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Collaborative Delegation
Empowering individuals on your team takes everything up a notch
Recently, I have been contemplating delegation, because I’ve been giving tasks to team members remotely, and some of it has been more command-and-control than my usual style. I have written on the Messy Desk blog about specific strategies for delegation, including an example of delegating to a less-skilled worker with little initiative. Even though I mentioned coaching, mentoring, autonomy, and situational leadership in that article, I really didn’t discuss collaborative methods that can transform an organization.
When we think delegation, we usually think of top-down “This is what you will do.” That kind of delegation is perfectly appropriate in some settings. Better managers soften it with some “please” and “thank you” language, and show true appreciation of the people who do these jobs. The best managers, though, empower team members at the highest possible levels for their position, strengths, and skills.
Empowering individuals on your team takes everything up a notch. It starts with decision-making about what tasks are necessary and what collaborative action is appropriate to the tasks and the team.
There are essentially five levels of collaboration in decision-making:
- The least empowering: The supervisor decides (and, if she’s at all collaborative, she informs her team of what and why as the decision happens).
- The supervisor requests input from workers and takes that feedback into account when making a decision.
- The most collaborative: The supervisor and the workers come to a consensus on the decision.
- The supervisor gives authority to the worker(s) to make the decision, but gives input into the decision.
- The most empowering: The worker(s) makes the decision.
As a manager, you have to know your staff, their levels of competence, their strengths, and their level of initiative. You can use collaboration as a way to increase capacity and help people grow as individuals. If you can…
