The Manager’s Playbook: When to delegate. The 70% rule.
Why delegate?
High-impact leaders and managers understand delegation is a tool for growing their teams, strengthening relationships, transferring responsibility to others who are closer to the work being done, and allowing those closer to the problems to take ownership for solving problems.
However, delegation is not always easy because we often feel as if only we can complete a certain task in the best possible way. It´s hard to trust others to do those tasks and trust the capabilities of our team that they will also be able to do a good job in those tasks.
To delegate effectively, it's important to remember that:
Delegation is not a binary thing. There are plenty of “shades of grey” between being a dictator and being an anarchist
Delegation is a step-by-step process. You hand over accountability to other people in a controlled and gradual way
Delegation is context-dependent. You want to delegate as much as possible, but if you go too far chaos might unfold
Three reasons we are reluctant to delegate.
Author, Tom Rowlings, in an article for People Development Magazine, identified three main barriers to delegation:
Time - "By the time I explained the task to someone else, I could have done it myself many times over!"
Fear of failure – "What if they make a mistake? What if they mess up? What if they don’t do it the way I want it done? I’ll just have to go back and fix the mistakes they have made, so I might as well just do it myself"
Pride – "If I delegate this piece of work, people will think I can't handle my workload, they'll think I'm overwhelmed, I don’t have the skills to keep on top or everything" or "If I hand this over to someone else, I'm not going to get any credit for doing it all, I won't get any recognition for my hard work"
So, when do you delegate a task?
This central question stops many leaders and managers from moving tasks to their team. They wait until someone else is able to complete the tasks as well as they and thus doom themselves to owning that task forever. Instead, Jim Schleckser author of Great CEOs Are Lazy, recommends using the "70 percent rule."
Put simply, if the other person is able to perform the task at least 70% as well as you, it should be delegated.
Is it frustrating that the task won't be done with the same degree of perfection or perceived perfection? Sure! But let go of perfection. Is it easier said than done? Yes, certainly. But there is no place for perfection when it comes to delegation.
Part of the delegation process involves knowing what you want to accomplish and then letting people know what is needed to get it done. Then it's time for perhaps the most difficult part of delegation - letting go and trusting that your team members will take the ball and run with it.
This requires an understanding that they may do it in a way completely different from how you would do it. To let go of perfection, you need to decide what's more important to you: having the work completed to "perfection" (the way you would do it), or having it completed successfully in a different way. You may even be surprised to find that when you give your team members a little leeway, they discover new - and better - ways to do things.
One important point is that if you delegate a task fully, you shouldn't try to coach up the receiver to get back that 30 percent difference.
And as a final point, remember…
“Never delegate methods, only results" Stephen Covey
Find out more…
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