Ed C.
Global Talent Management Leader - specialist in learning and leadership strategies
Do you know of a GREAT activity to teach delegation skills to new leaders?
I am working with a group of new leaders and want to lead an experiential activity to reinforce the concepts, benefits and realities of delegating. If you have something, I would be really appreciative.
Answers (21)
Denise D.
Small Business Communications & Online Vintage Seller
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Ummmm, delegate the task to one of the leaders and see what you get.
DD in Philadelphia
Hi,
Do you mean to say that if your working with the professional at your level and how to delegate to them.
Thanks & Regards,
Parag Ahir
You can refer the 5 zones of delegation, I dont recollect the author read it somewhere :Self Explanatory though !!!!
They are as follows....
Tasks which the Manager Must Deal with
Tasks which the Manager Should Deal with
Tasks which the Manager Can Delegate
Tasks which the Manager Should Delegate
Tasks which the Manager Must Delegate
Hope this helps!!
-Mehnaz
Have you used the "In Basket" technique? Give a person an in-basket with 50 to 100 items in it. Most items in the basket can either be done by the person or he/she can delegate it to someone else. You can only handle the item once and must take some action. Don't tell them what they can do but give them an org chart with people who the task could be delegated to. Depending on how many tasks were delegated will give you some idea how good the person is a delegating. Put a time limit on the exercise. Hope this is helpful.
I would say the best way to get delegating underway, is to have a meeting with the participants about the subject.During this meeting brainstorm a list of things that could be delegated to other individuals. Than make an action plan assigning these tasks to the people you want to start delgating- then they make a plan as to which tasks they will delegate and to whom. Have them met with these new task masters, offer assistance if they need any help in completing the task and give them a resonable deadline for completion. Then have the person check with them half way through that time, to see if they need help again. Finally you have them meet again at the task deadline date. At this meeting you ask how it went for them, what else they may need help with to complete tasks in the future. It is somewhat scary if you haven't delgated to others before, but it can be very effective. If the new "task master" had trouble, don't beat them up, help them come up with ideas how they could have been more successful and support them. The delegators will find this is an effective way to free up their "plate" and start building skills in other co-workers- which benefits everyone
Rob C.
Managing Director at The Engineers Network Ltd
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If you want an away day - arrange a corporate team buildig sailing day. If done right the instructors demonstrate that doing things one your own is hard work, confusing, ineffective and prone to mistake. By getting the 'Skipper' to delegate tasks around the boat he/she is able to think, clearly see all that is happening, make quicker decisions, quickly see results and instill pride in watching a team work together under their instruction. Back in the office you have real life reference points to highlight the benefits of delegation.
Lawrence P.
Rapid Retooler and Change Optimizer
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First lesson of consulting: Be creative...talk it out with your partner and you will come up with something...
Yes, I ran a proces where a management team ran a restaurant with the senior team cooking and the middle team serving we did it with the local college it was very effective
Aakanksha A.
Business Solutions Consultant at CHS Inc.
Best Answers in: Career Management (1), Ethics (1)
Delegation, for new leaders, must be projected as a "matter of right attitude" than "Leaders must delegate".
Firstly, its imperative to have the understanding that delegation is for empowering your direct report and adding to his skill set rather than reducing the manager's work load. Secondly, delegation is of tasks and never of the manager's authority and responsibility.
Having established this, one of the ways to delegate is to Mentor the direct report on a series of tasks that feed into the teams larger objectives. Have him/her shadow the leader, understand the steps in execution, be supervised on 1-2 attempts, given feedback and finally delegated to handle the tasks stand alone. This must must complete in the shortest possible mentoring life-cycle - few hours to may be a day or two.
It is not a very mature or formal mentoring that we are aiming at. This is a learning process for both the leader and the team member, because one learns to let go and the other learns to take over. One learns to empower and the other learns to grow. One learns to communicate and the other learns to execute. And they BOTH learn about each other as well as the task at hand.
With workplaces moving towards getting more collaborative and less hierarchical, delegation is a necessary and sensitive skill to develop.
Ed, this is not an exercise, but rather a simple book which hammers the point more clearly than any other.
The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey.
You have probably heard of it, but I wanted to suggest it just in case.
Arnold V.
Expert facilitating self-reliance in how to discover meaning of organisation, profound leadership, corporate culture
Best Answers in: Organizational Development (1)
New leaders – experiential – delegation.
As they are not yet leaders, what is their experience in receiving delegation?
Start with all of them pouring their experiences, try to get them out beating each other in telling the best or the worst. Watch what happens – chaos – disagreement – perceptions or reflections and who will take the lead and how, what does it do. Bossy or helping to get to a dialogue and delegate whatever.
Experiential for sure. Experiential makes only sense if performed by the participants! Do not teach anything, but let them discover. Experience from the feeling. Delegation is not a skill, it is living inclusion. At least that how it should be!
Success.
One trick I have used and it works with just about any experiential group exercise...
Ask for a volunteer to lead the exercise. Then instruct the person that volunteers to delegate managing the task to someone else - a manager. Tell them that as leader they are accountable for the task and must set performance expectations for their manager! As the task unfolds you can keep asking the leader for progress reports!
(There are other variations of this idea like putting the leader in another room and only allowing communication by phone.)
But I have found setting up an exercise in this way can raise awareness of many of the issues we face with respect to delegation. It's fun to watch too!
Drop me a note if you want any more information.
Ed,
The best delegation workshop I ever went to was called MAP - Management Action Planning. It delivers a system for delegating and holding staff accountable, but it does so within the framework of strategy alignment and rolling month by month progress reporting.
Monica M. P.
Expertise: Operational Efficiencies & Margin Enhancements
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I'd use Email as the lesson plan. There is a known method called 4D - Do it! - Delete it! - Delegate it! - Defer it! Focus on the number of emails that come in each day that can be and SHOULD be delegated. Once new leaders understand that their primary goal is to support and develop their staff - delegation becomes easy. It's not so much the lesson you present as the message that you send.
Dear Ed,
As a consultant, I used some of those activities to teach delegating best practices to my clients. I hope it will give you some ideas :
- Objective : identify what can be delegated and cannot.
Game : prepare a list of activities that they usually have to perform and ask them to separate between "I can delegate" / "I should not delegate" (ex : report, write a memo, organize year end party, attend meetings...). The idea is to have them think about their core scope of responsibility, and how much they should delegate and how to control that the task has been performed.
- Objective : identify the golden rules of delegation.
Game : the most effective way to get people to experience delegation is to have them work in team (cooking, sailing, are good examples of team activities, but you can also imagine a business game like working on a bid, or prepare the annual seminar of the company). It is useful that you assign specific roles to some of the participants (delegants and delegatees). Let them play, and save time at the end for global feedback. They should come up with Dos and Donts, which can be summarized in say the 10 gloden rules of delegation.
Regards.
Dear Ed
First need to move there level of thinking and know what they are rellay looking for, accordingly the mould them to reach their goals, am a new person to this but i want to share what i think to your question
Mike M.
LTE Project Manager at WesTower Communications
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Ed:
Here's a fun one I've done that really helps us control freaks feel the power of delegation.
1) You have a topic you want help on.
2) You sit down with two other people.
3) You explain the problem and what help you want from the other two (5 minutes)
4) The other two ask you questions to clarify things (5 minutes)
5) You turn your chair around so your back is to the other two.
6) They brainstorm together out loud about ways to solve your problem or bring up things you should consider (5 minutes).
7) During this process you take notes.
8) You turn around and tell them what you heard.
This forces listening and hearing people talk about your ideas where you can't interrupt them and poison the brainstorming process with your own ideas is humbling and insightful.
Although this is not technically designed to help with delegation, by doing this, you would likely better understand that others have much to bring to the table and also that it is important to confirm that what you communicated was what was heard (and therefore is more likely to be implemented).
Worth trying.
Mike
Wallace J.
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Great answers here! The Best! Activity to teach delegation skills: A Vacation.
Links:
Neil J.
HR Consultant/Psychologist - Talent Management, Change Management, Trouble Shooter, Coach, and Training Designer
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Leave them alone, delegate by example.
Mark R.
Director at Porterhouse Solutions, Cambridge - mark.ridgwell@porterhousesolutions.com
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Hi Ed,
Situational Leaership, Blanchard is by far the most effective leadership / delegation model I've ever used. We rely on this for our business. We've created a quick to absorb model of this (below link).
HTH
Mark
Links:
Melanie D.
Speaker / Author / Communication Alignment: Brand and Culture
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Hi Ed--
Great question and I see you already have a lot of suggestions. Regardless of which approach you take, the biggest hurdle I have noticed is that people do not know how to delegate meaning they do not know the words to make it effective. So make sure you have a portion of your presentation where you go over suggested wording.
The other thing is dealing with the emotional element of trusting someone else to do something knowing they will at least do it differently and there is a chance of them making a mistake.
Hope this helps.
