Leadership for Intelligence Professionals   

Some Guidelines for Delegating

To delegate means giving people the responsibility for carrying on autonomous work. The current word for that approach is “empowering” them.  But, it also means providing all the information, guidance and support at the outset that the person needs to do the job.  It means “enabling” (perhaps a better word than “empowering”) the person to do the job well.

There are some guidelines that can be followed and practiced.

-First of all, assess the ability and skills of the people in the organization to determine who can do the job that needs to be done.

--To do this the Leader must know the people of the organization and their strengths and capabilities.  This is best done by using a Participating/Supporting Leadership style with all the members of the organization on a regular basis. That style will help you to identify those individual members of the organization to whom you can delegate certain tasks based on their apparent interest and abilities. Then, with them you can move to a Delegating style.

When meeting with that person or those people to delegate:

-First, state the big picture of how the assignment fits into the overall goals and mission of the organization and why it is important.
-Then, give the assignment, focusing on the goals and desired results of their work, not the methods that they should use.
-Provide the guidance that is required; such as the scope of the effort, the parameters within which they must work, the performance standards to which they will be held, deadlines and the periodic reports desired.
-Then, identify the resources that are available; especially how you can and will help, if required.
-Finally, most of all, provide motivation. Tell them why you have selected them, how the job relates to their career development and what is in it for them.

When you have done that, comes the hardest part. You must step aside, bite your tongue, and let them do the job.  That is not to say that you should not monitor the project. You should, and as you do so you might want to get involved to straighten things out.  For example, you may see things being done in that ways you consider wrong or you will see things turning out in ways that they had not intended. Thus, you may be tempted to intervene, to take actions to get things done the way you want them done. You will become a micro-manager.  Don’t!  To avoid that trap, as already indicated above, when you delegated you offered your help as required.  Thus, on a short project you can stop by the person’s desk and ask “How’s it going?  Do you need any further guidance or help?  When delegating a longer project, you should ask for periodic reports.  That is the opportunity to give mid-course guidance in the form of suggestions.

Hopefully, those things will work, But, if you see things going awry and miss the opportunity to get involved during the process and things don’t turn out as they had intended, you will be tempted to reject or change the results.  Don’t! That type of behavior begins to indicate to the people of the organization that you do not trust them. If it happens more than once or twice, you will have stifled peoples’ initiative, creativity and feeling of responsibility for the tasks that you delegate.