Real Skills for E&C Professionals: delegating & empowering our E&C Team ✨

In our Real Skills Series, we explore what we traditionally call "soft skills". 

Ranging from communication to leadership to problem solving to creativity and governing how we interact with teams, we don't really learn them at school or university. 

And yet, no matter how savvy we are technically, these skills can make or break our success as a human working with other humans in any organization. Even though they are harder to measure and quantify, we definitely know when they are not there and it is usually not a very pleasant experience. I would like to refer to them as "Real Skills".

In today’s blog post, we will try to explore the critical skill of delegating within our team. In a later blog post, we’ll explore the even more complex ability to delegate within the organization and influence other teams to help our E&C agenda.

What is delegation about?

“Delegation refers to the transfer of responsibility for specific tasks from one person to another. From a management perspective, delegation occurs when a manager assigns specific tasks to their employees. By delegating those tasks to team members, managers free up time to focus on higher-value activities while also keeping employees engaged with greater autonomy.” (Harvard Business School online - Lauren Landry - HOW TO DELEGATE EFFECTIVELY: 9 TIPS FOR MANAGERS).

Specifically, I find that delegation is one of the keys, along with trust, to empower our team members to shine their best selves. When delegation works well, teams function harmoniously. On the other hand, teams where delegation is broken suffer from overwork, stress, and horror by micromanagement.

I know how hard it can be to really delegate. In my opinion, the act of delegating (and trusting) takes us to our deepest fears and even touches upon our sense of self worth. One may not admit it, but one may think things along the lines of:

• “It’s faster if I just do it.”
• “Only I can do this (because I would like to think that I am irreplaceable)...” 
• “Will I shine as well if other team members do the work?”
• “Will I still know what’s going on for this critical topic?”
• “Will that person try to steal my position or responsibility? Will I be backstabbed?”
• “The team is already overworked, can I ask them to take this project on top?”

Before we jump into the benefits of effective delegation and empowerment, let us clear the air and remind ourselves:

• Getting something done does not mean doing it ourselves.
• The work we produce is not who we are and should not define our sense of self worth. It is just work. 
• No one is irreplaceable in an organization. If this is the case, it’s dysfunctional and not a healthy business. We want to be irreplaceable for our loved ones, families and friends. Not for our companies. We do need to get rid of all that emotional attachment and weirdly placed loyalty: it’s a job, period. We are hired to deliver a service, give our time and expertise. The companies we work for feel the same way. No one will remember our emotional attachment when we are gone. Let’s focus rather on the service performance, get rid of the emotional attachment and we’ll perform way better.
• Most of our fears are about ourselves and have nothing to do with others. The others just happen to trigger us but it all happens within ourselves. Let’s work on becoming familiar with our fears. Why do I feel that way? Why do I feel threatened? What happens if I screw up?  What if I lose my job? What if I get demoted? Well, we’ll most probably figure it out when it comes. I am not saying that it will be easy, but this has nothing to do with your team members or colleagues and how we should work together effectively as a team.
• Making our team and colleagues shine will only make us shine brighter. We will see them develop from month to month and we will feel so proud!

Delegating is (not only) absolutely critical for our success 

We just cannot do it alone. It takes a village. And, without surprise, companies chaired by good delegators perform better: a Gallup study has found that CEOs with high delegator talent run companies which generate 33% revenue more than others!

So, we need to delegate well in our teams. In our Ethics & Compliance team remit, it is the same. We never have enough resources. We need to make the most out of what we have, with the goal to impact our organizations effectively and craft a culture of integrity. Ethics is everyone’s problem: how can we make sure that everyone in the organization takes its fair share? 

In today’s article, we’ll first focus on delegating within our team. In a later article, we will explore the magic of delegation across the organization and the complexities of enabling other teams to help us with business integrity. Stay tuned!

Delegating is (also) key for motivation & growth of our teams

In a TED Talk examining incentives and rewards, Dan Pink shows that financial and other old school incentives (sticks and carrots) are completely outdated and, worse, ineffective, when it comes to smart value added work. 

His analysis shows that businesses need to focus on three completely different things to incentivize people to perform their best:

“Autonomy, mastery and purpose:

• Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives. 

• Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters. 

• Purpose: the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. 
• These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses” (Ted Talk - Dan Pink - the puzzle of motivation).

What does this have to do with delegation? Well, autonomy is a key component for the receiving end of delegation! By delegating, we are empowering our teams with autonomy.

Concrete, hands-on experience is actually key to really learning and developing. Have you heard about the 70:20:10 framework?

According to this framework:

• 70% of our learning comes from experiencing, experimenting and reflecting on our actions;
• 20% of our learning comes from our interactions with others, collaboration and feedback;
• 10% of our learning comes from formal learning, such as courses and continuous education.

It’s a virtuous circle: the more we empower our teams with new things, the more they will learn and the better they will perform. The more we develop their mastery and autonomy.

I’ll take a real life example that was particularly striking to me: I started my career in a big law firm where whatever an associate attorney would write would be reviewed by the counsel and also most times by the partner. What did this mean for me? Intellectual comfiness: I knew that there were two levels who would catch my potential mistakes, or review my output to make it even better. 

When I moved in-house and was here to release the Group General Counsel from her heavy load, I knew she wouldn't have time to review what I’d do. We would agree on a goal and an outcome and I would run with it. What did this mean for me? Intellectual uneasiness, leading to sharpness: I knew there was no safety net and that I needed to do my best, swiftly, and be accountable for whatever mistakes I would make. This made me grow and learn very, very fast. It’s the magic power of autonomy and growing mastery!

Ok, at this stage, you probably are in to focus more on delegating. Could you delegate more? How much do you trust your team? That’s for each of us to answer when we tackle the topic. Let’s now see what it takes to effectively delegate!

How can we delegate effectively? 

To examine this point, let’s look at what good delegators do differently. According to this Gallup study, good delegators tend to have a few traits in common and things they do differently than others.  Let’s explore some of these traits.

We can’t do it alone

It all starts with knowing we can’t do it alone. By giving away responsibilities, good delegators are able to free themselves from the day to day operational stuff and focus instead on the value adding activities (Gallup Business Journal - Delegating: A Huge Management Challenge for Entrepreneurs).

We should know what to delegate

Then, we should find what we can and should delegate. Are there things we are holding on to? This could be an old habit or practice that we used to do ourselves because we were alone when we started. Is there someone in our team who could do it as well as us? 

Of course, some things that belong to our managerial capabilities should not be delegated, such as annual reviews, development plans for the team and so on (Harvard Business School online - Lauren Landry - HOW TO DELEGATE EFFECTIVELY: 9 TIPS FOR MANAGERS). 

One exercise I really like to do regularly is to run a quick consistency audit to list and notably identify the tasks that need delegation (for a quick and effective methodology on how to run a consistency audit, check out my blogpost Never enough resources? A few ideas to maximize the impact of your Ethics & Compliance Program 🚀)?

We need to know our team pretty well

In order to delegate well, we should know our teams well. This is important: do we know the strengths and weaknesses of each of our team member? If we’ve had a hard time delegating in the past, it’s likely that we have been too busy to actually find out what our team is actually good at. 

If you have no idea, ask them individually about their preference, make use of your next team meeting or run a little survey. What are they really good at? What do they enjoy the most? What drains them? Do the same with new hires. And then you’ll confirm and build on this model with practice and experience of delegation. 

I made the terrible mistake once: I gave a team member who thrived doing complex technical builds a more customer facing full-time role. It was the only full time role I had open, he was fully trained on our complex product and I really wanted to hire him full time. It was total pain for him, for the customers and for everyone involved. And it was my mistake! I should have known and observed better, and also, most importantly, I should have asked better.

This also applies to knowing our employee’s development goals: are they interested in more managerial experience? Are they, on the contrary, happy to be solo players or experts? Are they extravert or introvert? Where can they show their best selves?

Only by knowing our team will we be able to find the right match, and delegate the right task to the right human, which will enable them to learn, have fun, grow and deliver beyond expectations. This is turn will make our team shine collectively!

When delegating, we need to define desired outcomes clearly

People need context and the relevant level of information to deepen their understanding and perform in the best possible way.

 “Before anyone starts working on a project, they should know what they need to complete and by when, including the metrics you’ll use to measure the success of their work” (Harvard Business School online - Lauren Landry - HOW TO DELEGATE EFFECTIVELY: 9 TIPS FOR MANAGERS).

Beware, not setting clear outcomes or focusing too much on the process (i.e., the number of steps to get there and what each step should involve) can be a trick that your resistant brain is playing so that it can micromanage further down the line. Resist!

Once we delegate, we need to play the game. We need to focus on the outcome, progress, the deadline, and let our team member run with the rest. Of course, this does not mean we are not here for them: agree and align with your team member on how you will be informed about the project progress and help remove any blockers.

We need to support our team and give them what they need to succeed

Instead of diving into the details and starting to micromanage once we have delegated, we should rather focus on asking: 

• What do you need to make this a success? 
• How can I help you make this a success?

And our role is to help unblock, help them find answers and of course, escalate and position as appropriate. For example, maybe a team member needs us to speak to the Head of HR to unblock something. 

Remember, this does not mean solving all problems for them when they come our way: if a team member comes with a problem, let's ask them what they think we should do before jumping to provide our experienced and valuable input. They’ll get used to thinking about solutions and develop more autonomy. As you work on delegating more and more, you will see that the team will grow its ability to solve more and more problems without reaching out to you.

We are also here to help provide the authority, the training and resources needed to complete the job. We need to enable and empower.

We must also encourage different ways and views to solving problems

It comes with delegation: when we delegate we may realize that another person would take a completely different approach or method to reach a goal or solve a problem than we would have. This calls for our open mindedness, and also for our humility: there are probably 1000 different ways to solve any given problem. Why on earth would we believe that we hold the only truth?

“Non-Delegators do not trust others to do things as well as they themselves can. They hinder growth by centralizing and controlling decision-making at every turn” (Gallup Business Journal - Delegating: A Huge Management Challenge for Entrepreneurs).

Let’s not be that person! Let’s open our ears, eyes and heart. We may as well learn a new perspective or new approach in the process and broaden our views. 

When our team members are empowered and allowed to spread their wings and take all the space, we actually learn so much from them and keep developing our own selves. It’s win-win-win.

We need to nurture an open and trusting communication line

For all of the above to work well, we do need to have an open line of communication with our teams. And most importantly, we need trust.

Trust means that our team knows it’s ok, and even desired, to make mistakes. And that they will not be thrown under the bus for trying, testing and experimenting. Experimentation is how we grow. And as a leader, we should have the backs of our teams and provide them with a safe environment where they can be who they are.

To enable a healthy delegation framework, we need to communicate well: this means providing feedback about what works well or not. In particular once the delegated assignment has been completed. This is the right time to explore together what worked well and what could be done differently.

This also means giving praise and visibility to our team. If they have worked hard on a presentation for top management, maybe they deserve to be in the room and present part of it? The idea is that people are empowered to run with a task end to end, all the way including completion and shining. 

I have never been as proud as when I could invite some of my direct reports to QBRs with top management: why on earth would I present it all myself when they have done all the work? Most importantly, they know all the details much better than I do and together we can team-up to deliver a strong message. This provided also a great opportunity to coach them on presentation skills and delivering messages effectively. It also showed them what "my world" and environment was (and it did build their empathy towards me).

We need to think business continuity and succession planning

We should all have in our teams someone who could take our spot if we were hit by a bus tomorrow. Without being hit by a bus, we need someone who can handle while we are busy or on holidays. Otherwise, we are failing on our own business continuity and potentially preventing our own selves from moving forward even further: who would promote a leader to a new role if their team is not running on its own?

Let’s look at our teams, and see what we need to do to get there in the coming years.

We need to ask our teams for feedback

Lastly, I’d like to invite all of us to dare asking for feedback and have no misplaced ego. What can we as a leader do differently? What can we learn from our teams? What can we improve on? What should we stop doing and start doing? This is invaluable feedback that we need to collect to continuously improve!

Conclusion

I hope this article inspired you to take a few minutes to think about how much of a natural delegator you are (or not). If you have a hard time delegating, no worries at all: it’s a skill that can and should be trained. 

The more you will delegate, the more you will empower your team. The more your team will feel trusted and empowered, the more they will surprise you with amazing ideas, flamboyant deliverables and an outstanding execution! And this will leave you feeling so so so proud!

Follow Upright Solutions on Linkedin for more inspiration to lead your E&C Team and initiatives.

Love from Copenhagen 💜