In March I wrote a piece about the ‘Art of Delegation’. A coachee challenged me: “That all sounds great. But what about when I cannot delegate more?” I’m sharing here on LI the exploratory work we did together, as others may be asking themselves the same question.

When a leader is struggling with workload my ‘go to’ response as an Executive Coach, NXD and former senior leader is to explore how they might delegate more effectively. There are occasions, however, when a whole team is overwhelmed and the leader delegating more is simply moving the overload problem onto someone else, which is clearly not helpful. Here are 3 suggestions of what the leader could consider to address the problem.

Clarity of purpose and priorities. A key question to ask – What is the core purpose of the team? Gathering opinions, not just from the leader and the wider team but from all stakeholders, and reflecting upon them should generate clarity of purpose. Workstreams which align to this purpose are therefore priorities, and this is where resources and effort should be focused. Workstreams which do not contribute to this purpose should be allocated elsewhere in the organisation or dropped altogether.

When ‘Good’ is ‘Good Enough’. Whilst quality of work is important it is rare that everything needs to be done to the same high standard. As a former languages-student-turned-banker I used to love crafting briefing notes which were written with thoughtful vocabulary and elegant prose… until my boss pointed out that bullet point notes would be quicker for me to write and for her to read and just as effective at conveying the necessary information. Involve the team in this exercise: ask them which processes or deliverables are unnecessarily complex or time-consuming and ask for suggestions as to how these could be tackled in a simpler and quicker way which would deliver a ‘good enough’ result.

What can you stop doing? A step on from the above is identifying what could the leader or team stop doing altogether without impacting customers or colleagues. Too often we persevere with processes, tasks, meetings or communications which are no longer needed, simply because no-on has questioned if they are still necessary let alone valuable. Management information and reports are usually a good place to start this exercise, particularly if they look backwards rather than forwards. I’d encourage experimenting: eg. stop production of a report or sending a communication for a period: if it is truly missed, reintroduce it; if is not, then unnecessary work has been culled.

My coachee left our session committed to critically reflecting on the above – which ranges from ‘big picture’ to ‘small stuff’. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments on what else you would want to consider in this situation.

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Photo from the fabulous Burrell Collection in Glasgow

Posted in Thoughts about leadership