Disappointed to delegate?
One of the problems I hear very often with managers is that their teams don’t commit to the work and they (managers) end up solving everything. Also, something I often hear is “I have to do everything if I want things done well.” No doubt this is a serious problem, but it has a solution, and the solution is not to leave more things on the manager’s side.
A few months ago I began to accompany a new manager, he wanted to empower his team in making some decisions, and he felt very frustrated at not achieving it. He knew that the team was very novice to do so, however, he preferred to take the risk and support them in case any decision brought any bad consequences.
We agreed on some actions and for a few weeks, everything seemed to be going well, until he told me that the team took a step back and they asked him to make all the decisions. I decided to talk to the team and there I discovered something interesting, in fact, the team no longer made decisions despite having the consent to do so.
They told me that they experimented, however from the first days they ended up being scolded for every decision they made, so when they were scolded for making mistakes, again and again, they decided to stop doing it and have their manager do it, so as not to affect the operation anymore.
With this, I concluded that the team didn’t have enough confidence to decide due to the lack of experience and support, because everything they did seemed to affect the operation. On the other side, the manager was disappointed since he felt that the team didn’t want to be responsible and overwhelmed by having so many things on his side, he was probably not aware of the impact of his actions when the team decides something.
I was sure that the binary way of delegation (“I delegate you” or “I don’t delegate you”) was not working and did not allow the team to feel accompanied in the decision-making process and have that learning that would allow them to be more effective in it. Neither allowed the leader to feel confident about what was happening. That is why I decided that a good practice would be to use the Delegation Poker from Management 3.0.
The Delegation Poker is like a card game, in our hands, we will have 7 cards, which will be our delegation levels. We could say that these levels are divided into three, in the first block of 3 cards, the leader’s decision predominates, in the second block and with a single card we have a democratic decision and in the third block of three cards the team’s decision predominates. In the blocks with three cards, the end is that the protagonist decides for himself without consulting, which we could say is an absolute responsibility, a total delegation. The following refers to making the decision and then sharing the reason for the decision. The latter seeks to consult for more information and then make a more informed decision.
I asked the team to make a list of activities and decisions first, and for each element, each member would select the appropriate level of delegation, and they will discuss until they reach an agreement on the best for the current moment.
This allowed everyone to know each other’s perspective better by reflexing on each item on the list and establishing some future actions, for example, “Negotiating with other suppliers” was at a level 5 (they would be previously advised by the Manager, however, they will decide how to do it), and in the next retrospective they will review how they did with the delegation-level, and if they felt ready they could go to level 6 (after they decided, the manager would ask them about it). It is worth mentioning that their Manager wanted them to have level 7 in all, total delegation.
After 4 weeks, I was pleasantly surprised when I returned and I found that the team members were happy with the current levels of delegation (only one had changed since our session). They told me what they felt most confident about the new way of Delegating, that they were no longer afraid of making decisions. For his part, the Manager told me that he was calmer since he wasn’t so pressured to make all the decisions as before and that he already relied more on the ability of the team.
It is interesting how this practice opens up a range of possibilities, in this anecdote the team did not feel sure to be assertive in their decisions because of the lack experience they had and the Manager wanted to press them to do so, and when there were bad results, the boys they left the delegation they had been given.
I believe that this is why we have always seen the delegation as something binary, and I consider it something that should have more nuances, as Management 3.0 shows us. We could make the analogy with a baby, you can’t put it to walk because it still doesn’t have so much strength in the legs, and surely if you try to do it, he will fall, and that will hurt both the baby and the parents, so It happens with the delegation.
The agreements that result from Delegation Poker I recommend that be registered somewhere, commonly called the Delegation Board, a place that would help them follow up and keep the agreements in the mind. You can also accompany some columns to analyze the effectiveness of each delegation in each retrospective. If it works well for a few weeks, one might think of going up to the next level, otherwise one should think about lowering the level of delegation.
Without a doubt, we must keep in mind that the delegation must also be part of the experimentation environment. We must experiment until we find the right delegation-levels, for this it is important to have short feedback cycles that allow us to act instead of just complaining.
So, if you are disappointed to delegate … Do you want to stay the same or would you like to experiment with the Delegation Poker? I share with you the Google Spread Sheets template of the Delegation Board and its follow-up in retrospectives.
If you try it, I would love to know how it went.
Thank you for reading!