Delegate effectively
Good communication plays into effective delegation. There is
more than one way you can delegate responsibility to your
employees, so you have to make yourself clear on what you want.
“One type of delegation is that you’re telling someone to decide
what to do, then inform you about the progress,” Mullany says.
“Another kind is to tell someone to make a decision, then go ahead
with it — don’t inform me. A third type is to tell someone to make
a recommendation and we’ll work together on it. A fourth would
be to make a recommendation on it, but I’ll make the decision.
“So it’s important to avoid miscommunication and bad feelings,
and to make sure that doesn’t happen, people need to understand
the level of delegation you’re handing them. Then, when you delegate, you need to delegate both the responsibility and the authority to make it happen. If you delegate the responsibility and not the
authority, whatever you were planning isn’t going to happen, and
you are going to put the person in a no-win situation.”
Even if you’ve given others control over a project or department,
you need to keep supplying them with resources, which means
you need to stay in contact with them. Part of delegating authority
is giving them the authority to contact their superiors and request
what they need to get the job done.
“A leader has to make sure the person has what they need to do
the job,” Mullany says. “That includes the information, the authority and the understanding among everyone that this person has your
support.
“In some cases, I might know upfront the resources they need. In
most cases, they’ll start executing the project or whatever it is, and
I’ll tell them to come back if they need any help. They might come
back and tell me that they’ve started, but they need more information, more money or more time. But they need to understand from
me that my door is open and that we in management want dialogue and feedback. If they understand that, they’ll feel comfortable with coming back to management.”
Along with communication, training is a key component in
grooming employees capable of receiving delegated responsibility
and authority. A leader will not be able to deliver the best results
without a properly prepared team.
“The most critical element of delegation is to surround yourself with great people who you trust,” Mullany says. “The
stronger the team and the higher the trust factor, the more you
will have managers willing to delegate and people who are willing to take on that responsibility.
“The best business lesson I’ve learned is to surround yourself
with good people. I’ve seen leaders who have great people and had great results. But I’ve also seen very smart individuals who
didn’t have a good team and didn’t deliver the results.”
You have to develop your people, which means they have to
have confidence in the company’s leaders. That comes back to a
common theme in business: “Promise what you’ll deliver, and
then deliver what you promised,” Mullany says.
“That’s important to me. I have that on the wall of my office,
right next to my door, so people see it when they walk in to my
office and know that’s what I believe.”
HOW TO REACH: Wal-Mart Stores Inc., www.Wal-Mart.com
