Successful delegation is built on trust

Successful delegation requires the right culture.

If your staff are overloaded, fed up with getting grief from unhappy customers, feeling unloved and underpaid, resentful towards management (that is, towards you)…don’t try to delegate stuff to them.

If that is the situation in your business then chances are that you too are feeling overloaded, fed up with getting grief from unhappy customers, unloved and underpaid…and resentful towards your staff.

This is a recipe for a downward spiral.

How then to break out of this situation?  And break out of it you must, or things will just get worse and health, wealth and happiness will become a distant memory.

The fundamental basis for successful delegation is trust.  You must trust your staff to be willing and able to do the right thing for the business - and in order for this to be true they must trust you to be willing and able to do the right thing by them.

If you feel there is a lack of trust between you and you can see that delegation is either not happening or not working then try taking a leaf from the Alcoholics Anonymous handbook; the first thing to do is acknowledge the problem.  Now they have another eleven steps that aren’t as relevant so here is the delegation creed instead:

  1. Acknowledge the problem to yourself.  Turn off your phone, shut down your email, switch off social media notifications – and spend five minutes writing down the things you are not happy about in your business and the impact they are having and will continue to have;
  2. Acknowledge the problem publicly – to your employees.  Stand up in front of them and explain how you feel about your business, your performance and their performance;
  3. Acknowledge publicly that it is your fault (because it is) and commit to doing things differently as a leader;
  4. State your faith in your combined ability to improve things and build a business that will make you all proud.  Admit that you don’t have all the answers, you can’t do it on your own and that you need their help;
  5. Commit to better communication on your side, which means blocking out diary time to communicate, listening, and respecting opinions;
  6. Ask employees to commit to better communication on their side, which means asking questions, giving opinions and speaking up when they see things going wrong;
  7.  Explain that in future you will be asking people to take new things on and each time you do this you will expect them to ask you to change something or do something differently to benefit the business in return.

This creed doesn’t mention delegation – and only in the last point does it start to edge towards it.  The point is that the act of delegation is the last step, not the first.  Trying to delegate in a negative, suspicious, chaotic environment will be seen as an imposition and will simply contribute to more negativity, mistrust and chaos.  First you need to build the conditions for successful delegation – and the foundation for that is trust.  To gain trust you have to give it.

Once trust is developing, delegation will feed its growth and you start to develop a virtuous circle of trust.

To find out more about the process of delegation, how to do it well and how this helps you grow your business visit this website.

Based on an original post on my website www.nickbettes.co.uk

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