The Art of Delegation: Maximize

Your Time, Leverage Others, and

Instantly Increase Profits
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 Table of Contents

Page
INTRODUCTION
Empowering & Delegating....................................3

Chapter One: Self-Confidence

Upward Self-Revisions.........................................9 Self-
Confidence.................................................11
10 Ways to Boost your Self-Confidence.................18

Chapter Two: Why you should Delegate

Why Delegate?..................................................24

Chapter Three: Benefits of delegating

Essential Tasks of Team Leaders..........................29 10 Benefits that Result from
Delegation................30

Chapter Four: The Process of Delegating

Prepare to Delegate...........................................37
10 Guidelines for Successful Delegation.................39

Chapter Five: Courage & Delegation

Don’t Let Others Shape your Image......................47
You May Be Delegating Wrong.............................48
The Courage to Empower...................................50
Five Guidelines to Bolster your Courage................53

FINAL THOUGHTS
Delegating is Liberating......................................57
 Your Inner Fortitude..........................................60

Introduction
Empowerment

Empowering & Delegating

Delegating to workplace subordinates involves granting authority
down the ranks and giving those being commissioned the tools, skills and
knowledge to be effective and successful. For proper delegating to occur,
those two steps are inseparable. If you delegate without empowering, i.e.
give someone a task without also giving them the knowledge and means to
accomplish it successfully, you would be merely adding to their stress and
misery. Part of delegating therefore includes coaching and mentoring, but
also the boosting of the empowered person’s self-confidence, courage and
sharing in the significance of the task being handed down.
Subordinate employees can thus come out feeling liberated, able to make
their own choices and in charge of their self-image since they have been
made responsible for something meaningful that others will partake in.

As long as such co-workers perceive that doing their job satisfies

important needs of in-house colleagues or external customers, they'll have a
positive perception of the meaningfulness of their work. Employees must thus
feel like they are able to influence people and events in important ways in
order to feel empowered.

Empowerment goes much farther than that though, in or outside of

the workplace. Inspired people who empower others routinely and without a
fuss are viewed as belonging to the “good people” who have great inner
fortitude and awareness. They are kind, their empathy boundless, and they
invariably become influential mentors.

Empowerment can take the shape of praise, or a nod or smile that

confirms appreciation or even simple acknowledgment. It is necessary when
delegating down as we’ve described, but you don’t need to delegate in order
to empower.

The biggest event in a homeless person’s day could easily be, as an

example, if a seemingly successful person extends his or her arm for a hand
shake, or if they’re merely asked how their day is going, or given a greeting
with a smile.

As you grow, you enlarge your circle of family, friends and

acquaintances. You get involved in hundreds –thousands throughout a life
cycle- of rapport building and new relationships. With that groundswell of
connections, the influence you wield increases, and your choice becomes a
simple one: how will you choose to exercise that influence?

Many people choose to be generous towards others and empower

them as opportunities arise. That becomes a mantra for them, a way of life, a
philosophy and a doctrine, a life companion and a collection of self-
regulating instincts that become etched on their subconscious mind. If you’ve
recently come across someone like that –perhaps a teacher- you will
appreciate that you are truly free when you hug this mantra, when the
difference between right and wrong may be in everyone else’s mind –hardly
ever in yours.

You will notice that we are also describing empathy, again. The
dictionary defines empathy as “the capacity to recognize emotions that are
being experienced by another being.” Empathy is the precursor of love and
compassion. It is the bedrock foundation that sets the tone for empowerment.

When you empower someone you don’t criticize them, and you don’t
judge them. You restrain your natural egotistical tendencies as well as any
vestiges of cynicism that you may have. You put on your genuinely kindest
robes and you find something nice to say to the other person. You let the other
person soak in the best traits that you have garnered, and you do all that
without a fuss.

At the end of the day, your words may be forgotten, and your actions
too, but those with whom you had such encounters will never forget you.

Empowerment is not to be confused with delegating, although some

of the guiding principles are similar for both. You can empower a branch
manager and set them free to do your bidding, only using their own methods.
You don’t have to transfer actual tasks to them as you would if you were
delegating precise assignments. In our fast-paced workplace these days, there
may not be sufficient time for a truly busy manager to sit and bolster
someone’s mindset before giving them a chore. The busy manager may also
not be too familiar with the art of empowerment. The delegating may thus
come without empowerment, unless of course the empowerment preceded the
delegating. For example, the manager holds a team meeting in which his goal
is entirely about empowerment and morale boosting. At the end of the
meeting, the manager may sit with one person and briefly delegate a task.

This delegating process has become more than just an art these days,
and we will be examining what it entails in detail in subsequent parts of this
book.
 Finally, having an empowered group of employees reporting to you
is every leader’s dream. It means they don’t have to be nudged every time
there are important assignments to be undertaken, and you can expect them to
take initiatives and perform in manners consistent with your –or your
company’s- values and policies.

When you have not sufficiently empowered such employees, you

risk ending up spending an unwarranted amount of time micro-managing all
the little steps they need to take. The most enlightened managers create within
their team an environment of empowerment with individual team members
taking ownership of their work and holding themselves accountable.

~ ~ ~

Chapter One
Self-Confidence
 In order to delegate effectively, our premise in this chapter is that
you need to continually take stock of your managerial methods and possess an
abundant hoard of self-confidence and courage.

Upward Self-Revisions
A recent study out of Ohio State University sheds light on the
critical role that self-confidence plays in propelling you on a stellar career
path. Not only is your success in the workplace predicated upon possessing a
healthy dose of self-confidence, but you also need to have that confidence
validated every now and then by your peers in general and your co-workers
and bosses in particular.

The study sets forth the notion that if you can visualize yourself in a
future setting as the successful business person that you want to be, that such
future visions tend to make your goals more attainable. This is called
“upward self-revision”, an exercise in periodically reassessing yourself on
an upward career trajectory, and it is based on your innermost ambitions.
And although such revisions are naturally kept in check by your sense of
practical realities, they nevertheless play a role in at least keeping you from
falling behind in your quest for valuable self-confidence. For those who have
great talent but lack self-confidence in pursuit of a dream, upward self-
revisions can yield useful rewards.

In exploring some personal development traits that affect your

ability to delegate effectively, high among those is the self-confidence that is
necessary to look beyond yourself and to see the many benefits of delegating.
 Self-confidence is like a drip-drip infusion of adrenalin. It makes
you believe in yourself and opens up wonderful capacities for rapport and
relationship building, perception, creative functioning, calibrated venturing,
love, vitality, awareness and more. And the beauty of self-confidence is that
it is not something you are born with, but something, that you can develop and
nurture (more on that in subsequent sections).

Although self-confidence is different from self-esteem, the two

diverge only fractionally. For example, celebrities can be thoroughly
confident when in the limelight but have low self-esteem when by
themselves. A football player can be in the top echelon of stars in his
position and yet go home after the game and feel unworthy. It is also possible
–though unlikely- to think highly of yourself (self-esteem) and yet not have
the confidence to experiment and be creative at the office.

The distinctions between self-confidence and self-esteem are small

enough for us to keep for another day. Instead, we can concentrate on self-
confidence as embodying one of the essential prerequisites for effective
delegating.

Self-Confidence
Self-confidence is the common yardstick by which you evaluate
yourself, the essential ingredient in that evaluation consisting of a feeling of
being competent to deal with whatever comes up.

The incubators for that feeling are your particular skills and your
“fluid” intelligence, i.e. your ability –your alacrity- at interacting well with
your environment, including that environment’s endless amalgam of complex
circumstances, people, unforeseen events and self-inflicted setbacks.
 Self-confidence also has a tinge of “worthiness”, which is more
subjective and therefore more challenging. For example, what are you meant
to be worthy of? Are you meant to be worthy of society’s acceptance,
happiness, having the best family, doing great professionally, a leadership
role in your community, material wellbeing?

Thus self-confidence entails the marks that you give yourself in

terms of your general capabilities as well as society’s validation of such
marks. If you want your self-confidence to remain primed and expedient, you
need to receive society’s pat on the back every now and again. It is a
validation of your smarts and clever adeptness that you may have a great deal
of attachment to.

But you can tell that it’s not as simple as that, for both those
elements –self-confidence and validation- are impacted considerably by your
culture, faith, society’s fads and factors like stereo-typing, stigmas, guilt,
upbringing, environmental and behavioral issues, and more.

For example, your self-confidence is developed within a certain

geography and environment, where your familiarity with your surroundings
plays an important role. You feel you can cope with whatever comes at you
more effectively within the confines of your everyday setting. Thus if you
were to move from the US to India, for example, much of the nurturing of
your abilities and the validations you receive from your American society
may not be of help in India.

Does that mean that your self-confidence depends on where you find
yourself at any given time? Does the same logic apply when you move from
one trade or employer to another? One group of friends to a new one,
younger/older, more/less sophisticated?
 Your environment has a lot to say with regard to how you feel about
yourself, and your environment is not always predictable. It behooves you
therefore to work at boosting your self-confidence (next section), so that you
can wage your battles from a position of strength.

Self-confidence is a delicate –frequently tantalizing- measure of

how you are doing. Too much of it conjures up self-aggrandizement and
arrogance, while too little of it beckons all kinds of problems, including fear,
self-recrimination and different degrees of paralysis.

It is self-confidence which is considered the overarching driver of

success in Western cultures. The reasoning has it that you must absolutely
have a high assessment of yourself in order to get anywhere in a career. For
example, can a sales person with poor self-confidence make cold calls? Can
they be effective at closing on deals? Can a department head with low self-
confidence wield the necessary degree of influence on people in other
departments over whom he or she has no formal authority? Can someone with
questionable self-confidence go up on a stage and make a presentation in
front of 500 people?

From another perspective, no matter how brilliant you are, there are
always people who are more brilliant, and no matter how hard you try, there
are always people who seem to attain the same results with less effort. There
is always someone better looking, taller, richer, more eloquent and a higher-
echelon leader. In fact, when the mood is such that you turn hard on yourself,
it is easy for you to perceive that there is always someone doing better than
you and who makes you feel like a failure, and failure is forbidden when
you’re coasting on self-confidence. Failure, even temporary setbacks, risks
to bring down the house of cards.
 Besides, when you attain self-confidence, you have to maintain it,
which can be a struggle at the best of times. As such, you must keep stroking
your ego and feeling that you are totally amazing, and then you must maintain
that high mental image of yourself, for fear that any misstep could set you
back.

Self-compassion, i.e. self-acceptance or self-love, is a great

addendum to self-confidence. Self-compassion is malleable, easier on the
soul, more amenable to a prompt rebound after a setback and an all-in-all
better key to unlocking your potential. It embodies a fundamental willingness
to treat yourself kindly when in doubt, or having made mistakes. It then
prompts you to slowly work yourself out of the hole –compassionately. In
study after study, research has shown that self-compassion is a great conduit
to a personal sense of wellbeing and happiness.

“Well,” you might say to yourself, “I can’t make cold calls. I never
have.” But the idea is that you accept that of yourself –compassionately- and
determine to practice making cold calls until you improve at it –if, that is, it’s
meant for you to make cold calls. Your self-compassion played a critical role
there in motivating you to do what you had to do, and in further boosting your
confidence factor.

In this line of thinking, self-compassion, as an add-on to self-

confidence, goes beyond achievement and the workplace, to a whole new
realm of goodness and happiness. Self-compassion thus becomes the anchor
for the balance you strive to attain in your life. Since you accept yourself
compassionately, it probably follows that you accept others as well in the
same manner, and that you are an optimist with an outgoing personality, all
necessary ingredients for a well equilibrated approach to life.
 In the same tests that researchers conducted, the people with self-
compassion viewed their weaknesses as areas that they were going to work
on with the view to creating improvements.

There was neither acceptance of their weaknesses nor of their poor

output but, instead, there was resolve, with compassion, to improve. This
determination would lead to greater work quality, rather than to a
deterioration of self-confidence.

10 Ways to Boost your Self-Confidence

1. Bring changes to your thought patterns: The starting point is to
shed any negative self-images and persistent thoughts you may
have accumulated, irrespective of their origin. With total
resolve, you have to view this ridding yourself of all negativity
as a foundational base from which self-confidence can rise. If
you are to believe that you are not worthy, not intelligent
enough, and that you can never amount to much, then that will
naturally become a self-prophecy.

2. Bring changes to your daily habits: every negative facet that

you encounter about yourself has to be dealt with. For example,
if you are tentative and hesitant when you speak, isolate that
weakness, examine it, compare it to your observations of how
other people speak, and deal with it by resolving to make a
conscious effort to improve. Similarly, other characteristics of
your feelings, personality, skills, performance at work and
 interaction with people have to be examined and worked at.

3. Adopt “fitness for life”: with exercise and fitness, you (and
particularly your skin) will acquire a new glow that points at
good health and athleticism, highly regarded traits and magnets
for your friends and co-workers. Another immediate benefit
from making those lifestyle adaptations is that you acquire an
athletic posture, a great part of how you want to be perceived.
Learn to always walk without a slouch and with your head held
high. Learn to move about naturally like that, so that your
personal gait will come effortlessly to you when in company.

4. Work on your overall appearance: we often reflect on how a 20-

minute run can improve how you feel about yourself, but so can
good grooming and looking after your appearance generally,
particularly in the choice of clothes that you wear. If you’re not
much good as a style consultant, seek a relative or friend whose
taste you always liked and ask them simply to help you work on
your selection of clothes. Soon you will start looking at yourself
in the mirror and liking what you see, which helps boost your
self-confidence.

5. Self-confidence stems from self-love: teach yourself to stand

tall inside your mind, and let that superior love fill you up with a
positive outlook. Think of yourself as coming from the same
source as all the people for whom you have high regard. Life
shaped you a little differently up to this point in time, and you
can shape yourself any way you want from this point on –as long
 as you embrace your self-compassion and keep your focus on
the positive.

Your past does not determine your future, and your future starts
right now. In addition, your newly found self-confidence will be
acknowledged by those around you, and they will start treating
you with more admiration. You will have embarked on a journey
that will take you all the way to wherever you aspire to go.

6. Externalize and offer your services: we get too cooped up in our

little world, preoccupied with the zillion thought patterns that
cross our minds continually, usually just gibberish that we
somehow get entangled with. So break that pattern and bust out
to see “what else there is” out there. One of the good ways to
keep the mind fresh is to step outside of your comfort zone and
go find out if there is anyone that you could help today. In the
workplace, there are endless ways you could be of help to
someone, and your reward will always be unquestionably
fulfilling.

7. Be mindful of how you communicate: try to listen intently to one

or two inspirational speakers (their videos are easily
accessible). Also try to view and listen to a TED-speaker (there
are nearly 2000 TED-speakers on many diverse subjects, the
common denominator between them being the excellence of the
speakers). “TED-talks” (they can be googled like that) are
remarkably smart, incisive, and the presentation is usually
amazing. The point is that you would benefit from concentrating
 on your listening habits and how you speak, i.e. your voice, the
clarity of your thoughts, and the endless mannerisms that your
body language projects when you’re in conversation. In each
case, think of someone you admire, and try to examine why they
do something or other better than you.

8. Acknowledge and compliment others: we discussed the

validation needed from others in order to reinforce one’s self-
confidence, but bestowing someone else with a compliment, or
even simply acknowledging them with eye contact and a smile, is
itself rewarding. To be self-confident, yet humble and generous
at heart, is a worthy goal.

9. Work at being the best in your field: you may not be 6’4” or
have a powerhouse head of hair, but you certainly can get
known to be good –an authority- in what you do. Your expertise,
together with your other faculties, will again act as a magnate
both in the office as well as more generally in life. And you will
also be inclined to tutor and mentor others which is helpful as
well.

10. Keep your stress under control: stress is a malignant force that
can cause significant damage to your mental and physical
wellbeing. Fight it with the healthy lifestyle that was above
described, but also fight it by being outgoing, networking with
new people, socializing with friends whenever you can and
taking up a stress-relief modality such as visualization, yoga,
 meditation, breathing and other.

~ ~ ~

Chapter two
Why you should Delegate

Why delegate?
Many startup entrepreneurs embark on their ventures by personally
taking on the hundreds of tasks that come up around the office on a daily
basis. They cannot afford to do it any other way, for they simply don’t have
the staff, and they can achieve Herculean miracles in this manner –as long as
the volume of business remains relatively small.

It’s a different story however when their business starts growing,

and when they can afford to start adding staff. If they continue with their habit
of doing everything themselves, they will sooner or later hit a wall of
frustration and helplessness. The smarter entrepreneurs will not waste time
before they start building one or more teams comprising team members who
can be taught to undertake a whole slew of functions. Many tasks and
business management responsibilities can thus be delegated, enabling the
boss to pursue the business’s higher objectives.

Naturally, smart executives can manifest their savvy in many ways,

although one of those critical methods is to learn and practice effective
delegating. As a manager, the function of delegating itself is complex and
demanding of your best effort. You might easily experience that despite
delegating a task as best as you know how, you still face frustrations. Either
the task ends up not being done completely or on time, or the staff members
you delegated to keep coming back with a string of questions and displaying
confusion. When that happens, you may wish that you’d done the task yourself
and have been spared the aggravations.

As successful startup entrepreneurs grow, they quickly learn to let

go of a plurality of their tasks. They learn that they can only rise up by
delegating down. And when they communicate to their subordinates that the
destiny of the organization is in their hands, they are able to build motivated
teams to take on responsibilities in an accountable environment.

Managers, more so than the higher up executives, frequently feel

loath to hand over important tasks to team members. They commonly
embrace the illusion of believing that they –and only they- can accomplish
something in the way that it should be done. To corroborate their case, they
turn perfectionist, and when that happens it’s easy enough to find fault with
whatever someone else does. They point at tiny details that were
imperceptibly “sub-standard”, and from that they make the case that the entire
chore that was delegated was a failure –and not to be repeated.

Such managers may simply not know how to delegate effectively.

They never bothered to teach themselves, and no one ever taught or mentored
them, on the art of delegating. They harbor old fashioned notions that become
significant impediments to successful management. Here are a few examples
of their mindset:

It’s a lot less complicated and faster to just go ahead and do the
chores myself
I am convinced that my bosses want me to do things myself
I don’t mind doing things myself; in fact it keeps me busy, and I
enjoy it
I don’t have the time to teach someone in one sitting everything I
learned over years about a particular task
What are the merits of handing over a task to someone else if I
then have to sit and correct what they’ve done over and over
again?
So what if I have to work long hours and weekends to stay on
top of everything? I am prepared to do that, and my bosses like
that in me
It would seem like I would be asking for help, and that’s not like
me –I prefer to rely on myself rather than put my fate in the
hands of others
And the ultimate reason is the fear that those to whom I delegate
would become equally proficient as me and eventually take my
job

For a start, it’s easy to recognize that one person –any person- can
quickly become a bottleneck and major drain on the organization if they
embrace a mindset like that. Simply put, you would be standing in the way of
progress if you choose to burn yourself out by sinking into a sea of chores
and details. Leaders lead, and managers manage, so learn to assume your
position as leader of an effective team, and share the workload.
 ~ ~ ~

Chapter Three
Benefits of Delegating

Essential Tasks of Team Leaders

One of the essential tasks of team leaders is to obtain results from
their team members. If they don’t, they might as well be playing tennis with
one hand tied behind their back.
 And yet many managers struggle with the idea of delegation, or they
may have gotten into their positions of leadership without any background in
delegating. For example, a great sales person is catapulted into the position
of sales manager, the assumption being that if he excelled at sales, he would
do equally well as a team leader –a proposition that is highly suspect. He
might have the right work ethic and be otherwise well qualified, but in sales
he would have spent his entire career fending for himself, with no team
members to look after. If one is to succeed as a team leader and produce
results, getting an education in the art of delegation is an absolute must.

Here is why:

10 Benefits that
Result from Delegating
1. Your time: delegating tasks is liberating in its nature. As you
cross off chores from your “to do” list, you end up with
increased opportunities to pursue the strategic thinking that
you never had the time for before. This would include such
essential functions as planning, organizing and providing
additional team support to your bosses. Imagine how much
more you could achieve if you could lighten up your workload,
and imagine the added benefits you could bring to your team
and your organization if you weren’t tied up every day in tasks
that could be accomplished by others.

2. Your crew: when you empower one or more of your team

members, you unlock their pent up abilities and hidden talents.
In delegating, you are in essence assigning to them tasks and
 goals that up to then had been beyond their job description.
You would be asking them to extend themselves and give you
efforts that had not been a part of their routine duties. You
would share in your own learning and experience, thus
enhancing their skillsets, and you would make them
accountable, thus elevating their self-esteem.

3. Empowerment: nothing like empowerment to see a favorable

transformation among team members. The act of delegation
entails indirectly telling a subordinate employee that you
respect their ability to learn and perform satisfactorily, and
that you trust them to act judiciously and in the best interest of
the company. Enabled like that, you get from them a greater
level of commitment to the task on hand, to the company, and
to their team leader. Add to that the fact that teaching
subordinates more about the company and its products puts
subordinates ever closer to having direct contact with higher-
ups in the company as well as outside customers. This
inevitably results in team members taking ownership of what
they’ve been asked to do, when nothing works better than
team members striving to improve customer satisfaction.

4. Your leadership: for team members to have utmost respect for

you, you would need to sharpen such traits as integrity, clarity
of thought and voice, and a sense of fair play and empathy for
your co-workers –all pillars of leadership. This will set you on
your path to wielding influence beyond the workplace. Whether
you’re proficient at it or not, delegation at the onset reinforces
 in you how to develop and manage your team more efficiently.
This learning is a core byproduct of managing delegation
artfully, and the rewards that ensue become incentives that
propel you towards more refinement in delegation. A good
example is the surprise that you will promptly experience at
the speed with which your team rises to the occasion, and team
productivity shoots up.

5. New ways of doing things: When you assign a task to someone

else and make sure that they are equipped to successfully
achieving it, it invariably brings to light new ways of doing it,
ways that you’d been following for several years. Delegation
thus gets you outside of your habitual methods when your team
member gets a shot at discovering an innovation, new twist or
shortcut to your old process.

6. Delegation benefits your organization: when the environment

at work is one of trust, and employee morale is high, and when
everyone is aware of the productivity factor and working
towards greater efficiencies, the organization is the ultimate
benefactor. A culture of creativity and enthusiasm fosters team
cohesion, teamwork and ingenuity. Employees are less likely to
leave the organization, and the organization ends up with
better trained employees and better honed skills.

7. Your chance to focus: chances are you’ve never put yourself

through the test –until you’ve started to delegate. Your own
pent up abilities finally get a chance to flourish when, that is,
 you get a break from being swamped with work, and you can
“smell the roses”. You can finally concentrate on what you’re
really good at, particularly on being a great team leader. Your
team can now be a lot more productive, but your own
contribution may also reach heights that may be unexpected.
Given the opportunity to focus and carry the good thoughts
forward in newly liberated strategic thinking, you may even
begin to discover what you are capable of.

8. Your skills: delegation is a process that involves taking several

steps with your selected team members. Because you don’t
want to lose their time or yours, you need to do extensive
planning. You need to first know precisely who among your
team members you want to assign a task or project to. In view
of some employees’ skillsets, this might be an easy task, but if,
on the other hand, you have never been practiced at
meaningful delegating in the past, then it’s time to assess and
be selective. You have to explain with clarity what the task
involves, how it has been done in the past, and whatever
possible obstacles might be encountered. You have to ensure
that your team member is assimilating all that you are saying,
and that they comprehend the review points you have designed.
In this process, you have sharpened your communication skills,
planning, and employee assessment faculty.

9. New horizons for the team: the team eventually begins to

function solidly as one entity while at the same time offering
you a variety of newly developed skills. The talent pool has
 undergone significant expansion, including specializations that
did not previously exist. These might be in software,
copywriting, marketing, accounting, project management,
supply chains, and many other fields. You therefore now have
the potential of undertaking new activities that were
previously out of reach, with a newly acquired competitive
edge.

10. Your future is promising: if you’ve managed to transform your

unit into a successful machine, you’re probably also capable of
doing the same at the level of a larger unit, or of the company
itself, and astute delegating was at the heart of your
accomplishments. You now have leverage in any direction, even
pathways that had previously been out of question for your
team. What you did, perhaps on a small scale within your team,
is the same as you might be asked to do in a more senior
position in your company.

~ ~ ~

Chapter Four
The Process of Delegation
Prepare to Delegate
If you’re suddenly embarking on delegation, it’s usually because you
and your team have been in a rut, your performance dull and unproductive.
You blame yourself or, worse, your supervisors are showing signs of
frustration, and action is clearly warranted.

But it’s not easy, and the barriers to effective delegation are
numerous. For starters, you have to slow your operation down sufficiently to
give you time to think strategically and to create a master plan. Your plan
would set objectives and standards and would call for assessing the specific
capabilities of your employees and developing interim review points and
achievement metrics that your team members can understand. A
comprehensive plan would also have you involving your team members in
the delegation process and informing other team members when you start
delegating to one or two employees.

Above all, you have to decide on what you want to delegate, and it
is recommended in that context that you take baby steps, assigning the easier
tasks first. Don’t forget, together with your subordinates, you will be on a
learning curve, so you want to take steps that don’t bring the roof down if
people –including you- make mistakes.

From the beginning though, delegate those recurring activities that

will be part of your subordinate’s future responsibility. Thus in essence you
are beginning to match individual talent with long term activities. In this
respect, your own activities might be kept for functions like reviews,
coaching, mentoring and helping out with the more complex or sensitive
issues, such as people’s wages and interactions with the higher-ups.
Here are more details about the delegation process:

10 Guidelines for Successful Delegation

1. The right frame of mind: you’ve selected a few easy chores of the
repetitive kind, and you have established in your mind who you want to
delegate them to. It’s time now to shed the thinking that only you can get
something done correctly. On the contrary, think that someone else might
do an even better job on a specific task. In fact, in your new frame of
mind you are going to do everything within your power to get each
subordinate perform at your level or better. Just enjoy your newly found
freedom from all those boring tasks that you’ll now unload.

2. Be decisive and firm: in the past, when team members came to you
offering their help, you turned them down. It’s time now that you wield
your influence and take control, mostly by being firm, but also by being
adequately prepared. You can’t dump something that is ill conceived on
a subordinate and hope that they’ll put their heart to it and produce
worthy results. Having made plans that involve specific subordinates,
go and get them, one by one, without giving them too much of an option.
Delegating requires the team’s collaboration, so be the leader that can
get that going without too much trouble. If you’re uncomfortable asking
for someone’s cooperation and help, then you have to get over it.
Without asking you won’t get, and you would remain mired with a
debilitating workload.

3. Build a culture of trust: Some managers feel that they can be

kinder with their employees –give them less work. In fact, by
delegating, you are teaching tasks that you’ve been doing for a long
time, and you’re mentoring your subordinates and showing them all the
intricate ways that you developed for doing something or other in a
more efficient way. You are thus giving them new skills, so why would
you feel inadequate at loading them with all the chores that you think
they can accomplish with good results. The issue of trust has to be the
cornerstone of your handling of the delegation process. You have to
trust –and verify- that they give you their best effort, and they have to
trust that you are not just delegating without senselessly.

4. Be clear when delegating: explain, in as clear a manner as you

can, exactly what you want your subordinates to do, and especially the
responsibilities that you are empowering them with. Don’t give up on
this critical step until you are certain that you’ve been understood, and
that they’ve accepted your terms. Try to strike the perfect balance
between giving so much detail that your helper feels insulted and not
giving enough for your helper to get a good grasp of your assignment.

5. Delegate the task, not your mindset: keep your motives and
philosophy to yourself early in the delegating process, and when
passing on a task, set the performance standards for it, i.e. your
expectations in terms of the level of excellence that your subordinate
should deliver. Explain your objectives behind the chore, ensuring that
they are attainable, and that your employee understands how you will
be evaluating results. In addition, be sure to transfer to your employee
all the authority and tools that they will need in their new
responsibilities. At times this authority might entail paying out of
company funds, consulting with others within or outside of the team,
and speaking for or negotiating on behalf of the team or the company.

6. Fight the temptation to micro-manage: You would need to show

your subordinate how to do the task, though you would want to stay
clear of being a “control-freak”. Leave the employee some room for
discovery, telling them they can do it in their own way if they prefer, as
long that the task is done on time and up to set standards. If that doesn’t
go well for you, or if the employee gets stuck, keep in mind that you
will have occasion to check on progress at key intervals. Instead of
stifling their effort with frustrating play-by-play descriptions, give your
subordinates the latitude to be creative and experiment, and enjoy your
own fewer “to do” chores and more free time.

7. Train, mentor and coach: a team member may take some time and
effort to train, but remember, this is a long term investment for you and
your company. You also have to keep in mind that although you may
have done a chore hundreds of times in the past, your team helpers have
not. It is all new to them, and it behooves you to show patience and give
them the necessary training and mentoring to gain courage and self-
confidence. Walk them through the process and be available to field
their questions. Also, a poorly trained helper will make mistakes that
will require you to spend time to make frustrating adjustments. The rule
of thumb is simple: do proper training and follow-up mentoring so that
they get it right the early in the game.

8. Monitor the delegated tasks closely: you know well that there
will be mistakes, and that difficulties will crop up as your helpers make
progress. You would want to have backup plans, particularly in regard
to the consequences of not meeting deadlines or missing out on
milestones. The best thing you can do is put out little fires before they
become big fires. You would thus want to monitor inexperienced or
new team members more so than others. On the positive side, those
“first-round” helpers will in time train and monitor their own helpers,
thus leaving you twice removed, more or less, from tedious tasks.

9. Nurture the team’s bond with you: as team leader, the team is
your top asset, and if your team is known for its efficiency and includes
creative and individuals with great training, then your asset is valued
all the more in the company. As a leader, you know how much more you
can get from your team if they think highly of you and respect your
judgment.

One of the most famous football coaches, Bill Parcells, used to hold
friendly one-on-one meetings with team members, asking them for their
input, and just making them talk about themselves. He would also invite
team members to play pick-up basketball in a relaxed setting where
players could view him as a teammate rather than the hard-nosed coach
from New York. At first people feared him, but soon enough they ended
up revering him.
10. Time for leadership: now is the time to show your leadership:
when you start delegating, even if only to one person initially, you put
yourself on the spot. To rise to the occasion, you need to summon all the
virtues of leadership that are essential. For example, the virtue of
empathy will tell you to be kind and supportive to your subordinate and
to praise them individually as well as publicly with other relevant
company staff. The virtue of clarity of thought and voice is evident: you
must be well understood. Other traits, such as courage, integrity,
passion and awareness, are all characteristics in your persona that will
be admired if available for all to see. Leading by example has never
been more appropriate, for your subordinate will hardly work harder
for you if they witness behaviors in you that are less than worthy of a
leader. Even in a modest way, it would help if your subordinates
aspired to emulate you.

~ ~ ~
 Chapter Five
Courage & Delegation

Don’t let others Shape your Image

Your friends may want you to wear all your emotions on your
sleeves, i.e. to show and never suppress your emotions. Feelings that you
keep to yourself do not necessarily resonate well with your friends.

Take President Obama for instance: he can be a fiery volcano on the

inside, a genuinely passionate man, but because he is “cool” on the outside,
people are left to ponder what he’s really like. His public relations people
thus have to exert additional time and effort to portray him as a gentle and
compassionate leader.

In fact, it is not common to find politicians who are outwardly

dispassionate. Most politicians who make it on the public stage are typically
enthusiastic, backslapping baby kissers who never miss an occasion to show
their faces in front of media cameras.

Outward cool is not perceived in terms of “thoughtful” or

“thorough”, but it is more likely depicted as detached, arrogant or aloof –
each one of those with its own set of negative connotations. Thus emotional
control and inner courage, traits that have been celebrated in many parts of
the globe for thousands of years, seem to have become misunderstood and
badly cast in our neck of the woods.

You have to acknowledge though that these norms are not the same
in many European or Asian countries, and they are definitely not the same in
the military where “cool” is a necessary virtue. You don’t get to see a
general in sniffles and tears very often.

You May be Delegating Wrong

You may be doing things wrong if, having worked hard yourself to
attain your status and position, and being accustomed to doing
things yourself, you now find it difficult to trust and delegate. Your
good old self-control and work habits are embedded deeply in
your persona, and when there is an important task that needs to be
done, you still resort to doing it yourself.

You may be dumping an assignment on a subordinate and quietly

hoping that they can’t do it right, thus justifying you to take the
assignment back and doing it yourself.

You may be delegating a task and getting impatient in the middle of

seeing it to fruition. You thus take back the task leaving the
subordinate confused and dejected.

Skillful delegation requires empowerment, which in turn requires

that you educate your subordinate and give them a proper
education on what is required. Empowerment requires that you
also motivate your subordinates and assist them wholeheartedly to
 succeed.

You may be selecting the wrong person for any given task. Your
subordinates cannot possible do well for you if the material you
hand down to them is beyond their knowhow and capabilities.

The Courage to Empower

Your courage is a reflection of the fortress inside of you. Aristotle
believed courage to be the most important quality in a man. “Courage is the
first of human virtues because it makes all others possible." What you can
assume he meant is that if you were filled with courage, you would have the
guts to exhibit love, compassion and the other virtues –even to appear cool
on the outside, if that enhances your resolve and pathway to enlightenment.

Your inner fabric –your courage- is the force that emanates from the
sum-total of all your virtues, and it becomes the cornerstone virtue that
enables you to face fear and make way for your individual personality to
blossom.

You’ve heard someone being described as having “a backbone like

a ramrod and a spine of steel”. Well, if you carefully nurture your sense of
moral integrity, if you hug the high ground and harness your humanity, your
generosity and the other virtues you aspire to live by, then you too could have
a backbone like a ramrod and a spine of steel.

It has to be said that half measures are entirely acceptable when

embarking on your journey. In other words, you can’t hope to genuinely
assimilate virtues like that in one swoop. Rather, baby steps are to be
encouraged, feeling your way as you move forward. It is not a matter of
speed or efficiency but rather one of intellectual conviction and awareness.

You can experience and live by the high moral ground in steps: you
first intuitively feel and know what course of action you need to take –
seeking purpose- and then your intellect consolidates your feelings. A noble
or generous deed is first conceived intuitively –unconsciously- and then your
brain highlights what you do and quietly rewards you.

That sequence then becomes one that is subconsciously appealing to

you, with the reward at the end. Your acquired nobility and open love
become enshrined and part of your nature. And so the story goes, acquiring
your other virtues first by intuitively knowing –instinctively- what the right
course of action is, and then taking it without a second thought.

In that process, it is you –not others- who chooses the shapes and
colors of your image. You get bolder as your self-confidence rises, and as
courageous stands become second nature to you.

When it thus comes to delegating to team members in earnest, let

your courage guide you towards the better you, the magnanimous,
compassionate and resilient you. Have the courage and awareness to know
that this will not detract from the most efficient processes or best practices.
The more courage you have, the more empowerment you become capable of,
and the more benefits accrue to your team members.

But how, apart from your other virtues, do you bolster your courage?

Five Guidelines to Bolster Your Courage

1. Courage and fear go hand-in-hand: you ought not to confuse
the concept of courage with that of recklessness. Reckless men
take unnecessary risks, or ill-calculated risks, whereas “human
beings with spines of steel” know how to strike a balance
between irrational fear and foolhardiness.

A man of courage knows spontaneously what ought to be feared.

He withstands his fear with confidence, leaning on his sense of
honor, nobility and other pillars of morality.

2. On maintaining a positive mindset: visualizations (aka

imagery) have been found to be extremely useful as aids to
staying positive and coming out ahead at important crossroads.

Athletes who practiced positive imagery and loud affirmations

before a contest surpassed others who didn’t. “Positive”
translates to hope, optimistic, forward looking and other
feelings that protect us from sadness, depression and other
negative feelings.

You can visualize in your brain any image that strikes you as
honorable, and gutsy, e.g. that of your favorite athlete, or even a
historical hero of yours such as General Patton or Churchill.
You can then turn that into a strong, sometimes loud, affirmation,
letting your mind pull you up and turn you into “steel”.

3. Acknowledging your fears: your shortcomings foster anxieties,

and denial breeds fear. It therefore behooves you to learn to live
 with those shortcomings that you can do nothing about –physical
issues for example, disorders and the like. The sooner you adopt
an authentic lifestyle without self-inflicted obstacles, the faster
you can be on our way, free of artificial anxieties.

4. Exposing yourself to vulnerabilities: it is thought that your

self-assessment mechanisms, notably your self-esteem, protect
you from your own vulnerabilities. You are instinctively
worried that people should see you for who you really are. The
remedy is to take the fear out of your vulnerabilities by exposing
willfully and persistently that which you always wanted to hide.
For example, someone who is short should bring it out into the
open, perhaps by joking about it.

5. Stress is a fierce enemy: stress is not only tiresome for the

mind, but it also diminishes the capabilities of your immune
system to fight back against toxins, infections, weariness and
fatigue. You need to look out for psychological stress, such as in
long-harbored guilt feelings or anger against parents or others,
or for behavioral stress, such as when you are stigmatized or
unfairly passed over at work. You know well what the answer
to stress is: good nutrition, plenty of sleep, remaining well
hydrated, and daily exercise. You shouldn’t be surprised that
this recipe of clean and active living works wonderfully for
your sense of courage.

~ ~ ~
 Final Thoughts

Delegating is Liberating
We saw how delegating requires granting authority down the ranks
and giving those being delegated the tools, skills and knowledge to be
effective and successful. For proper delegating to occur, we also described
those two steps as being inseparable. Delegating without empowering is a
recipe for failure and anxiety, and part of delegating therefore includes
coaching and mentoring, but also the boosting of the empowered person’s
courage and confidence. Subordinate employees can thus come out feeling
liberated and able to look forward with newly gained optimism.

As for managers, the attractive part of delegation is how much time

it saves you, and how much opportunity it gives you to shine in pursuit of
more demanding areas that are of prime importance to the team as well as the
company. The conclusion therefore is clear: delegating liberates all
within the team and, when successful, it creates a culture of collaboration
and a sense of being more productive.

Delegation gets you to work more closely with team members, and it
is thus a big motivation force in the workplace. When done consistently,
delegation grooms people who can replace you altogether. If you are self-
confident enough to be comfortable with that prospect, then you are well
suited to this process that empowers others.

In this instance, when considering the process of delegation,

perfectionists find it extremely difficult to let go of the reins, and when they
do, they pick endlessly at the result. They can’t let go of even the most trivial
chores, and the best advice for that type of manager is to let go of that
mindset first, and only then to attempt to delegate.

You are first challenged by the pick you make from among your
subordinates in order to delegate a task. If you are timid, you might be
swayed by the imagined cry from your helper that would be saying: “Why
me?” Naturally, it is important to overcome those kinds of sensitivities and
instead explain to the selected subordinate the benefits that they would get
from learning additional skills.

Your next hurdle would be in selecting a specific task. Every time

you think of one, your mind would also be telling you that it doesn’t make
sense to let go of that task since “no one can do it better than me”. Or, “I
don’t have time to teach someone on this occasion, so I better do it myself”.

Unless you are entirely decisive, your team members will detect
your trepidations. You cannot approach someone out of the blue to ask them
to do something for you that they’ve never done before when your words and
body language are saying opposing things. You have to be strong, well
prepared and convincing, including having freed yourself sufficiently to do a
good job introducing your employee to the task to be delegated.

Great leaders empower others routinely and without a fuss. They are
viewed as belonging to the “good people” who have great inner fortitude and
awareness. They are kind, their empathy boundless, and they invariably
become influential mentors. We mentioned the example of the homeless
person deriving great pleasure at times from a mere smile or friendly eye
contact. If you are to mold yourself into a leadership role, kindness towards
others would be one of your most important traits.

Your Inner Fortitude

We also discussed the role of courage and self-confidence in the
delegation and empowerment process. Being self-confident is a function of
how you view your skills in dealing with whatever circumstances that come
your way. This entails how you grade your overall capabilities, although you
would also need validation for that self-assessment from society in general
and your peers in particular.

In this context you can see the significance of validating your own
workers’ accomplishments in the workplace. They need you to be generous
with your praise and to provide the timely pat on the back. Without that, their
self-confidence might wane. That is another mark of a good leader, namely to
always be aware and sensitive to his followers’ feelings.
 We then provided 10 guidelines for enhancing your self-confidence.
They are all important and fairly easy to encapsulate into a lifestyle. The fifth
guideline we provided is of special importance. It highlights the value of
self-love, and it is especially important because many other methods and
traits can come out of self-love.

We also listed 10 benefits that accrue from delegating. Guideline

number 4, about leadership, stands out, but only for the following reason:
empowering others is part of a leader’s journey, and when you delegate, you
are in effect exercising many of the roles that a leader assumes. For example,
you strive to boost employee morale, you speak in terms of positive things
and convey hope and optimism, and you think and speak clearly.

If you’re going to delegate, you had better delegate the right way.
You can’t just dump an assignment on an employee and simply hope that they
find their way. That would be a recipe for eventual stress and frustration.

Furthermore, you can’t just get impatient at a time when your

delegated task is being accomplished. Everyone knows that you could have
done it in faster time, but you need to give your delegated employee a full
and fair chance to get it done, or at least to come and ask you for help.

Finally, when it comes to your courage, keep Aristotle’s words in

mind as an inspiration: “Courage is the first of human virtues because it
makes all others possible." What you can assume from those words is that if
you were filled with courage, you would have the guts to exhibit love,
compassion and the other virtues –even to appear cool on the outside, if that
enhances your resolve and pathway to enlightenment.

Courage therefore ranks with empathy in that they are both

marvelous qualities from which overall goodness emanates.
~ ~ ~