Delegation is a vital practice for leadership teams, but it can be an uncomfortable one to put into practice. For some insight, review our article 6 Mantras for Managing Self-Organizing Teams. Refusing to delegate can result in overloaded managers and missed learning and growth opportunities for team members. We share some real-world experience regarding The Reality of Organizing a Self-Organizing Team in this past post.
The Management 3.0 philosophy identifies seven levels of delegation:
- Tell – I (the manager) will make the decision and tell the team
- Sell – I will make the decision and try to sell it to the team
- Consult – I will consult with the team and then decide
- Agree – The team and I will agree together
- Advise – I will advise the team but they will decide
- Inform – The team will decide and inform me afterwards
- Delegate – The team will decide and does not need to inform me
Different teams and different decisions require different delegation approaches. Consider creating a working agreement with your team that outlines decisions that may need to be made, and the approach that will be used for each of those decisions.