Welcome to midweek motivate, where our goal is to build your leadership and give you something practical to try with your team.

We are part way through a six week coverage of the Six Daily Practices of Outstanding Leaders. So far we’ve looked at the importance of Reflecting, Inspiring, Developing and Connecting. The fifth daily practice that we will explore today is Delegating.

I used to really struggle with delegating. When I first became a manager I quickly realised that I needed to delegate. There just weren’t enough hours in the day. But often times it was quicker and easier to just do something myself. I saw delegating as a short-term efficiency effort that didn’t work in the short-term and definitely wasn’t efficient. Eventually I came to understand that delegation is actually about long-term development and capability building. Once that light came on, I was happy to delegate anything. The unavoidable dip in performance and quality that came with delegation didn’t put me off - rather, it was a reminder that the person was learning.

Leaders who focus on Delegating regularly undertake four activities:

1. Delegate important work - great leaders take key parts of their role and delegate them to their people.
2. Take a long-term view - you have to extend your focus beyond this week or this month when it comes to delegating.
3. Provide feedback - relentless feedback is a key part of successful delegation. But be clear that your intent is to help the person to improve, and not to micromanage what they’re doing.
4. Focus on accountabilities - people may well do things differently to the way you would have. In fact, they may even do it better. Give people plenty of autonomy about how to get things done.

I’m sure, of that list, there are at least one or two actions you could increase this week. If you want to review the list I’ve included them in the show notes.