Do many of your staff constantly underestimate themselves?
Does your staff turn to you for answers they already possess?
Is there a person on your team with leadership skills you want to amplify?
Identifying, nurturing, and empowering your staff’s leadership skills is a key trait of an effective nonprofit leader.
We all want to develop and support the leadership potential of our team, but the task is harder than it seems.
With competing demands on your time, different relationship and power dynamics among your staff and lack of clarity of how to equitably develop leadership potential, the work often gets ignored.
Today’s podcast will explore one element of cultivating leaders by skillful delegation.
Creating Leaders through Skillful Delegation
When you delegate effectively, you provide your staff with a chance to exercise their skills and act with autonomy. Providing opportunities for your staff to gain mastery is a key component in helping you cultivate the team you need to run your agency.
Find the full transcript for episode 3 at relishyourrole.com/3.
Create Conditions for Leadership
If you want your staff to take on more leadership, they need the opportunity to do so. You may feel you already do this and have been unsatisfied with the results.
I want us to focus today on how to set you and your staff up for success when you pass on a project you want them to lead.
There is a tried and true four-step process on how to delegate in a way which both gets the job done and supports leadership development.
The four steps are:
- Set clear and explicit expectations.
- Provide access to all the necessary resources.
- Jointly establish benchmarks and check-in schedules.
- Celebrate successes and then de-brief the project.
Let’s dive into each step so you can start cultivating your leaders.
Setting Clear Expectations
Let’s say you want a member of your team to take on the responsibility of editing the agency’s quarterly newsletter. In the past they have brought you articles to include and have left it for you to decide what else should be included and when to showcase a program, agency partner, staff or Board member. You now want them to take on full responsibility for the project.
The first step is to take the time and discuss the goals of the newsletter; how articles are selected, the quarterly rotation of types of information included, what has been successful and what has not worked in the past. You need to discuss timelines, others who need to be involved, and what activities and behaviors you expect from them to get the project done.
This is the time when you develop a thought partner by freely sharing all your thoughts about the newsletter. Elicit from them what they want to keep and what they would like to change and why.
Expectation setting is a two-way street. In additional to spelling out your expectations, it is vital you hear from your staff what they need from you. They may not have clear answers at first, so it is important to ask what they need from you throughout the project.
These initial conversations lay the foundation for your staff to take ownership so do not stint on your time or attention on goal and expectation setting. Throughout these conversations, verify that you are both 100% on the same page.
Freely share resources
As a part of empowering your staff to truly take the lead on the project they need access to all relevant resources.
Relevant resources may include written material, archival information, people with expertise, authority over project funds. You need to make sure they have all the tools they need.
If they ask for resources you had not identified, be open minded. Make sure you understand their rationale for the request. Recognize that the way you did things may not be the way they plan on getting the project done.
Allow them the opportunity to make their own mark and do things their own way.
This is often the hardest part as an Executive Director, you may believe you have determined the best way to get things done. But, if the goal is to truly grow leadership, it is smarter and more effective in the long run to loosen the reins.
Establishing Benchmarks and Check-ins
Part of setting expectations is breaking down the project into clear incremental benchmarks. All projects have a sequence and identifying benchmarks help translate the task into manageable steps. A benchmark should have a clear description of the completed task and an estimated due date.
These benchmarks keep the project on tasks and serves as agreed-upon mid-project assessment point. Mutually determined due dates allow you and your staff track progress in an objective way.
The second component of this step is when I see many EDs fall short. It is vitally important to have regularly scheduled check-ins throughout the project.
You cannot hand off a project and disappear.
Ideally you have set up a check-in schedule at the beginning when discussing goals and expectations. Make these check-ins a priority in your calendar.
The check ins should be semi-structured, you should have a clear sense of what you want covered during those meetings and your staff should do the same.
Resist the urge to solve the problems for them. As their thought partner, refer back to expectations and resources to give your staff what they need to figure things out. These check ins are a chance for your staff to shine and show their growth.
Celebrate and de-brief
Give honest and actionable feedback about what was done well and where there are areas for growth. Use the de-briefing as an opportunity for them to sharpen their self-awareness and assessment of their role in both the process as well as the outcome.
These four steps can help you grow the leadership and autonomy of your staff. When you have a more autonomous staff, you are freed up to attend to those big picture issues.
You can do it and I am here to help.