Not a Knot - passing skills to another person

I was teaching someone relatively new to abseiling. Gina (not her real name) was quickly building skills and was hugely enthusiastic. I’d delegated the rigging of the ropes on a cliff she’d never worked on before. As I walked back along her ropes, I spotted a knot that was not. It was sloppily tied and not fit for the purpose she’d used it for. Abseiling is very safe if all the gear is properly used, but get it wrong and the consequences can be spectacularly fatal. 

A group was about to join us for the day, so I quickly called Gina over, discussed the problem and demonstrated a better knot to tie. After the group left we did a couple of practice rigs to expand her knowledge about rigging. It would have been easy for it to be awkward, or to feel like micro management, but we were following an explicit skill transfer process:

We had discussed and used the process for other skills and were moving from We Do Together, to You Do, I Watch. The process encourages demonstration, clarification, and thinking. It’s a great way to hand your skill set to another person. If they know what you expect from them at each stage and what they can expect from you, it takes much of the potential stress and clunkiness out of learning. 

A couple of weeks later, Gina rigged all the ropes, and inspected them herself while I laid out equipment for the group that was arriving. We both knew that she had developed enough skill and judgement to set the ropes. She also knew that I would answer questions and/or assist if she found herself not sure what to do. We’d taken the time to build mutual trust in each other in relation to that activity. Next week, we’d start the process again on a more complex skill set.

Can I trust them?

“Can I trust them?” is one of the most asked questions when I am coaching leaders about delegation. When we delegate stuff, often it remains our responsibility - If it doesn’t work out we may be the person who will be held responsible.

In many environments there is a regulatory responsibility too - if something you delegate goes wrong, your ‘licence to operate’ may be on the line. Potentially you’ll face regulatory penalties of some kind. This is true whether you are a board delegating to a CEO, or a frontline nurse manager, delegating to a team of nurses. It applies in many settings and at many levels.

So how can you trust someone to do what you have delegated properly - trust them enough to not be constantly looking over their shoulder to make sure it's OK? Especially if what they are doing is complex and/or complicated.

It takes time. How much time will depend on the person's prior experience, their confidence and their skill. It’s useful to have a system for handing skill sets on (We’ll talk about that next time). It’s also useful to consider what you will need to see from them to be satisfied that they know what they are doing.

Be transparent about how long you will be watching and what you are watching for. Explain the risks/consequences if it goes wrong and the incentives for getting it right. By doing so you are creating an environment where trust can develop and delegation will be successful.

Piggy in the Middle

Take a well-respected, competent, and confident crisis management specialist. Put them in charge of an operational team. Give them a clear mandate to lead, and 6 months to make a positive impact on team cohesion and results. What would you expect the results to be?

I expected great results and a tight-knit team, but instead I found:

• A new leader who felt irrelevant and undervalued.

• The operational team feeling micromanaged and like they weren't trusted.

• A senior leader who was feeling overwhelmed with details that he thought the new team leader would have been taking care of.

• An increasingly toxic environment where trust was diminishing.

How could it go wrong so quickly - especially when everyone involved was technically good at their job, committed to the team, and the work they did together?

It’s a pattern I’ve seen often enough that I call it Hierarchy Hopping. If there are 3 (or more) layers, and middle layers get bypassed, chaos ensues. A senior leader bypasses their operational lead and directly tasks the team. People on the frontline bypass the operational lead and go to the senior leader to fix problems.

Hierarchy Hopping

Why would it happen? Clearly there is a need for the additional layer, otherwise the role wouldn’t exist. 

For the senior leader there’s often comfort and familiarity in the ‘tools’ of the layer one down from them. Plus, if the layer is new, they’ve previously been responsible for fixing the problems and tasking the team. Handing that to a new person can feel unsettling. The new person can do the job, but the newly leveled up leader feels disconnected from what is happening and so returns to what is familiar. The new person is unintentionally sidelined and the frontline people now have 2 direct bosses.

They’ll hesitate to act until the more senior person's view is clear. You’ll hear them saying, “We are supposed to work on X, but every time we get started, the boss comes down and the direction changes. Let's just hold for a while until they tell us which way to go.” Over time this reinforces itself. The new Ops leader is getting no traction or buy-in, so starts to second guess themselves or throw their hands up and say “what’s the point of my role?”. The frontline shows less and less initiative as they wait for clear direction from 2 bosses.  The senior person experiences even more load/stress than before the new ops manager was around. The person works hard at demonstrating their value, often overstepping all sorts of boundaries in an increasing effort to do the job they were hired for. The senior person feels that if they are not involved at the front line, it will all fall apart. 

Uninterrupted, it starts to get toxic. People play the 2 leaders off against each other, and start assigning blame to others. The team becomes less effective and more fractured. There’s lots of unhelpful talking behind each other's backs and factions forming. 

Over this series, we’ll look at ways people at all levels can avoid it, and/or fix it if Hierarchy Hopping starts.

All the Answers?

Leaders sometimes feel as if we should have all the answers. A ready solution to every problem. There are times when our expertise and experience is exactly what the other person needs, but even then it’s worth creating the space to DISCOVER. Ask more than tell. Explore more than solve. A good ratio to aim for is 60:40. Ask or Explore more than you solve or instruct.

This creates thinking space. It invites the other person to be an active part in the answer or solution, rather than a passive recipient. You also get insight into how they think which sometimes makes for a deeper conversation. Rather than solving the immediate problem, you might be able to discuss some higher principles, values or strategies. This makes the conversation valuable beyond just the situation at hand. It gives people support and tools to make decisions that line up with the organisation.

A few great questions to ask are:

• Imagine you already had a great answer to your question. What would your answer be?

• How would you solve this problem? What do you think the best outcome would be?

Reflections on Perception

I’m foolishly recovering from a fortunately small and easily removed metal fragment in my eye. Reflection number 1 is “all the gear, all the time, no matter how short or quick the job is”.

I work a lot on my own in my shed, and have a pretty high standard on safety gear. And I took a “shortcut” which has taken a lot longer to resolve than slowing down for the couple of minutes to get my safety specs from where I used them last. Working in company, we can keep an eye on the safe practices of others around us. Alone, not so much. If you work alone a self prompted review (preferably without a GP) is well worth it.

The perception of shortcuts and too busy pop up regularly in the coaching work I do with leaders. Themes like:

• It’s faster to do it myself

• I haven’t got time to give people the reasons for what I'm asking, they just need to get on with it.

• I know I should do more about health, exercise, sleep, food, etc, but I don’t have time.

There are many like these, and I can relate to all of them. The short term may show a tempting illusion of being faster, but ultimately all these “shortcuts” involve do-overs or repairs of some kind. A couple of useful questions are:

• How can I build capacity and strengthen relationships as I do this? While doing so may take a little longer, in the long run the trust and capacity built will speed us up.

• What are the negative consequences of this “shortcut”?

• What are the actual risks of rushing this?

Not surprisingly, today I’m feeling more one-eyed about this than I might otherwise…And I’m counting my blessings.

Belief

Who do you know that could benefit from an injection of belief?

Bulls and Boardrooms

I stood on the sideline of the auction yards, hoping to buy a bull that (in my opinion) was the finest animal on the lot. It would be a great addition to the farm breeding stock. Two bids later, I stepped back and watched the price climb. Maybe I was right about it being the best bull. It sold for the top price. I eventually secured a lesser bull. I made the decision without supervision and using someone else's money. The farmer I worked for was a master of delegation. He had given me a signed blank cheque and sent me to the annual sale alone. His instructions were simple. “Buy the best bull you can. Don’t spend more than $1500.” When I got back I told him about the best bull, and together we admired the one I had purchased.

I’ve often thought of him when I lead others and work with leaders. One of the most significant roles of a leader, all the way to the boardroom, is delegation. Despite delegating all the time, there’s often unnecessary friction because we don’t always do it well.

What that farmer did very well was define the task or territory - Best bull possible at or below $1500. My task was epic for my age and experience, but the parameters were crystal clear. I knew precisely what was in and out of my authority that day. He also backed the decision I had made.

When we are delegating, we can reduce friction significantly by clearly discussing what is in and out of the territory. Sometimes there will be grey areas, in which case discuss the triggers to refer back for more information or support.

And get really good at accepting the outcomes of delegated territory. Questioning or criticising decisions and actions makes it much less likely that people will want to act for you next time round.

How and where could you improve your capacity for delegation?

Delegation for Capacity

Imagine a high performance foiling Yacht sailing the Americas Cup. They have 11 crew, all with highly specific roles on board. When they are working well, the boats are poised on a knife edge of F1 like performance. It’s a great example of effective delegation for capacity.

The skipper may well have the skill to fill all the roles on board, but if they tried to sail the boat single handed it would never reach anywhere near its full potential. To make the most of the boat and the team, the skipper has to delegate.

Workplaces are like that too. Without effective delegation Capacity is severely compromised at every level:

Overall Performance - Capacity is reduced because of do-overs, lack of clarity, inappropriate workloads, ineffective use of the total capability of the team.

Leaders Performance - Capacity is reduced as leaders are likely overloaded with micromanagement, having to solve all the problems/provide all the answers, frustration that the team is not working as it should (BTW this is often a leadership problem, rather than a team member problem)

Team Member Performance - Capacity is reduced due to overlapping roles, lack of clarity, waiting for ‘permission’ and missed opportunities to develop greater capability.

As a leader, one of the highest return on investment skills you can develop is Delegation. How do you shape up?