INNERGISE!

Going off on holiday inevitably requires managers to delegate – things need to happen while we are away. Peter (not real name, but true story), a partner in a law firm, was jetting off for a week of sunshine with his family recently. Of the various things that he had to delegate, one was date critical and had to be completed and delivered to his client by the Thursday of his week off.

So Peter took a number of proactive steps to make sure it was going to happen. He chose Phil, a junior solicitor, who knew the case history, and who had been working on it with him as the most suitable person to delegate to.  He asked Anna, a fellow partner to be available to review the document when Phil had completed it, and he diarised sufficient time to walk through exactly what was required with Phil. All good positive stuff, and Peter jetted off confident that it would happen.

On his return, he came back to a very disgruntled client, a demoralised and embarrassed Phil, and a bemused Anna. Where had it all gone wrong? Well, when I asked Peter about it he was clear that Phil had messed up, had left the work to till the last moment and therefore failed to find time to speak to Anna. The quality of the completed work was not what it needed to be, something Anna would have picked up, and the client was dissatisfied.

To recover the situation, Peter reworked the document, and in order to re-engage the client, drove down to see them face to face (5 hour round trip). It all ended fine but the consequences of what had happened are typical of what happens when delegation isn’t done effectively:

• The job doesn’t get done as intended and others see the failure or lack of quality
• The person delegating isn’t happy, and their leadership is potentially undermined
• The person delegated too is demotivated by their involvement in failure
• Time is wasted in recovering the situation, and often repeating the work.

Following a discussion with Peter, he recognised that the fault actually lay with himself and the way he had delegated.

He had failed to analyse in enough detail the qualities required of the ideal person to whom this task should be delegated to.  Inevitably, when we delegate something to somebody, there is a range of skills, knowledge and attitude that is required of the person if they are to succeed. Inevitably the person being delegated will have one or two shortcomings (don’t we all) against the ideal person.

In Phil’s case, yes he had knowledge of the client which was important, but he was also not very strong when it came to personal organisation and time management, and had a habit of leaving things to the last minute.

Reviewing the way he handled the delegation, Peter recognised that if he had identified Phil’s weaknesses, he would have been able to support him better by requiring Phil to diarise when he was going to both complete the work and review it with Anna. Had he taken these steps, the work would have been delivered to the client’s satisfaction and all the waste and frustration would have been avoided.

Effective delegation requires clear direction and identification of what success looks like, a clear review process, but equally importantly is real clarity of what the ideal person would be like. So when delegating:

• List the knowledge, skills and attitude required of the person to whom you are delegating
• Score the individual (or individuals) whom you are considering delegating to on a scale of 1 -10 (10 being excellent) against the various knowledge, skills and attitude requirements
• Identify the best suited person
• Identify what shortcomings they have and agree how to compensate and support them appropriately

We all work to hard not to enjoy our holidays and wonder what we are coming back to and those we delegate to deserve to have it done right. It’s a win win.