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Here’s a simple checklist to help you to delegate more effectively. These strategies are explored in greater depth on our Effective Delegation Skills training course
- Analysis of the task
First and foremost decide if the task is appropriate for delegation. For instance make sure that it isn’t anything that you alone have been trained to do. What is also very necessary for you to bare in mind is that you must choose the right person for the job, you can’t be biased towards this sort of thing otherwise it will undoubtedly be your downfall. If there is no one capable then I’m afraid the responsibility falls to you to do it once again. But remember delegation is as much a reflection of you as it is on the people you delegate to, as it shows your ability to judge people correctly and can often be a marking that you are capable of this on a larger scale
- Make sure that there is a firm understanding of what needs to be done and why.
The person or people who give the job to should be fully aware of any responsibilities and expectations that come with it. Make sure that they know what sort of a priority this task is and why they were chosen. From the beginning state what you expect and what needs to be achieved, the person or team you have assembled should be under no pretences about what the results should be and when the deadline is. Similarly your team should be properly equipped with the resources and/ or equipment that they will need to get the job done.
Also it is vital at this stage, before the project gets underway, that you reach an understanding with the person, or persons delegated to about how you are going to monitor and check their performance on the project. If you do not breach this topic with your delegates then when you do begin to monitor the situation they might find it interfering or meddling.
- Monitoring and checking results.
This is a very important part of delegation, even though you yourself are not now working on the project at hand it is essential that you take an active interest in how things are going. As was said before it is as much you on the line as it is your delegates, so it is vital that you are fully aware of what is happening and are there on hand to correct any mistakes. If something does go wrong in the project make sure that you understand what went wrong and why it happened, so you will be able to rectify the problem and hopefully stop it from reoccurring.
When your team or delegate has finished the job successfully make sure to let them know that they have done a good job and that their efforts are appreciated. It can sometimes be the case that a manager will take the credit for work done through delegation and whilst you are entitled to credit you should remember that this should include your delegates also.
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Posted by Faye Binfield in Time Management on April 3rd, 2009 | No Comments »
When learning to manage your time, make sure that you allow yourself time to do things that make you happy. What do you enjoy doing? Don’t fall into the trap to ignoring your need to take time out occasionally. It may mean having a little less time to accomplish tasks that need to be done, however it can give you the energy and put you in a state of mind that can actually help to accomplish tasks more quickly in the long run.
Writing a list of goals will give you the idea that you are in control that in turn can help your confidence to accomplish these goals as you are already anticipating success when you start your plan of action. This will boost your self confidence
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Posted by Faye Binfield in Time Management on October 26th, 2007 | No Comments »
This free management resource provides advice and tips useful for managers who are new to their position, and will also provide a useful recap for existing managers.
These free resources are designed to complement our range of Management and Leadership Training courses.
Introduction to Management Awareness
Managers who know themselves well and who are aware of their emotions are in a better position to understand and empathise when managing others.
So an important step to being an effective manager is self-awareness. This means, amongst other things, knowing:
- Your strengths
- Your areas for development
- Your positive and negative qualities
- Your prejudices
- Your feelings
- What effect you have on others
Emotional intelligence
Emotional Intelligence, or EI as it is known, can be helpful in this area of interpersonal understanding as it involves thinking about yourself and others.
EI is said to be categorised into five aspects:
1. SELF-AWARENESS
If you’re aware of yourself and what makes you tick, you’ll be a more effective communicator and a better manager. Once you understand yourself and are open to self-development, you are in a better position to lead and guide others.
2. MANAGING EMOTIONS
Do you always know how you feel? For many of us our feelings are unclear and hidden as we have been taught to suppress emotions. Reversing this isn’t easy, but research shows that unless we’re first aware of our emotions we can’t gain control of them. You can increase your awareness of feelings simply by spending time thinking about them. The more you practice, the more conscious you will become.
3. MOTIVATING YOURSELF
Once you’re more aware of your emotions you can put them to good use to motivate yourself and keep yourself motivated regardless of the situation. You no longer have to react in an automatic way to outside stimuli; you can choose.
4. EMPATHY
Without empathy it is difficult to gain people’s trust, create rapport, influence people and develop their abilities.
Empathy is having a sensitivity to the feelings and concerns of others and seeing things from their point of view, rather than selfishly seeing things from your own perspective.
5. HANDLING RELATIONSHIPS
Once you have empathy with someone and can recognise their feelings of stress, anger, sadness, rejection and so on, you can manage emotions in others. Handling relationships means having a degree of social competence and using social skills.
How can we use this to be more effective managers?
Having the basic building blocks of EI means it is possible to control your emotions, create and maintain successful relationships and motivate yourself and others to achieve goals, all key aspects of management!
How can I find out what effect I have on people?
Feedback should be a two-way process. Now is your chance to ask for some for yourself! This takes courage but is worth it.
The more specific the feedback the more valuable it will be – this applies equally to praise as to criticism. You can help people be specific with their feedback by being specific with your questions:
Choose two or three people you trust in your organisation. They may be your staff, peers or manager. Identify two aspects of your management style that you want to receive feedback on. Be specific about what you ask for.
- Record what each of them says
- Analyse your emotional reaction to what they said
- Make notes on what you can do and are prepared to do to change your behaviour
You need to be sure that if they are critical, you don’t get defensive. You will have to handle your feelings about the interchange if some of the comments are negative!
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Management Skills on April 3rd, 2007 | No Comments »
From every manager giving good clear feedback is vital. Although it can sometimes be seen as criticism when handled carefully it can improve results and strengthen working relationships. Many employees may not even be aware that they are not performing as expected or required. Constuctive feedback can help people see their blind spots and understand the impact of their behaviour, feedback can enhance their career.
Unfortunately many managers put off giving feedback because it makes them uncomfortable, or they want to avoid confrontation. Feedback should be clear and precise and avoid hints, blame or humiliation. Managers need to know how to be assertive and ask for what they want from employees.
Once an employee knows or understands what their manager would like they may go away and think about it, change their behaviour and enhance their own career as a result. Everybody wins.
Assertiveness and confidence building training - A good one day course for managers on assertiveness.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Management Skills on September 24th, 2009 | No Comments »
Delegation is about letting employees make decisions and work on their own initiative. To be successful, employees must have the resources to complete a delegated task. This may mean providing training, tools and support.
Managers can delegate authority however they cannot delegate responsibility, this is important. Although an employee is responsible for meeting deadlines, goals and objectives, the Manager is still ultimately responsible for the success of the delegated task.
DELEGATION BENEFITS
- Employees may do a better job when they feel personally accountable, even though responsibility ultimately rests with the individual who made the delegation.
- Delegation can make an employee’s work more varied and therefore motivate the employee.
- Managers have more time to innovate and plan.
- When delegation involves training and mentoring, the organisation will benefit from a more highly skilled workforce.
- Employees will learn to be better decision makers given more responsibility.
DELEGATION DRAWBACKS
- Managers may lack the knowledge or motivation to delegate.
- Managers may choose the wrong tasks to delegate.
- Managers may not communicate the task effectively, providing inadequate direction.
- Some managers get stuck in the belief that “if you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself.”
- Managers may:
- Lack trust in their employees
- Fear being seen as lazy
- Be reluctant to take risks
- Fear competition
Any of the above may result in incomplete or incorrectly completed tasks.
The manager is ultimately responsible for delegation and must take responsibility for:
- Delegating the wrong task
- Delegating to the wrong person
- Not providing proper guidance.
The employee is ultimately responsible for:
- Doing the task incorrectly when given adequate resources, guidance or training.
See our Delegation Skills training course if you are looking to improve the way you delegate.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Management Skills on January 16th, 2008 | No Comments »
The manager’s role is to organise resources and employees to achieve the best results for an organisation. How a manager perceives his employees will affect his skill at motivating staff. Consider these two approaches below.
The pessimistic manager
The pessimistic manager may assume the following about most employees:
- People do not enjoy work; they will try and avoid it if possible
- People are not ambitious
- People do not like responsibility
- People prefer to be told what to do
- Most people are not creative when solving problems
- People are only motivated by basic needs for security
- The majority of people are self-centered, and so will need to be controlled in order to work towards organisational goals and objectives
- People are resistant to change
- Most people are not intelligent.
- People are gullible
This attitude towards management and employees assumes that people at work are motivated firstly by money closely followed by basic security needs.
In order to control employees the pessimistic management may rely on coercion, threats and tight control command. The pessimistic manager could be passive and simply hope for cooperation. Neither of these solutions are productive styles of management. The first will result in hostility, employees may purposely under perform, and workers may unite in opposition to management. The second approach does not motivate at all, it may encourage apathy.
The pessamistic approach assumes that once a need is satisfied it no longer motivates hindering the need to satisfy higher-level needs. More money becomes the only form of motivation. Employees will use work to satisfy this basic need only; their higher needs (see McLelland: Motivational Drives) will have to be fulfilled elsewhere. As we will see later – employees can be most productive when their work goals align with higher level needs.
Pessimism in management that recognises only basic needs for motivation usually encourage employees to work without responsibility, enthusiasm or creativity, promoting an environment where employees dislike their work, avoid responsibility, have no interest in organisational goals, resist change, etc., thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The Optimistic Manager
Maslow’s Hierarchy looks at mans basic needs for survival food, shelter etc. in a working environment money is the only currency that will satify these needs. Managers should also be interested in higher-level needs (see McLelland: Motivational Drives), needs that are continuing needs as in seldom completely satisfied, such as self esteem and self actualisation. As these needs are on going and not so easily attained, the promise of more can more easily be used to motivate and reward employees.
The pessimistic manager may assume the following about most employees:
- Work can be fun/rewarding/enjoyable
- If employees are committed they can be self directed and creative when working towards organisational goals
- If rewards can fulfil higher needs such as self fulfilment, employees will be more committed to maintaining quality and productivity
- Enthusiasm, commitment and creativity can spread
- Most people can handle responsibility
- In the right conditions people will seek responsibility
Here there is an opportunity to align organisational goals with personal goals by using higher needs such as self fulfilment as a motivator.
There may be employees that are not as responsive when offered the promise of higher need fulfilment. There may be employees that will still need a level of control to make them productive. They may however develop as they work in an environment that encourages responsibility and creativity and control can be relaxed as employees develop.
Silicon Beach Training offer a Staff Motivation course.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Management Skills on June 3rd, 2008 | Comments Off
McClelland identified three key motivating drives that work for everyone. He named these key drives as:
- The Need for Achievement
- The Need for Affiliation
- The Need for Power
He also identified how these needs each vary in strength between different people. Everyone, says McClelland, is motivated by all of these, but to motivate individuals, the manager needs to consider what the primary drivers in each case are.
Achievement
How to recognise the Achievement Motive in a person
- They like working by themselves and making their own decisions
- They like realistic challenges and getting things done
- They do not work well under close supervision
How to deal with them and arouse their Motivation
- Be factual, to the point and straightforward, minimise discussions
- Use a business-like approach, no unproductive encounters or ‘passing the time of day’
- Offer ideas and suggestions and avoid telling them precisely what to do
- Let them play a significant role in making the decision as this will commit them to it
Affiliation
How to recognise the Affiliation Motive in a person
- They seek the company of others and seek to make friends
- They are eager to interact and need to be liked as a person
- They are warm and can appear non-assertive
- They may talk at length about family, friends and outside interests and engage in social ritual
How to deal with them and arouse their motivation
- They respond to warm human qualities, a smile and interest in family, social activities
- Be prepared to spend time developing a warm relationship with them as they will do things for people they like
- They are motivated by friendship and relationships and do things for people they relate to on a personal basis
Power
How to recognise the power motive in a person
- They tend to be firm, direct and competitive, and they try to be persuasive in their dealings
- Thy like to impress and may express their status needs by displaying objects, such as trophies, medals and works of art
- Like to act as a representative and spokesman for other people and to give advice
How to deal with them and arouse their motivation
- Treat them as important people and recognise and refer to their status objects
- They are impressed by manner of dress, the size of the office, club membership, salary, type of car and status achievements of the people they associate with
- Ask their advice and opinion on matters, and listen to their point of view.
- They pay particular attention to the manner of presentation of reports of discussions, they like things to ‘look good’ as well as be good.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Management Skills on October 30th, 2007 | No Comments »
