The principles involved in stewardship delegation are correct and applicable to any kind of person or situation. With immature people, you specify fewer desired results and more guidelines, identify more resources, conduct more frequent accountability interviews, and apply more immediate consequences. With more mature people, you have more challenging desired results, fewer guidelines, less frequent accountability, and less measurable but more discernable criteria. Effective delegation is perhaps the best indicator of effective management simply because it is so basic to both personal and organizational growth.
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Whether you go to the concert or stay and work is really a small part of an effective decision. You might make the same choice with a number of other centers. But there are several important differences when you are coming from a principle-centered paradigm. First, you are not being acted upon by other people or circumstances. You are proactively choosing what you determine to be the best alternative. You make your decision consciously and knowledgeably. Second, you know your decision is most effective because it is based on
principles with predictable long-term results.
Effective people stay out of Quadrants III and IV because, urgent or not, they arenāt important. They also shrink Quadrant I down to size by spending more time in Quadrant II.
Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management. It deals with things that are not urgent, but are important. It deals with things like building relationships, writing a personal mission statement, long-range planning, exercising, preventive maintenance, preparationāall those things we know we need to do, but somehow seldom get around to doing, because they arenāt urgent.
Many people refuse to delegate to other people because they feel it takes too much time and effort and they could do the job better themselves. But effectively delegating to others is perhaps the single most powerful high-leverage activity there is. Transferring responsibility to other skilled and trained people enables you to give your energies to other high-leverage activities. Delegation means growth, both for individuals and for organizations. The late J. C. Penney was quoted as saying that the wisest decision he ever made was to ālet goā after realizing that he couldnāt do it all by himself any longer. That decision, made long ago, enabled the development and growth of hundreds of stores and thousands of people.
Stewardship delegation involves clear, up-front mutual understanding and commitment regarding expectations in five areas.
DESIRED RESULTS. Create a clear, mutual understanding of what needs to be accomplished, focusing on what, not how; results, not methods. Spend time. Be patient. Visualize the desired result. Have the person see it, describe it, make out a quality statement of what the results will look like, and by when they will be accomplished.
GUIDELINES. Identify the parameters within which the individual should operate. These should be as few as possible to avoid methods delegation, but should include any formidable restrictionsā¦
If you know the failure paths of the job, identify them. Be honest and openātell a person where the quicksand is and where the wild animals are. You donāt want to have to reinvent the wheel every day. Let people learn from your mistakes or the mistakes of others. Point out the potential failure paths, what not to do, but donāt tell them what to do. Keep the responsibility for results with themāto do whatever is necessary within the guidelines.
RESOURCES. Identify the human, financial, technical, or organizational resources the person can draw on to accomplish the desired results.
ACCOUNTABILITY. Set up the standards of performance that will be used in evaluating the results and the specific times when reporting and evaluation will take place.
CONSEQUENCES. Specify what will happen, both good and bad, as a result of the evaluation. This could include such things as financial rewards, psychic rewards, different job assignments, and natural consequences tied into the overall mission of an organization.
Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people. But it takes time and patience, and it doesnāt preclude the necessity to train and develop people so that their competency can rise to the level of that trust. I am convinced that if stewardship delegation is done correctly, both parties will benefit and ultimately much more work will get done in much less time. I believe that a family that is well organized, whose time has been spent effectively delegating on a one-on-one basis, can organize the work so that everyone can do everything in about an hour a day. But that takes the internal capacity to want to manage, not just to produce. The focus is on effectiveness, not efficiency.