Set guidelines
You have to be effective at delegating to be an inspirational leader who creates a team environment.
You may think you are delegating by pushing off tasks that don’t interest you and telling other people to take care of them.
But, that’s not the case.
“One of the things I learned early in business life is you can delegate but you can never abdicate,” he says. “If you give someone a task to do and they are not able to do it, you are abdicating that responsibility and I can never abdicate my responsibility.”
Abdicating your responsibilities can create chaos. You have to have systems in place to guide employees so they know what they are doing when you give them a task or a problem to solve.
MacKechnie refers to setting up guidelines and then delegating as a culture of discipline.
“When you have a culture of discipline, you need less hierarchy and people can be left alone and they can be encouraged to grow and blossom without someone looking over their shoulder all the time,” he says. “Typically, you and I don’t want someone looking over (our) shoulder all the time. That’s not fun. We want it to be fun.”
For instance, a branch leader at Amscot is trained to follow procedures from the minute he or she enters the parking lot to the minute the branch leader leaves. While that sounds like it may create a stifling environment, MacKechnie sees it as quite the opposite.
“I would say it does the reverse,” he says. “It frees them. It frees them because they now know beyond that, it’s just looking at customers.”
You have to explain to employees that the rules and guidelines aren’t meant to micromanage them. That gives employees a better idea of what is expected of them, and gives them the freedom to make decisions within the set guidelines.
“If you create these strong procedures, you can leave people,” he says. “You can leave the branch leader once they know these procedures, … [and] then we can delegate because they know the procedures and they can be more empowered to go help customers.”
You want to monitor what you’ve delegated, but you also want to show faith in your employees.
“You have to go back to trust and verify,” he says. “But you’ll never grow your business if you can’t delegate.”
