Dave Stitt Quotes

The delegator is able to frame the thing that is to be delegated in a clear way, leaving no room for confusion over what success looks like, or by when the thing should be done.

To get started there should be no more than five, judged as the most critical for this stage of the project.

Without effective goal-setting there can be no holding to account and, therefore, no accountability. If there is no accountability, feedback is meaningless. It will lack purpose and be arbitrary. At worst, it is the mere projection onto an employee of the boss’s own issues. So, deal with goal-setting and accountability first.

To win back time and unleash talent you have to delegate something substantial. You can tell if the delegated thing is substantial if: 1) it hurts a bit to give up; 2) it feels risky to let go; 3) it is stretching for the delegatee; 4) it makes you all a bit nervous; and 5) it constitutes a good chunk of your time, 20% for example, based on your Time Tracker results (see Chapter 3).

Offering input only when problems arise may cause people to see you as unappreciative or petty,” observe the authors of Giving Effective Feedback (Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 2014).

Three criteria are put forward by O’Neill in assessing trustworthiness: competence, honesty and reliability.

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.

Idea • Being leader of a team, department or organisation should not mean you are CPS (Chief Problem Solver). If you are, you are working one or two pay grades below what you were hired to do. Idea • Your real job is to conceive and articulate a vision for where your team, department or organisation should be heading, and, with help from your people, to work out a detailed roadmap (strategy) for how to get there. Reflection • Ask yourself and others what things you can do that will get your ‘ship’ moving toward the vision, and what among those things fall inside your Zone of Mastery.

The Specific Test goes like this: Somebody must do something he or she was not doing before. The ‘do’ is a good, ordinary verb that a child will understand. If you are not sure, find a child and ask him if he understands the verb. Doing the thing will have a tangible result, one that we want.

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

This happens when people are allowed to derive three crucial things from work: a sense of autonomy; a sense of mastery; and a sense of purpose.

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.

• What difficult conversation do you need to have but have been putting off because you don’t want to upset the other person? Idea • An ambitious delegation requires you to give lots of both support and challenge to the delegatee. Idea • Too much challenge is the Zone of Stress, burn-out and uneven results. Too much support is the zone of complacency and slipping standards. Too little of each is the zone of inertia, apathy, isolation and boredom.

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.