.

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Let’s take a closer look at the Becoming Leader method:

Critical agenda analysis

Take the time to review all your calls and appointments from the last 3 months and categorize them into critical, semi-critical and non-critical elements in relation to the added value you can bring to them. For example, a meeting just to get information but not to participate in any decision is probably not critical for a senior manager or director.

Definition of the added value of your role

Refocus on your role and what you are in the organization to do and especially not to do – Everyone has a role and a place to play and things start to go wrong when you start doing things that shouldn’t be done by you. Take a step back and focus on the essentials at your level – if necessary revise your job description and don’t confuse your responsibilities with your role.

Just because you are ultimately responsible for activities doesn’t mean it is your role to do them yourself.

Identifying current activities that should be managed differently

From now on you are able to list all the activities that you do or on which you consume time and which are not really at the level of your role.

Some things will appear naturally and others will be difficult to admit because you will not see anyone else capable of doing this task at the moment and yet you come to realize the task should be done by someone else or at least take you less time.

Applying the ECRS method

With the activities identified above, you have 4 ways to approach them:

Eliminate the task completely
Combine the task with another one to save time (e.g. 2 meetings of 1 hour on a related topic combined into 1 meeting of 1 hour)
Reduce the task (e.g. by requiring better preparation for a meeting or project it can be done more quickly)
Simplify the task (e.g. during a workshop where your added value is not optimal with experts, join the conclusion only to understand the results and decisions to be made – and of course optimize your time)

Delegation

Once you have optimized your activities, it is time to consider what you will be able to delegate. There is no point in delegating activities that are not useful to anyone or that consume too much time even for one member of your team.

There is nothing demeaning about delegating. On the contrary! It is an opportunity to free your mind, to recharge your batteries, to gain the esteem of those around you and to mobilize your creativity. But it is also a challenge that you take on by betting on a person, a task to be accomplished, a situation… knowing that training can also appear as a delicate experience to be carried out at a time when the mission can be very important for your own career.

There are 2 simple rules to delegation:

Train and align your delegate well with the role of representation – what can he or she decide or not? What is the role of the delegate?
Ensure concise verbal or written feedback from the activity (in 5 minutes instead of 2 hours) to adjust and refocus the contribution.

A delegation is never passive – it stays active but helps you make better use of your time.

At the same time, it helps your delegates grow and rub shoulders with different worlds and other leaders in the organization. The right delegation is great for everyone. Dare to delegate !