FireFly Facilitation

With tighter budgets and fewer staff, we could all benefit from a defter touch in the way we delegate. Here are three habits commonly held by effective delegators.

1) They paint a picture of what success looks like at the end of the project.

When delegating, read the final chapter first. Time may prohibit you from explaining the details of how you would like the plot to be written. However, don’t let that prevent you from giving clear direction on how the story should end.

2) They define deadlines and goals.

Vague requests like, “Can you make that happen?” or orders such as, “Be sure it gets done,” are sorry excuses for delegation. The person to whom you’re delegating should know specifically what must done and exactly when the assignment needs to be finished. For the purposes of accountability, it pays to document deadlines and goals in an email.

3) They provide a compelling reason for the particular delegation.

“Because I said so” may work on your 3-year old, but won’t cut it when dealing with a fellow professional. As the leader, it’s your responsibility to articulate the reasoning behind assigning work to your team. Use delegation as an opportunity to affirm both the person you’re delegating to and the value of the task being delegated.

For instance, you may want to point to the assignee’s:

• Unique skill or giftedness for the job
• Experience and qualifications for the project
• Enjoyment or interest in the work
• Reliability or trustworthiness

Or, you may highlight the task’s:

• Strategic significance
• Potential to bring about growth
• Importance to you personally

There is minimal wasted energy in the glow of a firefly. Incredibly, 96 percent of the energy that a firefly uses to create light is actually converted into visible light. Compare that to a typical light bulb, which converts only 10 percent into light and uselessly expends the remainder. Fireflies know how to shine without creating heat—without wasting energy on unnecessary conflict.

Leaders are the gatekeepers of conflict—monitoring the degree to which it manifests itself within team dynamics. They allow conflict when it generates light, but defuse conflict when it serves only to raise the tempers and temperatures of those involved. However, what if you, as the leader, keep falling into useless arguments and petty debates?

From a healthy tension, conflict can easily boil over into a destructive war of personalities. Here are three pieces of advice to prevent you from stumbling into wasteful conflicts.

1) Start with the heart. Clarify your goals and intentions up front. Be honest and sincere in your motivations.

2) Innocent until proven guilty. Give the other person the benefit of the doubt. It’s easy to be suspicious of their motives and ascribe rotten qualities to them in the heat of the moment. Remain composed and seek their perspective, even when it seems to make no sense.

3) Mirror, mirror on the wall. Evaluate your own motivations when you find yourself ensnared in a fiery debate. Sometimes our prejudices and predispositions make us unreasonable. Looking in the mirror makes us aware of our underlying desires and enables us to communicate in a more levelheaded way.

It’s been said, “Variety is the spice of life,” but for many managers the spiciness of diversity causes heartburn. Leading a team would be much easier if one size fit all. However, the reality for managers involves cleverly tailoring roles, reward structures, and recognition. In doing so, leaders have to balance unique treatment of dissimilar personalities with a uniform application of fairness.

Diversity in the workplace goes much deeper than race, gender, job title, or even daily responsibilities. Leaders have to discover how team members think, what drives them, where their strengths shine, and so on. Leaders light the way by making this kind of inquiry a priority, and by creating the tools and processes that allow people to see one another in a new light.

Here’s a practical application to illuminate diversity on your team and reap benefits from it.

At the close of a week, gather your team together. Give each person ten minutes to make two lists:

List #1 – Three work activities from the past week that felt draining or tedious.

List #2 – Three job activities from the past week that felt enjoyable and invigorating.

Do not discuss the lists as a group; simply collect them after the ten minutes are over. Repeat the exercise each week for a month.

At the month’s close, convene a team meeting. During the meeting, assign each person to share one recurring activity they enjoy and do well. Also, have them talk about one regular activity they dislike and find draining.

This simple exercise will bring awareness of the various strengths and weaknesses on your team. Over the course of the meeting you may want to reshuffle a few tasks or open avenues for team members to volunteer their strengths in new ways.