Elevate, Delegate, And Scale Through Others
My Field Notes For Effective Team Empowerment
Hello Leaders!
Delegating is a key skill for leaders, one that I have found difficult to master, and a continuous growth area for many, including for myself. Again in 2023, I felt into some of the traps of giving work to my team, but not truly empowering them. As I approach 2024 with more intentionality, I want to be more intentional about how I can scale through my teammates, and increase our collective impact. In this release, I am going to share some of my notes for effective team empowerment.
Before I delve into this exciting topic, let me share an exciting opportunity offered by my friend Alison, a leadership workshop called “Take the Reins: Be the CEO of Your Life”. In her own words:
I built this workshop for a number of reasons, but a significant reason is that I was observing too many good, smart, creative leaders get sick because they had such a lack of balance in their life. Relationships, joy, wellness, personal growth, fun experiences were being pushed aside in favor of the never-ending pressure to work, work, work - more, more, more - to what end? And ultimately - work suffers too! I was certainly a culprit of this too. I want to help people find their fire again, find their joy again! In this experiential, 3-hour workshop, time goes fast (like life)! Attendees experience what it is to be the CEO of their Life by 'taking the reins' and owning their life like it's a corporation. They walk out of the workshop with a Visionary, Inspired, and Structure Plan for the year ahead, and even get some options for Accountability and Support. You can register Here and send your questions to The Lens Leadership here: info@thelensleadership.com
Delegate vs Empowerment
To be honest I don’t really like this word. Somehow ingrained in our language, “delegate” is synonymous to give non-important work to others when you don’t have time to do yourself. Look at the Eisenhower Matrix - a useful tool to prioritize your work - and how Delegate is defined.
I prefer Britannica’s definition:
to give (control, responsibility, authority, etc.) to someone : to trust someone with (a job, duty, etc.)
Delegation is about trusting and empowering your team to deliver, and a way to increase your impact by scaling through your teammates.
Benefits of Delegating
A obvious benefit for you as a leader is to get more time to work on bigger things. More importantly, when done with intentionality, delegation can lead to more innovative solutions, increased team engagement, promote a growth mindset, and develop new leaders.
I often recommend "Turn the Ship Around!" by L. David Marquet, one of my favorite books about leadership, and empowering teams. Marquet emphasizes that "Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves". This underscores the idea that effective delegation involves not just assigning tasks but also instilling a sense of ownership and capability in team members.
Marquet observes, “People who are treated as followers treat others as followers when it’s their turn to lead". When you give opportunities to teammates to grow in their role, and take on more responsibilities, you are building a virtuous circle that cultivates future leaders, as people tend to replicate the leadership styles they experience.
Common Barriers to Delegation
Letting go is hard, even more when you have been a successful Individual Contributor, then moved to a manager role. You may fear that you are losing control on the way things are done, planned, or the quality of deliverables.
The net-net is that you won’t be successful as a leader, and will fail your team if you are not able to delegate effectively. You will have too much on your plate, work insane hour, and potentially will be facing burnout as Ryan Johansen explained recently on the podcast. So you have to accept this reality, recognize the situation when you should delegate, and put in place the mechanisms to empower your team to deliver to acceptable standards.
When to Delegate
Effective empowerment will only be possible when you know your team enough as it is important to match tasks with team members' strengths and development goals. To get there, I like Daryl Hammett's perspective on leadership. He emphasizes that exemplary leaders focus on serving others rather than themselves, and being fully present and authentically engaged with their team's needs. So be curious, learn what motivates them, and also assess what they are capable of delivering.
Of course, let’s be honest, it is not possible to only assign work that will inspire your team. Some tasks are “necessary evils” to run a business, like reporting. When you don’t have time to deliver on those, or you don’t have the skill set but they have, you must delegate effectively.
How to Delegate Effectively
I was inspired by Daniel Pink’s work about team engagement that he captured in his book Drive, and a famous TED Talk. He explained three innate psychological needs – competence (Mastery), Autonomy, and relatedness (Purpose) – and how satisfying these needs leads to motivated, productive, and happy teams. With those principles in mind, be intentional about how you assign work:
Start with Why, the Purpose. Provide context, and help teammates understand how this work accrue to bigger things your team aspire to deliver.
Be a servant leader by opening doors, facilitating access to the necessary tools, data, and resources to be able to deliver (Mastery).
Be crystal clear about expectations. Ensure there's no ambiguity about what's expected: level of quality, who the customers are, deadlines, metrics, etc…
Inspect what you expect with mechanisms. Agree on having regular checkpoints by scheduling follow-up meetings, or other reporting mechanisms.
Be patient and keep your door open. On their path to mastery, team mates may make mistakes. This is the time when you put your coach hat on, and help them grow.
Celebrate achievements and acknowledge hard work.
Always follow up. Summarize what's been agreed.
Going to the next level
In addition to those core steps described previously, I have learned a few things at Amazon that I found extremely valuable. First of all, the concept of mental models. Those models describe how to approach a problem in your team, so that when you are not in the room, and team mates have to make a decision to deliver on the project, they can make it with confidence. This is what Amazon describes as a framework for High-Velocity Decisions.
One mental model is identifying One-Way Door vs Two-Way Door. Two-Way Door decision have limited risk, and can be easily reversed. As opposed to a One-Day Door Decision that have bigger impact, and are much harder to get back from. Give examples to your teams of what each type of decision would look like in your team, and how to approach them.
Escalate quickly is a core element of the Amazonian culture. The definition of escalation is very different from many other companies, where it is seen as a way to bypass someone to raise a problem. At Amazon, escalation are used to identify blocking points, disagreements that are slowing the team down, or could put the project at risk of being stalled. In those case, all parties would write a decision document together to explain the reason for disagreements, and offer potential paths so that leaders can make the final decision to unblock to the situation.
Making decision with 70% of data is another mental model that is very powerful for leaders to give to their teammates to avoid delaying decisions because of a lack of data.
It is your turn to empower your team
True engagement comes from within, as Marquet notes, "You may be able to buy a person’s back with a paycheck, position, power, or fear, but a human being’s genius, passion, loyalty, and tenacious creativity are volunteered only." Delegation should be done in a way that taps into the intrinsic motivation of team members, as described by Daniel Pink.
Don’t forget that this is a journey, keep a growth mindset, reflect on what works, and what does not work, and seek for feedback from your team mates so you can work better together.