If you never were in a CEOs shoes, a thought that may come to your mind surely is: "It's easy to be a leader! They just delegate!" Unfortunately, CEOs would say, it's not simple.
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aders must delegate, that's for sure, but if you think about it, you can see that no company will pay millions for the leader to go around and talk "You do this, you do that." As any other duty a CEO has, delegating requires a bit of knowledge and a lot of experience.
We can give you that bit of knowledge and you can expand on it on the spot.
The first thing is to delegate to the lowest level.
That means that the employee who is nearest to the task is the best for the job. As a CEO, you can delegate to the nearest subordinate, she to her subordinate, and the task can go down through several level until it reaches a particular worker. This is bad habit.
First, you are losing time: every communication needs time, thus more communication levels, more time spent.
Second, when many people communicate there is a good chance error will occur, from simple ones to a really big one when "Do it" becomes "Don't do it." So, find who can directly do the job and tell her to do it.
The next thing to have in mind is to include your people in the process of delegating.
Ask "Who's the best for the job?" even if you know who that is. You will show your people that you trust their judgement, and at the same time you will see do they know their team inside out.
It is also good to ask directly "Who's ready to jump on this problem?"
Every employee who's staring at the floor should be high on your list to pay attention too, from additional motivation to showing her the door.
Also, pay attention to "Me! Me!" workers.
It is good to show motivation, but do not allow one worker to jump on every possible opportunity - give other a chance to show what they know. They may just be slower with answering, that doesn't mean they are not interested.
One of the most common mistake an inexperienced leader may make is to delegate this way: "Do it."
You should clearly state what has to be done, why, what resources are on hand, and in the end why you choose that paticular employee to do it. That shows that you know what you are doing and that you are not one of those "I DON'T CARE! JUST DO IT!" bosses.
And after you delegate work, leave your people alone because that's the point: others should do their job and you should stick with yours.
But what if things go south? Of course, it's easy to say "That's Tom's fault!" but in fact it's your fault. And if you think that's not fair... I couldn't care less.
Your shareholders don't care. The market doesn't care. Nobody cares about Tom or John, Mary or Lucy - you are the face of the company.
It's your job to manage people and processes so if Tom did something wrong that's on you. Maybe you chose the wrong person for the job, maybe Tom has not enough resources, maybe there's another reason...
Anyway, as a CEO you are responsible for the whole company and every mistake will end up on your shoulders in the end.
And a bonus tip: While explaining to your shareholders or the market what went wrong, don't say "It's Tom's fault." You have only two options: "We made a mistake" or "Our company made a mistake."
Why? Because "He did that!" is something kids in the kindergarten say when they want to blame somebody else, that's not what adult do. And even kids learn that's not appropriate behavior.
If you follow great companies and their leaders, you can see that their CEOs are always a buffer zone before the outside world and their workers. All problems you have should be dealt with in-house.
Of course, there are even big companies that go public with "Our team in Detroid made a mistake. That's their fault!" and that's exactly the reason they are big but not great. ■