“How do I, as a manager, develop my people for the long-term?” That’s the question I explore in this article. As a leader and manager, over my career so far, this has been one of the most important aspects, if not the most important. Indeed, it is why Protagion exists today – to multiply that positive impact of professional growth and evolution across organisations and countries as much as possible, and inspire more professionals to actively manage their careers.

This is the third article in the series prompted by The Six Conversations of a Brilliant Manager* by Alan J Sears. The first article covered my thoughts on the book overall and four of the six conversations: coaching, taking responsibility, addressing performance/behaviour, and performance appraisals. The second article focused on delegation as a manager, and applied that conversation framework to the employee perspective too. Read more for the rest of the third article.

Delegation is a phenomenal technique at your disposal as a manager – it can multiply your impact as you can get so much more done through others than carrying everything on your own shoulders. However, it can be a struggle for some managers. I explore this struggle further in this article, in addition to sharing a structure for a conversation to delegate a task, project or responsibility to someone else. The article also covers tips on how you can get your manager to effectively delegate to you i.e. where you are the one being delegated to.

This is my second article based on the book The Six Conversations of a Brilliant Manager* by Alan J Sears. The first article covered my thoughts on the book overall plus some discussion on other (related) approaches, and delved into the specifics of four of the six conversations. They were coaching, taking responsibility, addressing performance/behaviour, and performance appraisals. 

Alan argues that “many organisations are systematically under-delegated, with everyone doing tasks they really should have briefed others to do”. In my view, this means everyone is operating below their potential, under-developed because they are stuck doing things that are routine for them, but would have offered growth opportunities for others if they had been briefed properly and supported while learning.

Delegation is one of my professional strengths according to a previous manager of mine. For me, it’s about empowering and trusting your reports to do their best and what’s right for the business. And, yes, it may push you and them outside of your respective comfort zones, but that’s how we learn and grow.

Difficulties for managers
Some of the difficulties include managers:

• being unable or unwilling to let go
• lacking faith in the other person’s abilities
• having insufficient self-confidence to delegate properly

Thoughts like ‘it’s quicker to do it myself’ or ‘if you want something done properly, do it yourself’ are insidious, and often conceal a need to feel indispensable at work. Arrogance might be a part of it too, such as believing that ‘only I can do this’ or ‘no-one could ever do this as well as me’.

There may be an unstated suspicion that if you delegate well, you’ll have nothing left to do! If your team is a ‘well-oiled machine’ and stretched (in a good way), dealing with delegated opportunities with aplomb, the risk of redundancy or downsizing for the manager is sadly a legitimate concern in some organisations… Even developing potential successors such that your team is sustainable can be dangerous in those organisations i.e. if you actively work to reduce their reliance on you, you increase your risk of redundancy. Nevertheless, I still feel you should delegate as it’s what affords you the capacity and time to take on broader responsibilities across your business, like volunteering for strategic projects.

It’s important to learn how to delegate properly, else you won’t get back what you’re wanting. You’ll then be under pressure to go back to doing it all yourself, stressing yourself out, and demotivating your team as they feel they can’t meet your standards. 

Delegation Conversation as a Manager
The steps in a delegation conversation are:
1) Set the scene, including the reason(s) why you want it to be done, what the overall aim is, and why you are asking them to do it.
2) Describe the task, being clear about what needs to be done. Cover both the general outline and sufficient detail so they can be clear on the result required.
3) Set the timeline: when it needs to be done by.
4) Talk through who else might be involved, and perhaps where it will be done, and be clear on the limits of authority (what they can and can’t do).
5) Check the other person’s understanding of the four key points (why, what, when, who/where/limits) by asking them to run your request back past you, plus tell them when you want updates on progress from them.

Note though that you should not cover how they should get it done – that will be up to whoever you are delegating to. It is key to remember that anything you delegate will not be done exactly the way you would have done it. This is not a different quality standard (if you’re sufficiently clear on the quality expected), but just a different approach taken. Other pitfalls to avoid are flitting between why and what (as this can be confusing) and insufficient clarity on timelines. 

In more complex situations, you may need to cover:

• phases of delivery, or intermediate milestones, 
• what resources are or can be made available, and 
• administrative aspects or issues around working with other departments. 

And, limits of authority can include: 

• who else they can involve and ​what help they can get, 
• whether they can delegate it to one of their own team, 
• budget, and
• things they’re not allowed to do (such as saying “my manager told me to”).

You should also cover what they should do if they need help from you e.g. raising what they might need from you as part of their regular progress updates.

Delegation as a direct report
As a direct report, you could use these elements of the delegation conversation too, when you’re being delegated to. In other words, ask your boss specific questions when she delegates to you to:

• pin the task down specifically i.e. what
• make sure of the timescale i.e. when
• check your limits
• recap exactly what you’re going to do and by when, plus when you’ll provide progress updates

If she agrees with your plan, there is a much higher chance that you will later deliver exactly what she wants on time, meeting her requirements and motivating yourself to take on bigger challenges in future.

What have your experiences of delegation been? Have techniques like the ones above helped you, either as a delegating manager, or as the person being delegated to?

* PROTAGION is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk. The links with * participate in this programme. ​

In this series of articles, I’d like to focus on some practical advice for new or aspiring managers, based on The Six Conversations of a Brilliant Manager* by Alan J Sears. It’s an immensely readable book, structured in two parts: first, an engaging fictional story of a new manager (of a team of six), followed by a ‘simple reference guide’ as the author calls it which recaps the key messages.

Alan’s book is based on the concept that many management conversations with the individuals in your team have a structure, which if followed, makes it more likely you will achieve a good outcome for both you and the team member.

Part of the reason I enjoyed it so much is that it echoes a number of the themes which resonate strongly with us at Protagion, including treating your team members as individuals, adapting your approach to each of them, and allowing them to shine, and taking charge of your own career proactively and not expecting that your organisation will manage it for you.

Early in the book, the fictional manager realised that he “needed to have a completely different conversation with everyone in the team” to make the difference his company needed. He’s an endearing protagonist for the book’s messages, a good-natured and supportive manager who describes his thought pattern with: “I worked out what I thought the problem was, and then where I should start and finish the conversation in order to get to where I wanted to be – and where I wanted the other person to be.” He even chooses specific locations for conversations in the story based on who he would be speaking with, and the nature of the discussion.

Read more for an introduction to the six conversations, covering coaching, taking responsibility, addressing performance/behaviour, delegation, career paths, and performance appraisals, followed by more of my thoughts on the book and other (related) approaches like Patrick Lencioni’s famous business fable The Five Dysfunctions of a Team*. This article then goes into more detail on four of the conversations, leaving delegation and career conversations for future articles in the series.