Dave Stitt Quotes

Three categories are proposed: Tasks, Processes, and Outcomes. The third category, Outcomes, bestows the most freedom on the delegator and, on the delegatee, the biggest opportunity to grow.

If you are disappointed with your candidate’s score because they got zero, but you feel it is not a true reflection, consider broaching the topic with her. You could say, “I’m considering asking for your help on a new project but in the process of thinking about it I realised that I sometimes feel that if I don’t hassle you, things don’t get done. Is that fair?” Make sure you have examples to hand, and ask for her thoughts. Be prepared for a frank conversation, especially if she thinks you may be part of the problem!

The Delegation Feedback Conversation has a job to do. For it to be of service to the delegation project it must cover all the bases by allowing the following things to happen: The delegatee gives an accurate report on progress made in reaching agreed milestones. An assessment is made of the success or not of that progress. Barriers to success are explored. Strategies for overcoming those barriers are adopted. Ways you can help are identified. The delegatee is challenged where, however inadvertently, she is working against the aims of the project. Milestones are reassessed, with some kept, others dropped, and new ones agreed as necessary. She departs with new ideas, heightened clarity, and refreshed confidence and energy. So do you.

The first is your Zone of Mastery, or Unique Ability, the zone you inhabit when you’re doing what you love most, what only you can do, and where the results are remarkable. However, since this is your work or professional life, you need to apply a second filter, which is the field of activity most necessary to get your organisation heading in the direction it needs to go. Where those two filters overlap, that’s what you should be doing. All accountabilities falling outside those boundaries are ripe for delegation, which will win you time.

Frank Sinatra never moved pianos. He didn’t worry about lighting, stage sets, or ticket sales.

Ask the delegatee to summarise the delegation back to you and listen carefully to the words he uses. Are they specific, and is his ‘specific’ the same as yours?

Focussing on progress instead of perfection builds confidence, which boosts our energy, stimulates lateral thinking, and helps us take necessary risks.

Spend some time making a list of all the things you do in your role. Work from your formal job description, but make sure to include all the things you actually do, as well, from training new recruits, to organising away days, to setting strategy. Then arrange this catalogue of activities into four groups: Things you are incompetent at doing: The realm of stress and futility, you really should not be doing it. Things you are competent at, but don’t enjoy: You meet minimum standard levels, but others do it better, and it bores you. Things you’re quite good at, but have no passion for: From experience you can do it standing on your head, but it doesn’t fire you up. Things you excel at, and love doing: Here you are ‘in the zone’. It is the realm of Unique Ability, passion and maximum effectiveness. If you think of these four categories as concentric rings, the first is cold and distant, the Outer Ring Of Rank Incompetence, a place to avoid at all costs. Next in is the Ring Of Dreary Competence; you do not want to linger here for long, either. Getting warmer and closer-in is the Ring Of Passionless Skill, where many of us spend more time than we’d like. And in the middle is the Bullseye of Mastery.

Like a coach, the delegator’s job is to raise the delegatee’s level of awareness of the delegatee’s own performance and potential, so that the delegatee can begin to take more responsibility for the factors limiting or enhancing that performance.

Good delegation requires active participation from the delegator but not overbearing involvement in the delegated thing, which is why, in the beginning, good delegation does not make the delegator’s life easier, necessarily.

Good delegators: instil confidence and belief; get organised; communicate well; let people get on with it; and provide effective feedback.

As a leader your first responsibility is to articulate a vision of where your team or organisation is going. What should the organisation look like, and be doing, in one year, two years, five years? What will we be like, and what will clients be saying about us? Having arrived at the vision, you and your people then need to work out an effective, detailed strategy, a roadmap for getting there.

Good delegators, it emerges time and time again, are people who instil confidence and belief; who are organised; who communicate well; who let people get on with it; and who provide effective feedback.

The ones that are greediest and farthest from the bullseye represent the fields of activity that most urgently need to be delegated.

True results-oriented people prioritise the cultivation of relationships.