I, Dallas Travers, am a [recovering] drive-by delegator. In the past, I’ve struggled with delegating. I’ve thought about passing a job off to a team member, and then decided it would be easier and quicker to do it myself. This might make sense, but it definitely creates a glass ceiling on what I can create because I’m only one person with 24 hours in each day.
Or, when I did actually pass a job off to my team, I wouldn’t take the time to clearly outline what results I wanted to accomplish. This forced my team to check in often to make sure they were “doing it right.” Or just guess at what the hell I was talking about and “do it wrong” because they couldn’t read my mind.
Thankfully, my drive-by delegating stopped, thanks to tools learned from Dan Sullivan at Strategic Coach. I now incorporate what I’m gonna call deep-dish delegating. (Not gonna lie…pretty excited about that name.)
Here’s what it looks like:
Step One: Envision the end product.
BEFORE you give a job to anyone on your team, envision what criteria needs to be met in order for the project to be labeled successful.
For example, let’s say I want to pass off Facebook ads to my social media manager. Rather than saying, “Can you take over FB ads for me? The budget is $500 a month,” I need to be specific about the expectations I have in order for me to feel 100% satisfied with her performance. She also needs to know what my expectations are so she can feel empowered to knock her job out of the park.
Here’s what success criteria looks like for me in this example:
This project will be successful when the following criteria are met on or before April 30, 2016:
- Design Facebook ads whose images reflect the look and feel of my brand using my signature colors, fonts, and logo.
- Use Facebook ads to increase engagement by a minimum of 20%.
- Convert Facebook fans to email subscribers increasing my mailing list by at least 100 new people per month.
- Review Facebook’s pixels and reports to deliver a weekly summary to me letting me know what’s working, and what’s not.
- Provide me with suggestions for improvement.
- Come in under my $500 monthly budget. #NoPressure
Step two: Trust your team to take care of the how.
You’ve crystallized what success looks like. Now it’s time to EMPOWER your team to execute like the rock stars that they are. You don’t need to worry about how they meet your criteria, just that they will. This is a tough one for me, because I sure like to be in control. But I’ve learned (the hard way) that micromanaging is the opposite of helpful.
And when my team has autonomy, they’ll beat expectations.
So, the opportunity here is to enable your team to draw from their own creativity and expand on areas of knowledge where you might be limited. You’ll know when the job is done and if it’s done well.
How?
Because you’ve described, from the beginning, what done well looks like. Now you don’t have to stress and they don’t have to guess. #WhatARelief.
