Secret #12: Initiate Transformation for You and Your Team
Transformation means that we shift the ingredients in our lives. When we manage a team, we have to balance our needs with the goals and values of our team members. All the research indicates that what people want most is positive recognition. So as a manager, you want to set a tone of support and challenge crafted to the strengths and weaknesses of your staff.
In the book, The 12 Secrets of Highly Successful Women, I go into great detail about all the elements of being a positive manager and I have trained and done executive coaching with hundreds of managers. But today I want to clarify the confusion around delegation. So many women business owners hang onto too many non-CEO tasks and get totally burned out. Executives at companies block the promotion line when they don’t train their staff to advance. Delegation is not dumping. There are some important guidelines to make it work well. Make sure that you don’t over-delegate to your best people and get them burned out too.
There are 5 Basic Steps to Delegation:
Decide on the task to be delegated and then select someone who has the capability to do the task and the ability and interest to learn it.
Set up a meeting with the person and describe in detail the task and the timeline and try to get their buy in. Discuss all the details with him/her, including any needs for training and/or coaching. Point out the benefits to them as well.
When the person has agreed to do the task, have them create an action plan with timeframes and deadlines. Go over the plan in detail and edit as needed.
Have a discussion with them about how much assistance versus freedom they would like from you at this time and make a plan.
Be sure and build in recognition for a job well done!
Another important point here is to follow your intuition about who really has the ability and genuine motivation to learn these new skills and move forward. If you have chosen the right person, it frees you up to focus on growing your business or your own career.
Do you have any delegation success stories to share with us? Leave a comment.
This concludes the 12 Secrets of Highly Successful Women video and blog posts. Stay tuned for our next new series.
