Have you found yourself in your bosses office giving you feedback from your team that you are a micro-manager?  One of the perceptions derived from this criticism is that you are a great “operational” manager, but you are not a candidate for “strategic” leadership.  If you ponder this dilemma you are challenged by the possibility of losing control of the outcome, which your boss wants error free and your own insecurities about the competency of the members of your team.

“Managers prone to micromanagement fall prey to several misconceptions about delegating to staff. The first is the assumption that delegation has an on and off switch. That is, that they either delegate totally to all direct reports in all situations or not at all. They fail to assess each subordinate’s ability to operate independently and don’t put in place the “eyehooks” of implementation — the check-ins, milestones, and metrics — that promote predictable execution. And they forget that there are times when they need to get directly involved to get a major initiative back on course.”

Delegation benefits managers, direct reports, and organizations. Yet it remains one of the most underutilized and underdeveloped management capabilities.

Chronic problems with delegation can cripple your team’s productivity and create a major impediment to your own career success. We all have employees that we consider highly skilled often when we review their interaction with others, we find them in the middle of every decision.  By accepting this mentality, the team grounds to a halt.  Key people lose interest or don’t engage at all.  Operating at a higher level means allowing your team to figure out how to work together, how to collaborate, how to make decisions and how to problem solve.   If you find team members that are consistently telling you that they can HELP you with what you are doing and if you are working an inordinate amount of hours while they are going home at 5, then these are obvious signs that you are not utilizing your team effectively.

Possible Solutions:

• Delegate and leverage your team more and figure out where you can add value to the overall performance of your team
• Understand the talents and skills of the members of your team and delegate areas of a project where they can excel and teach them how to ramp up their skill sets and add more to the results.
• Reshape the team so that roles play to the skills of your team; step back as the facilitator, allow the team to take on a leadership role by rotating responsibilities for leading team activities.  It doesn’t always have to be YOU.
• Try to avoid asking your team members HOW they intend to complete the task.  Focus on questions that are more strategic like why did you decide to go in this direction or what is the scope of the task and their level of responsibility.
• Provide key milestones and goals for the team to reach; create appropriate check ins to ensure that the team is operating effectively
• Make sure you assign roles for note taking, tracking progress, deadlines and goals
• Create a positive environment by role modeling
• Remember that all team members operate differently.  Your challenge is to let go of how you would accomplish the task as long as they achieve quality results.

Learning to let go is one of the key skills for all managers.  Make sure you practice these skills and in the process you are creating a work force that will do the same.  [contact-form-7 404 "Not Found"]