Category: News

By Sam Warner, Toastmasters International club

Why have a dog and bark yourself?  You might have heard of this expression – and it’s certainly true.  The trick is to find the balance between delegating effectively and becoming Teflon-coated and not doing any of the work yourself.

In my experience, far too often companies promote members of staff into leadership roles and then develop them once there, instead of giving them the tools to do the job first and then promoting them into the role once equipped. When this happens, the new leader is left unsupported and drowning.  New leaders are often under the impression they must prove themselves so they want to get a lot achieved in their first year – but they risk burn-out if they try to do it all themselves.  A sign of a great leader is one who is confident enough to delegate effectively.

Delegation provides opportunities for people to feel empowered, supported and encouraged.  It also gives the leader a chance to dial-down overwhelm and stress by spreading out the workload amongst the team. 

Here are 10 tips to help you delegate more effectively:

1. Clear goals. Be really clear about your vision and mission and share it with your team.  If they understand the direction the team is going in, and the objectives that need to be achieved they will start to think about how they can contribute.

2. Ask for help.  If employees feel respected they will offer to help you to achieve your objectives and goals.  You have to be clear about what’s in it for them.  They need to know you are the kind of leader who rewards effort and is there to help them succeed.  A good saying is that “your success is only achieved through theirs” – and you have to mean it and let them know this is how you operate.  There’s no room for insecurity or game playing if you want to be an effective leader who delegates easily.  If they can see your vulnerable side, where you are not perfect, where you make mistakes and don’t have all the answers, they will know that you value consulting with them and leveraging their knowledge and experience when solving problems. Ultimately, they will feel respected and valued.

3. Small steps. If you are new to the role of leader or you have a new team – don’t go in like the proverbial bull in a china shop.  Don’t start making changes in the first three months.  Instead use this time to get to know the team, understand their ways of working, rules of engagement, foibles, idiosyncrasies and preferred styles of communication and you’ll be able to appreciate their world as it stands – before you add to it.  Really get to grips with their deliverables, and understand their touchpoints with other teams, their concerns and challenges.  These small steps will pay off massively in the long run.

4. Great feedback. If you can’t give great feedback that is useful and useable then it will become very challenging for you to delegate a second time.  You need to give them specific examples of where things went well and why that was great or didn’t go so well, help them articulate how they might mitigate that in the future so that the issues melt away. Reward them, in a meaningful way, for their efforts. Deliver valuation and feedback that supports their career goals and identifies training and development opportunities.

5. Skill sharing and enhancement.  Is there a task that needs to be done that uses a very specific skill set – even if you have someone with the skills already – is this a chance to upskill a more junior member of the team? By ensuring that you have no silos (individuals with special skill sets that are potential single-point-of-failures if absent), delegating tasks across the team will upskill them and ensure that no-one, when they return from holiday or other absence, is faced with a pile of work – because it’s been absorbed by the team.  This will create a harmonious team working environment where everyone feels like their team mates have their backs.  When people are in this mindset – they are willing to take on other initiatives to help.  It reduces stress and absenteeism as an added bonus!

6. Ask for ideas.  If it’s a viable idea ask the team member to lead on it, with you as a consultant (so they don’t feel isolated or vulnerable). This raises their profile, makes them feel respected and gives them a specific deliverable which so many jobs rely on to prove that the individual is delivering work over and above the standard job description.  This is important in competitive corporate climates. You can build a culture of problem solving by being genuinely approachable and easy to work with.  If you don’t want people to bring you problems to solve – ask your team to bring you solutions and ideas instead.  They will feel empowered to try to figure out how to fix things before approaching you for approval to go ahead; thereby discouraging whinging and moaning about problems which they then expect you to solve. 

7.  Tell them why before how – and be specific.  Humans are not robots – they need to understand why a task has to be done to understand the value they are delivering.  Only then will they be able to absorb the policy, process and procedures; the nuts and bolts of the task.  You should feel comfortable explaining the why – so the employee can see how it fits in to the bigger picture and can feel part of something beyond themselves.  If the task you are asking them to do serves no purpose and hangs over from the past “We’ve always done it” then reassess it and define its value before asking someone to spend time on a seemingly pointless task. When delivering instructions for a task – start with the end in mind and be specific about the desired end result. Clearly outline the lines of accountability, responsibility and authority. Be extra clear on touch points/milestones and deadlines – get them diarised. Organise a review once the work has ended so you can give feedback (see no.4). Don’t be tempted to focus on how they got there, just focus on the results achieved.

8. Most of your team members will be unconsciously incompetent. For this reason, it’s really important to nourish them when completing new tasks.  Support them, advise them and check in with them (without micromanaging them) agree set times to check in so that they can reassure you they are working through it, and ask any questions they may have.  There has to be a level of trust and smothering someone daily by asking them if they have completed a task yet serves no-one.  Set an agreed deadline and adjust it (with mutual agreement) along the way if necessary; it is the professional way to approach task completion.

9. Choose the right person.  Getting to know your team will help you to build mutual rapport, trust and respect.  Its these things that help you decide whom to delegate to as you’ll know if they are able to cope with the work, or if it’s too much of a stretch – both in workload and difficulty.  Take time to get to know how they like to be rewarded and why they come to work every day – then you will understand what words to choose when you are being persuasive and encouraging to them. There’s no point in overloading someone with too much work or give them a lot of new things – you’ll just watch them fall.  It’s important to get to know your employees’ limitations so that you can push them a little but not drown them.  There is no point in fostering the “sink or swim” mentality as you’ll lose key players in your team and build distrust and resentment. Choose wisely.

10. Become self-aware. Understanding your impact on others will greatly enhance your charisma, your ability to delegate effectively and your listening skills. Seek to understand first, then question.  Listening is the most useful skill you can cultivate.  It validates the person speaking, and makes them feel heard.  It allows you to be a safe sounding board for all sorts of things in the team.  Ask for feedback from your team (it’s not a one-way street you know) and respond to that feedback if you can so they know you are paying attention and adapting.  Let the team see how you interact with senior members of staff so you can show by example how you would like to be treated. Most leaders are followers too.

Lastly, I recommend you cultivate the power of persuasion.  It’s amazing how influential you can become when you say quietly to someone “I can see you doing X.  I think you’d be really great at that, why don’t you give it a try?” Remember team leaders are there to lead the team and make decisions, NOT to do all of the work.

3 things powerful immigrant professionals have in common that can propel any aspiring workplace ‘outsider’

Being an outsider in the workplace is tough. Doubly so if you’re both a woman and an immigrant, two characteristics that can make your professional life a great deal more difficult. And when you’re trying to lead a team on top of having any type of perceived “outsider” status–people who share an upbringing you weren’t part of or set of meaningful experiences that you don’t have–it can seem impossible to feel the kind of engagement and respect to make professional headway.

But the outlook isn’t nearly as hopeless as it may appear, says Chinwe Esimai, Chief Anti-Bribery Officer at Citigroup–the first to hold the title in the bank’s history. The same ingredients that might seem at first to be insurmountable disadvantages for outsiders can instead become the fuel for success. Esimai has both been through it herself and seen it done amongst others in seemingly compromising professional circumstances.

Esimai spent 17 years in Nigeria before arriving in the U.S. A Harvard-educated lawyer, today she leads global initiatives to combat corruption and is a regular speaker at formidable international organizations like the United Nations. Throughout her career, she has met extraordinarily successful (and fundamentally extraordinary) aspiring female immigrants who have aptly leveraged their ostensibly prohibitive backgrounds to propel themselves forward in the workplace.

“It’s like being struck by lightning when you meet these women,” Esimai said. “There’s this instant kinship because of the shared experience and realizing we’ve all faced the same challenges.”

However, what was particularly striking about the expat powerhouses Esimai has met is that nearly all of them possess certain traits that have helped them excel in the modern American business environment (and beyond in many cases); ones that she hopes ambitious immigrant leaders today, both men and women, can take inspiration from.

The 3 Things Powerful Professional Immigrant Women Have in Common

 1) We All Have That Instinct To Blend In. They Ignore It.

Some people spend an obscene amount of time and effort trying to stand out. Others don’t like attention. But as an immigrant, you don’t get that choice. You speak another language. Maybe you have an accent. You are almost certainly used to different foods, holidays and music. Ultimately, you carry a unique viewpoint that can’t help but draw attention and the first instinct of many is to downplay this difference, to hide it.

Except this can be a huge mistake. The truth is that successful immigrant leaders need to stand out in some way, and it’s been determined that powerful women tend to be even more assertive than men. Developing the confidence to do that means drawing from experiences unique to you and, most of the time, that’s a byproduct of how and where you grew up.

“I would not be able to lead the initiatives I have against bribery and corruption if it weren’t for my experiences making me the person I am…It’s be impossible,” Esimai said. Few of my peers understood how normalized some of these practices were and this gave me a unique perspective on how to develop solutions.”

How can you take advantage of what makes you different? For one, ensure that you are not the person holding yourself back. Remind yourself that you deserve to be there and be confident in your own experience and judgement. This will radiate outwards and affect how others see you. If you’re in a situation where you find you have special insight into a problem, and nobody in the room is saying what you think should be said, silence your inner critic and go for it!

Remember, influential leaders rarely get to where they are by simply repeating what everyone else does or amenably agreeing with what others say. They certainly don’t apologize for their own distinct thoughts.

ActioNet founder and Taiwanese immigrant Ashley Chen cites the quote that pushed her to build her $360 million business: “Action without vision is a nightmare, and vision without action is only a daydream.”

 2) They Excise Self-Limiting Behaviors (And Excuses).

It goes without saying that immigrants or any perceived workplace “outsider” faces certain obstacles because of their unique circumstances. If you identify with these labels, you might not expect that one of the biggest of these can be the limits imposed by your own mind. But, there’s a particularly common one amongst immigrant women that those who break through have aptly transcended.

“Shyness is an epidemic,” Esimai laments. “There’s nothing inherently wrong with being shy, but it often stems from a lack of self-confidence that is almost always undeserved.”

Often, immigrants tell themselves that they don’t have the qualifications or language skills to speak up or volunteer for a project, cutting them out of valuable opportunities to advance their career. Studies find that doubts based on these self-inflicted stereotypes persist even when professionals are explicitly told otherwise.

If you have a similar shyness problem, remind yourself that you don’t need to fit every qualification for a role or project. You will learn what you need as you go. One of the best pieces of advice Esimai ever received was, “What you don’t know, you will figure out;” wisdom that’s been substantiated time and time again in her own professional experiences. And it’s an essential mindset to learn, because being willing to face challenges you’ve never encountered before so that you can overcome them is crucial to your growth, both as a professional and certainly to elevate to team leadership status.

But self-limiting behaviors are about more than just a lack of confidence. They are labels we apply to ourselves to justify certain actions we take—or don’t take. For instance, not attending that networking event you know you should go to because you’re an “introvert.” Or not correcting a team member’s behavior because you’re a “bottom-up leader.”

“All the great leaders I know engage in regular and rigorous self-examination,” Esimai continued. “They’re constantly thinking about where they want to be, what they want to achieve and how to get there.”

Do the same for your professional approach and goals at large, and take a hard look at the labels you put on your own character—whether negative or even self-inflating. Are any preventing you from being an effective leader? Often, we put undermining labels on ourselves simply because certain things make us momentarily uncomfortable, not because we’ll actually suffer harm from doing them. Reportedly, that feeling of discomfort mixed with excitement you sometimes get is often caused by new information entering the brain. The next time you say “no,” consider why you’re making that choice and what the upside would be if you course corrected. 

 3) They Define Themselves, Instead Of Letting Others Do It For Them.

You likely have experienced no shortage of people trying to put you into neat, nicely labeled boxes. Whether you’re an immigrant or a perceived outsider for some other reason, some might immediately make disparaging judgement calls about your level of education, ability, experience or other key factors for professional growth. Being a woman comes with its own set of assumptions, of which ladies likely need no reminder.

Many of the people you will meet, both professionally and otherwise, will invariably come to certain conclusions regarding how you should act and who you should become. This “well-intentioned” advice will come from coworkers, bosses and, of course, family. So, what is the key to effectively utilizing that advice … or knowing when to turn a deaf ear to those recommendations and judgements and plot your own unexampled course?

“Irrelevant or outright bad advice is inevitable,” Esimai noted. The clearest way to discern which feedback fits that description is already knowing where you want to go, how you intend to get there and believing you can make it so. Those doing something unusual must have thicker skin and dwell a little bit less on what people think of them. After all, it’s been found that only 13 percent of immigrant women pursue a profession.

In one noteworthy account, Indra Nooyi, former CEO of Pepsi-Co, lamented that her decision to attend Yale resulted in a family gathering where relatives debated whether or not she could go, because sending an unmarried young girl off to the United States alone was considered scandalous. But, she stuck to her vision and became one of the world’s most powerful executives.

Ultimately, it comes down to believing that the best person to makes decisions about you, and for you, is you! Have confidence and even brazen certainty that the path you set out upon is achievable.

 Perhaps The Most Important Trait Of All…

You don’t have to do any of the above alone, nor should you. A universal trait amongst the top leaders Esimai has engaged with is their keen ability to work with other people to achieve their goals.

It’s easier to embrace your differences when you have others who share it. This is the case with both male and female immigrants, women in general or even those with handicaps or anything that makes them look, feel or be perceived as different. You notice your own self-limiting behaviors faster when you have a friend who can give you that extra pair of eyes. A mentor or coach who has already walked a similar path to yours can give you hope and inspiration that you can walk it too.

Reach out to others. Tap into your unique advantages without apology. And believe that yes, you really can do it.

“There are so many brilliant people out there from diverse backgrounds that will go on to do amazing things,” Esimai assures. “They just need to embrace who they are, what they believe and in their ability to exceed expectations.”

By Merilee Kern, MBA. As the Executive Editor and Producer of “The Luxe List,” Merilee Kern is an internationally-regarded brand analyst, strategist and futurist. As a prolific branding and marketplace trends pundit, Merilee spotlights noteworthy industry innovators, change makers, movers and shakers. Experts, brands, products, services, destinations and events across all categories are spotlighted in her exclusive cross-media platform that reaches multi-millions each month through several syndication channels: print and online publications as well as broadcast TV and terrestrial radio. Connect with her at www.TheLuxeList.com / Instagram www.Instagram.com/LuxeListReviews / Twitter www.Twitter.com/LuxeListEditor / Facebook www.Facebook.com/TheLuxeList / LinkedIN www.LinkedIn.com/in/MerileeKern