Category: managing team

Delegating effectively

Managers are responsible for getting things done through other people. You need to accomplish assigned goals by delegating responsibility and authority to others. Empowering others through delegation is one of the most powerful managerial tools for increasing productivity.

Empowering others

Managers delegate by transferring authority and responsibility for work to employees. Delegation empowers employees to achieve goals by allowing them to make their own decisions about how to do a job. Delegation also helps develop employees for promotion opportunities by expanding their knowledge, job capabilities, and decision-making skills.

Delegating lets you focus on key strategic activities and can also lead to better decision-making

Feeling the benefits

Effective delegation is key for any manager. It will free up your time, allowing you to focus on big-picture strategic activities. It can also lead to better decisionmaking, because it pushes decisions down the organization, meaning that decision-makers are often closer to the problems. It also helps those you are managing develop their own decision-making skills and prepares them for future promotion opportunities.

The four components of delegation

ALLOCATION OF DUTIES : Before a manager can delegate authority, the tasks and activities that need to be accomplished must be explained.

DELEGATION OF AUTHORITY : Delegation is the process of transferring authority to empower a subordinate to act for you as a manager.

ASSIGNMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY : Managers should assign responsibility to the empowered employee for performing the job adequately.

CREATION OF ACCOUNTABILITY : Managers should hold empowered employees responsible for properly carrying out their duties. This includes taking responsibility for the completion of tasks assigned to them and also being accountable to the manager for the satisfactory performance of that work.

Letting go

Managers often have trouble delegating. Some are afraid to give up control, explaining, “I like to do things myself, because then I know it’s done and it’s done right.” Others lack confidence in their employees or fear that they may be criticized for others’ mistakes. While you may be capable of doing the tasks you delegate better, faster, or with fewer mistakes, it is not possible to do everything yourself. If you often feel that your team isn’t taking ownership of projects it may suggest that you are handing out tasks,rather than delegating responsibility. When you delegate, you should expect, and accept, some mistakes by those you delegate to. Mistakes are often good learning experiences. You also should put in place adequate mechanisms for feedback so you will know what is happening.

20%
of your activity yields 80% of your results; try to do more of the 20% and delegate the 80%

You should expect and accept some mistakes by those you delegate to; mistakes are often good learning experiences

How to delegate

CLARIFY THE ASSIGNMENT : Explain what is being delegated, the results you expect, and the timeframe.

SET BOUNDARIES : Ensure that the
delegatees understand precisely what the parameters are of the authority you are bestowing on them.

ENCOURAGE PARTICIPATION : Involve delegatees in decisions about what is delegated, how much authority is
needed, and standards to be attained.

INFORM OTHERS : Let everyone who may be affected know what has been delegated to whom and how much authority has been granted.

ENCOURAGE DEVELOPMENT : Insist from the beginning that when delegatees come to you with a problem, they also bring a possible solution.

ESTABLISH CONTROLS : Agree on a specifictime for completion of the task, and set dates when progress will be checked and problems discussed.

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Valuing diversity

Understanding and managing people who are similar to us can be challenging, but understanding and managing those who are dissimilar from us and from each other is tougher. As the workplace becomes more diverse and as business becomes more global, managers must understand how cultural diversity affects the expectations and behavior of everyone in the organization.

Understanding the changes

The labor market is dramatically changing. Most countries are experiencing an increase in the age of their workforce, increased immigration, and, in many, a rapid increase in the number of working women. The globalization of business also brings with it a cross-cultural mandate. With more businesses selling and manufacturing products and services abroad, managers increasingly see the need to ensure that their employees can relate to customers from many different cultures. Workers who believe that their differences are not merely tolerated but valued by their employer are more likely to be loyal, productive, and committed.

Capitalizing on diversity

Managers face many challenges capitalizing on diversity, such as: coping with employees’ unfamiliarity with native languages, learning which rewards are valued by different demographics, and providing career development programs that fit the values of different targeted groups. There are several ways for you to try to capitalize on diversity:

  • Communicate your objectives and expectations about diversity to employees through a range of channels, such as mission and value statements, slogans, creeds, newsletters, speeches, emails, and everyday conversations.
  • Recruit through nontraditional sources. Relying on current employee referrals usually produces a limited range of candidates. Try instead to identify novel sources for recruitment, such as women’s job networks, targeted newspapers, training centers for the disabled, urban job banks, and over-50s clubs.
  • Use diverse incentives for motivation. Most studies on the subject of motivation are by North American researchers—unsurprisingly— on North American workers. Consequently, these studies are based on beliefs that most people work to promote their own well-being and get ahead. This may be at odds with people from more collectivist countries, such as Venezuela, Singapore, Japan, and Mexico, where individuals are driven by their loyalty to the organization or society, not their own self-interest.

Tip

PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH First look into your heart and mind and root out any prejudice. Then, demonstrate your acceptance in everything that you say and do.

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High-performing teams

As Lee Iacocca, former CEO of Chrysler Corporation, said: “All business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profit. People come first. Unless you’ve got a good team, you can’t do much with the other two.” Successful managers are those who create, work with, and manage successful teams.

Defining highperforming teams

A team is two or more people who meet regularly, perceive themselves as a distinct entity distinguishable from others, have complementary skills, and are committed to a common purpose, a set of performance goals, and an approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. High-performing teams engage in collective work produced by coordinated joint efforts that result in more than the sum of the individual efforts. Research and practical experience have shown that teams with many more than 12 members tend to lack cohesion and struggle to make fast and effective decisions.

Understanding team performance

WHO ARE WE? Sharing strengths, weaknesses, work preferences, and values allows the establishment of a set of common beliefs for the team, creating a group identity and a feeling of
“what we stand for.”

WHERE ARE WE NOW? Understanding the current position means that a team can
reinforce its strengths, improve on its
weaknesses, and identify opportunities to capitalize on and threats to be aware of.

WHERE ARE WE GOING? Teams need to have a vision of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They also need a mission, a purpose, and a set of specific
team goals that they are all excited about.

HOW WILL WE GET THERE? Team members must understand who will do what and when to accomplish team goals, and must be clear about their job description, roles on the team, responsibilities, and areas of authority and accountability.

WHAT SUPPORT DO WE GET/NEED? Reviewing each member’s training
and development needs can set the stage for individual training, counseling, and mentoring that will strengthen both the individual and the team.

HOW EFFECTIVE ARE WE? Regular performance reviews of quantity and quality outputs and the team process— with recognition and reward for success— ensure achievement of team goals and provide members with standards.

Achieving good teamwork

To help your teams perform to the best of their ability, create clear goals. All team members need to have a thorough understanding of the goals of the team and a belief that these goals embody a worthwhile result. This encourages team members to sublimate personal concerns to those of the team. Members need to be committed to the team’s goals, know what they are expected to accomplish, and understand how they will work together to achieve these goals. However, these goals must be
attainable; team members can lose morale if it seems that they are not. To avoid this, set smaller interim milestones in the path to your overall goal. As these smaller goals are attained, your team’s success is reinforced. Cohesiveness is increased, morale improves, and confidence builds. As the manager of a team, it is your
job to provide the resources and support that the members need to achieve success. Offer skills training where needed, either personally or by calling in specialists within your organization or outside training services.

Steering your team

Team members should all share in the glory when their team succeeds, but also share in the blame when the team fails. However, members need to know that they cannot ride on the backs of others. Identify what each member’s contribution to the team’s work should be and make it a part of his or her overall performance appraisal. To help monitor performance, select members of the team to act as participant–observers. While a team is working, the role of the participant–observer is to focus on the processes being used—the sequence of actions that takes place between team members to achieve a goal. Periodically, the participant–observer should stop the team from working on its task and discuss the process members are engaged in. The objectives of the participant–observer are to improve the team’s functioning by discussing the processes being used and creating strategies for improving them.

Setting standards

Create a performance agreement to record the details of what the team is aiming to achieve, what is required and expected of every team member, and what support will be available to them. Setting out the framework for team success clearly helps to ensure that there is a mutual understanding and common vision of the desired results, and emphasizes the standards that you expect from every team member.

Tip

CHANGE PERSONNEL If your teams get bogged down in their own inertia or internal fighting, rotate the members. Consider how certain personalities will mesh and re-form your teams in ways that will better complement skills.

6–12
members is the ideal number for a team to work at optimal effectiveness

CHECKLIST… Creating a team performance agreement yes/no

  1. Have I identified what is to be done and when?
  2. Have I specified the boundaries (guiding rules of behavior) or the means for accomplishing results?
  3. Have I identified the human, financial, technical, or organizational support available to help achieve the results?
  4. Have I established the standards of performance and the time intervals for evaluation?
  5. Have I specified what will happen in performance evaluations and the consequences of not meeting the standards?
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Designing work

Job design refers to the way tasks are combined to form complete jobs. It involves trying to shape the right jobs to conform to the right people, taking into account both the organization’s goals and the employees’ satisfaction. Well-designed jobs lead to high motivation, high-quality performance, high satisfaction, and low absenteeism and turnover.

Defining jobs

Jobs vary considerably: a lifeguard, for example, will have very different day-to-day responsibilities than an accountant or a construction worker. However, any job can be described in terms of five core job dimensions:

Skill variety : the degree to which a job requires a variety of different activities so that the worker can employ a number of different skills and talents.

Task identity : the degree to which a job requires completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work.

Task significance: the degree to which a job has an impact on the lives of other people.

Autonomy: the degree to which a job provides freedom and discretion to the worker in scheduling tasks and in determining how the work will be carried out.

Feedback: the degree to which the worker gets direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his or her performance.

As a manager, you can maximize your team’s performance by enhancing these five dimensions. Skill variety, task identity, and task significance combine to create meaningful work. Jobs with these characteristics will be perceived as important, valuable, and worthwhile. Jobs that possess autonomy give workers a sense of responsibility for their results. Jobs that provide feedback indicate to the employee how effectively he or she is performing.

Skill variety, task identity, and task significance combine to create jobs that are seen as important, valuable, and worthwhile

Ways to design work by enhancing the five dimensions

CREATE NATURAL WORK UNITS Design tasks to form an identifiable whole to increase employee “ownership” and to encourage workers to view their jobs as important.

ESTABLISH CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS

Building direct
relationships between
the worker and the client— the user of the product or the service that
the employee works on—increases skill variety, autonomy, and feedback.

COMBINE TASKS Put existing fragmented tasks together to form
larger modules of work. This can help increase skill variety and task identity.

EXPAND JOBS VERTICALLY Giving employees
responsibilities formerly reserved for managers closes the gap between the
“doing” and “controlling” aspects of the job, and increases autonomy.

IMPROVE FEEDBACK CHANNELS Feedback tells employees how well they are
performing, and whether their performance is
improving, deteriorating, or remaining constant.
Employees should receive feedback directly as they do their jobs.

Tip

GET THE RIGHT PERSON FOR THE JOB

It is very difficult to completely change how a person performs, so try to match people to jobs that they are good at. This will make them most likely to achieve good results.

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Managing a team

Teams are the cornerstones of most public and nonprofit organizations. Successful team leaders understand what makes a team effective and what can lead to failure. To be a successful manager, you need to be able to plan and design the work of your team, delegate tasks effectively, monitor progress, and motivate your team to excel.

Setting goals and planning

Planning is a key skill for any manager and starts with having a good understanding of the organization’s objectives. It involves establishing a strategy for achieving those goals using the personnel available, and developing the means to integrate and coordinate necessary activities.

Knowing your goals

Planning is concerned with ends (what needs to be done) and means (how those ends are to be achieved). In order to create a plan, managers must first identify the organization’s goals—what it is trying to achieve.

Planning and monitoring

Goals are the foundation of all other
planning activities. They refer to the desired outcomes for the entire organization, for groups and teams within the organization, and for individuals. In the best organizations, employees and teams work closely with their managers to set their own goals and plan courses of action. Goals provide the direction for all management decisions and form the criteria against which actual accomplishments can be measured.

How to develop and implement a plan

Define your overall goals, by asking questions such as “Why do we exist?” and “What do we do?”

Thoroughly analyze your working environment, to identify opportunities you can exploit and threats you may encounter.

Use the results to set objectives that you want to meet. These will create a standard against which to measure your progress.

Formulate a plan to achieve those objectives—what needs to be done, by whom, and by when.

Implement the plan, clarifying roles and providing support.

Monitor your progress to make sure you are on the right track.

Setting your goals

There are five basic rules that can help you set effective goals. Always make your goals SMART: Specific, Measurable, Aligned, Reachable, and Time-bound.

Specific Goals are meaningful only when they are specific enough to be measured and verified.

Measurable Goals need to have a clear outcome that can be objectively assessed. They also need to have clear benchmarks that can be checked along the way.

Aligned Goals should contribute to the mission, vision, and strategic plan of the organization and be congruent with the values and objectives of the employee implementing them.

Reachable Goals should require you to stretch to reach them, but not be set unrealistically high.

Time-bound Open-ended goals can be neglected because there is no sense of urgency to complete them. Whenever possible, goals should include a time limit.

Tip

LOOK TO THE FUTURE Write down three SMART goals that you want your team to achieve in the next five years, and then plan how you will reach them.

Goals are the desired outcomes for the whole organization, for groups within it, and for individuals

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