| How can I empower staff members
with confidence that they won't fail?
This is a dilemma! If you delegate a piece of work to a staff member,
you obviously can't have 100% confidence that nothing will go wrong.
If it is a new piece of work - a particular challenge for the person
- you must still carry the blame also!
However, empowering staff remains one of the most telling actions
you can take as a leader. In the long run it will boost employee
motivation, get much more achieved and allow you to focus on more
strategic activities. So how can you make it work?
Talking together about work you will delegate. There are two kinds:
- Regular jobs that you can give someone else total control over,
simply keeping you informed on progress.
- New tasks that are stretching, but not impossible. These are
coaching opportunities, and people need help from you and will
gradually assume responsibility.
Things you have to be careful of are:
Making decisions yourself - if you do this, people will expect
it of you - they get used to not having to assume responsibility
and will defer to you for everything. Sometimes you have to refuse
to give a ruling on something when asked (when you know that a staff
member is perfectly capable of doing the right thing)
Not receiving reports - many people, empowered for the first time,
will forget to keep you informed. This can be dangerous. Talk about
the reporting schedule and pick people up on it if they slip.
People doing things in a different way to you - this is what happens.
Don't be worried about it, unless they are really off the line.
Talk in advance about the contraints.
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