During a recession, there is a tendency to focus on business to the exclusion of people. Ralph Nader once said that he “starts with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” In business this is certainly true, and a strong management team is a hallmark of a healthy business.
Time must be spent finding the stars, looking for those with the skills, talents, experience and attitude the company will need for the transition and beyond. They must be evaluated honestly to determine if they possess, or show the potential to develop, the skills to either step up into a higher or different position. What better time to see what people are made up of than now? Putting together individual development plans will help them get there. Their success and that of the leader, however, rests on the leader being able to let go.
A department or a business should be able to run without the leader as a standard operating procedure. Many leaders, however, work in the business, not on it, and can in fact become bottlenecks for decision making and speedier progress. Being too hands-on may feel powerful or necessary, but in fact it stops business progress and the development of the team’s management skills.
If, after an honest look in the mirror, a business leader realizes this is a problem, she should consider actively look for ways to develop and delegate to the appropriate people. She should think about what their own core competencies are, and what their highest level of contribution can be to the company, and keep those as part of their work. Those that fall outside the highest contribution areas should be considered for immediate delegation as a development tool.
Once those tasks are successfully entrusted to others and the executive sees their own strategic productivity rise, those tasks that enable the most professional development of others are next to be delegated. Empowering others powers the organization forward to its new future. Finally, it should be kept foremost in mind that it is best to delegate whole pieces of work as opposed to just tasks. The employee learns more by viewing how it all works together, and the business owner lets more work go to someone else.
Effective professional development and delegation is an important and powerful tool that some leaders hesitate to use. This may be a result of perfectionism, fear of surrendering authority or a reluctance to release work one personally enjoys doing. A good leader, paraphrasing Theodore Roosevelt to reflect the WITI constituency, should have “sense enough to pick good (wo)men to do what (s)he wants done, and the self restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”