Failing to delegate decisions to your team will kill you, your team, or your business. All these outcomes are terrible! We need to discuss your trust and self-confidence to ensure none of these outcomes occur. Let’s take trust first.
Trust
You may not trust (empower) your team to make decisions because:
- You feel they are not ready to assume the responsibility
- You don’t want to take the heat for a wrong decision you did not make
- You suffer from paralysis by analysis and have to look at each decision from every angle and examine every possible outcome
- You have knowledge that you have not shared with the team
- You seek perfection, and you know the team members are more pragmatic than you are
If you have this issue, you are not alone. Recently, Pragmadik CEO Andrea Olson surveyed 100 manufacturing CEOs, and this is what she heard:
98% explicitly stated that they “Wanted to make the majority of decisions, as they did not want to have to blame or discipline their employees”
Self-confidence
Delegating means that someone other than you will make as good a decision as you will, or maybe even a better one. If you are relatively new in your present job, recently had to defend a poor decision someone made, or had an employee push back on a delegation situation by saying, “that’s above my pay grade.” You may feel it is OK to make all the decisions.
The hardest thing for you to say may be, “this is your decision since you know more about the subject than I do.” This may not be very safe for you.
Why delegating well is vital
Here are a few reasons why delegating is so important:
- If you keep making all the decisions, and somehow your business grows, you will either wind up working 24/7 to keep up with the company, decisions will not be made, or you will make decisions very late. In any case, Failing to delegate is not sustainable.
- All service leaders are worried about losing their “old timers” who can fix problems on any product still in the field and have great relationships with their customers. Yet, they will be held back at promotion time by not giving them the freedom to make decisions that are within their experience and responsibilities. And when they get tired of traveling and want to do tech support or training remotely, they will not be mentally prepared for the job.
- Not delegating sends a clear message that you do not trust your team. As people are ready for increased responsibilities, they will look elsewhere for a place to demonstrate their skills and feel more satisfied. If you are lucky, they will find new jobs inside your company. Otherwise, you will lose all their hard-earned knowledge and customer loyalty.
- People not empowered to make decisions typically vent their frustrations on your customers. It may not be overt, but an insightful customer will quickly notice.
- You will miss out on the creativity of an empowered team creating an innovative solution to a significant problem. Many people are more open when working with their peers than when the “big boss” is at the table.
What to do to learn to delegate better
We all have employees that we trust and who will speak honestly to you. Ask that person a few questions like these:
- Do I delegate enough to you? To others on the team?
- Do people feel as though I do not trust them?
- Are people looking for new jobs because they do not feel trusted?
- Will you help me learn how to delegate better?
- Can we meet every week to discuss my progress?
- Will you keep this between the two of us?
As you feel comfortable delegating decisions, you should talk with your boss. Ask her for feedback. Explain how you discovered your problem and the steps you have taken to rectify things. In other words, while learning to trust your team better, you must also learn to trust your boss.
The next steps
- Empower your folks to make decisions within your guidelines. When I hired new employees, I always took them to lunch on their first day at work and told them to imagine how they would feel if the result of their decisions were displayed in the headline of their hometown newspaper and the Boston Globe. Today I would replace the two newspapers with Twitter and Facebook.
- When you feel comfortable, set up a team of key employees and challenge them to solve a tricky problem, give them a timetable, and at the end, ask them to present to you and some other key managers.
Be brave; life will quickly start getting better.