One of the leadership competences is achieving results. Managers are often required to act, not with their own hands, but with the hands of their employees. As managers tend to be highly responsible, motivated, and action-oriented, they often get frustrated when they tell others what to do and they don’t do it, or don’t do it in the way the manager imagined. In this case, employees are seen as irresponsible and unaccountable.
How many times have I heard managers say that “we agreed on what needed to be done and the team members still did not do it”.
Doing a task, and doing anything in general, is a very complex process, unless it is already routine and completing it means repeating roughly the usual, familiar steps.
For us to perform and to be accountable, firstly to ourselves and then to others, the following criteria must be met:
- “What I intend to achieve (goal and actions) is important to me and to others. Achieving it will have good consequences or failing to act will have very unpleasant consequences.” Such awareness has a strong motivational power. Awareness is different to the external voices, which can threaten the promise of awards.
- “The action and the goal are in line with all my values and do not create a dilemma or a value conflict for me.”
- “I have a fairly clear vision of what the final implementation will look like, and I can see the first step very clearly, because that is where the journey starts. Often it is only when I have taken the first step, that I will be able to understand what the second, third and other steps are.”
- “I know that I have internal and external resources. Internal resources can be knowledge, expertise, direct and indirect skills, the right attitudes, the right state of mind, etc. External resources can be other people and the necessary aids (mental and physical).”
- Seeing, feeling, measuring progress. We do not naturally look at progress, but at the distance not yet covered. However, progress gives us hope, joy, pride, energy, a sense of competence, self-confidence and nourishes perseverance.
- Positive emotions during the process (the more steps that trigger positive emotions, the easier and more fun it will be to act).
- “A system that makes it easier to remember the plan and to take new steps alongside all the other steps in my life. For example, at the moment I have a new project that I am involved in alongside all the other things I am doing (all the previous criteria have been met), but there is no space in my life for this project. Therefore, I have to rearrange my existing system so that the new actions fit organically into it.”
Does it seem complex? It is. But when all the criteria are met, well, maybe not perfectly, but to a large extent, then it is easy to act.
Delegation is not just about assigning and communicating what is expected (by the way, often communication is also superficial because there are a lot of untested assumptions), but a whole process that helps the employee to have clarity and a feeling that they can and want to do it.