In Leadership Skills That Inspire Incredible Results, Fred Halstead shares his thoughts about one of a supervisor’s most important functions: delegation. Its benefits include the development of a direct report’s skills as a leader and manager; keeping what Bill Oncken characterizes as a “monkey” off the back of a supervisor; strengthening an organization’s executive “bench”; and freeing up a supervisor’s time and energy so they can focus on tasks more appropriate to their position.

Alas, many otherwise capable supervisors are poor delegators. Why? Halstead has identified these barriers:

1. Thinking you can the job better than anyone else. Halstead poses two key questions: “Who is the person who should be doing this?” And then, “What are the trade-offs of asking the best person to do this based on ability versus the best person based on developing and growing them and allowing you to do the things that create the highest value for the company?”

2. Not wanting to take the time to explain what you think needs to be done.  It’s time well-spent to explain the larger context. That is, making certain that the direct report understands “what needs to be done, why it needs to be done, and how it needs to be done” in relation to the Big or at least larger “picture.”

3. Not trusting the person to complete the given work successfully. It’s usually a good idea to be explicit:  “I have great confidence in your ability to achieve this.” If you don’t have that confidence, delegate to someone else. Never set up someone to fail.

4. Lack of clarity about the goal and what needs to be done to accomplish it. “Lack of clarity about the why, what, and how causes the most failed attempts at delegating.” Require the person to be held responsible — and accountable — to verbalize all three.  On occasion when delegating, it may be a good idea to let the person entrusted with the what be allowed to determine the how.

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Fred Halstead’s coaching of executives emphasizes understanding and taking full advantage of one’s strengths, discovery of powerful new ideas, accountability and measuring results. As a result of his work as an executive search consultant for 30 years, Fred has an understanding of the traits of high performing leaders and how those traits can be adapted to unique cultural environments. Fred is the only senior level executive coach in the US who is an academically trained coach and has decades of experience in understanding many healthcare organization’s cultures and assessing the leadership skills of hundreds of senior executives.

To learn more about Fred and his work, please click here.