CELSIM

Enabling and equipping your AAA Leadership

This month has been an interesting and taxing struggle for me. I delegated work! Not just any work, but the type of work that I  honestly enjoy a great deal. I’m happy to delegate the stuff I don’t really enjoy doing, but the things I love to do, and that I’m pretty good at doing?

The first major shift for me this month was delegating a number of coaching clients to my team. Not unusual in itself, but for the first time, delegating the whole of GAPPS3 feedback.

The second major shift is our new website. Now I’ve been pretty good at creating websites, programming fancy things, building communieties and so on, and secretly I thoroughly enjoy doing it and seeing what else the technology can do and how it can help our clients. Handing this over to someone else, now that’s been tough.

Then I met Pam Siow. she’s an expert at website design and comes highly recommended. The only difficulty for me has been ‘letting go’ and empowering her to do it. Does she do things the way I would? No way! And whilst that’s why I asked her to do it… oh it’s been tough to just allow her to do so. I’m glad I did by the way, check out the outcome for yourself, and do tell us what you think.

Then I got to thinking, by doing this am I delegating or empowering? And is there a difference? We here a lot from clients and prospective clients about the need to ‘empower’. We read it in the company ‘values statement’. So just what do we mean and how do we do it?

6 Steps to Delegation

Delegate [ del-i-geyt ]: to send or appoint (a person) as deputy or representative; to commit (powers, functions, etc.) to another as agent or deputy.

About a third of my coaching hours is helping leaders delegate effectively because they, like you, are overloaded and stressed out.

There’s a simple six step process to follow to delegate to someone successfully. The leader needs to:

1. Establish exactly what to delegate to whom
2. Clarify the specific outcomes you want
3. Clearly define responsibilities
4. Communicate the scope and authority
5. Establish a time frame
6. Montior progress

So far so good. I knew what to delegate and to whom. Number 2… now that was more difficult, but having chosen to delegate to a professional, I was well guided. 3, not so troublesome. But number 4! When you communciate authority, you are giving your power to someone else.

giving power to someone else is the part I struggled. And I know that I am in excellent company here. This though was the first time I’ve trully given away something I love to do.

So long as you can give your power (authority) away, delegation is not that difficult is it?

At least, not when the person to whom you are delegating knows what they are doing, has the right experience, attitude, motivation and process. So why did I resist it so much? Why was I so uncomfortable?

Partly it’s pride I admit, mostly though, its about power! I’m giving power over my business, my marketing, my public face… to someone else! So is this empowerment?

For more on your ‘Power’ read my tutorial on Influence Level here

2 Steps to Empowerment

Empower [em-pou-er]: to give power or authority to; authorize, esp. by legal or official means; to enable or permit.

Empowering someone though is much more than delegation and trust. Empowering is giving away your power! Isn’t that the same as delegation?

They key to empowerment, I discovered, is in the second definition above: “Enable” – to make ready, to equip, to make able.

You as the leader need to:

1. Teach, train or mentor that person with the skills, knowledge, expertise, means and resources they need to undertake the tasks you wish to delegate to them.
2. Delegate (see above)

So, strictly speaking, this last month I’ve empowered by coaches to take on some of my clients and I delegated my website to Pam. Both mean giving away my power. But to delegate means that they have the skills and resources, to empower means that you also give them the resources they need through training or coaching.

For me, this last month. Well, I finally had enough time to get my new book finished and published. The new website is great. And many of our clients prefer the style of our coahces over my own style… yeah, that last bit kinda hurts… then I remind myself, I do this for your benefit and swallow my pride.

John’s new book

Now on Amazon.

Anyone involved in developing others and wants to know what’s the best and most effective way to develop managers and leaders needs to read this.

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