Delegate Away Your Meetings

Domain: Execution - Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

If your team absolutely needs you in meetings, that's a sign of a larger problem.

One the things I work-on with leaders of high-performing teams is getting them to the point where meetings can be effectively ran without them.

After all, you don't want progress to stop when you find yourself with conflicting meetings, traveling to see a client or simply taking some much deserved time off.

In fact, many meetings can be made more effective by the leader removing themselves where possible.

A lot of leaders don't like hearing this. We're taught that our attendance at meetings is critical and that we should be there to helm the ship. As with anything in leadership, sometimes that's the case…but not always.

Here are just a few ways of removing yourself from certain meetings and making your team more effective in the process…

The outcome

A critical step of any delegation is to clearly communicate the desired outcome.

Simply facilitating a meeting is not an outcome. I mean, it is…but it's not a meaningful one.

Instead, you want to think about what value the meeting should be delivering. Use that as the desired outcome that the individual should focus on delivering.

If it's a brainstorming meeting, then the outcome could be a list of the top five options ranked in order of preference. If it's a recurring project meeting, the outcome could be xx% progress towards implementation with next deliverables and due dates assigned. The outcome will be dependent on the meeting, but the point is to ensure that those outcomes are delivering value and serving the organization's core mission.

Step down

To be clear, I'm a fan of delegating both the facilitation of meetings and your attendance. But you don't need to do it all at once. In fact, doing it in phases is a helpful approach for those who are reluctant to delegating this in the first place.

The first phase is simply delegating facilitation. You still attend the meeting but have someone else run it.

Doing it this way allows you to observe your delegate, which is helpful for building trust in their ability to run the meeting and also for providing feedback (later) if requested and/or necessary.

Once you've built a comfort level with how they run the meeting, you can start to back out of the attendance piece. Even this doesn't have to happen all at once. Start by intentionally missing a couple and go from there.

The key piece of the phased approach is determining what both of you are comfortable with. Some relationships will allow you to do this all at once, others will require a more gradual process. There's no one-size-fits-all.

Have them own it

If you are familiar with my philosophy on delegation you'll know I place an emphasis on delegating the outcome not the process.

For meetings, this means letting your delegate choose how to run their meetings. They will likely adopt much of what you have done in the past; however, encourage them to put their own spin on it. This can include everything from how they create the agenda, to facilitation style, to follow-up on deliverables.

To encourage this independence, I recommend having them develop their own ground rules instead of just adopting your own. It's a manageable first step in helping them create their own approach to the process. It also reinforces their ownership with them and the rest of the team.

While you’re there

If and when you are still in attendance, you want to continuously defer to their delegated authority.

If you start interrupting with your opinions on how things should be ran, your title and authority will force control away from your delegate. That defeats the whole point of this exercise.

If the facilitator is failing to move the meeting forward, save the feedback for later. If people look to you for input, defer to your delegate.

Developing the habit of speaking less and later is a big help here. Let your facilitator and the rest of the team really drive the conversation before you give your opinion. Once you offer your opinion, the team interprets that as the likely decision and is therefore unlikely to continue generating new ideas.

Selective feedback

Feedback in delegation is critical and widely underdelivered. And yet, delegation is also one of the instances where I believe feedback needs to be more carefully considered.

The problem here is that leaders tend to give feedback when the delegate's way of doing things is simply different than their own. If we are truly delegating outcomes, how they arrive at those outcomes (within reason) should matter less.

Of course, there are exceptions. This is where a manager's discretion and independent judgment comes into play. If the individual is requesting feedback, by all means, provide it. If they are behaving in a way that is detrimental to the culture of the team, absolutely give them feedback. If they are risking critical failure, by all means…communicate that.

But if they are just trying a different approach that may work just as well, be careful before offering unsolicited negative feedback.

Positive feedback, on the other hand, is highly encouraged throughout the entire process.

Thank you for reading. My hope is always that you've found something helpful and easy to implement. If you have feedback, suggestions or questions, please reply to this email.

If you are interested in exploring one-on-one coaching to transform your leadership, email me at [email protected] and we’ll coordinate a free, one-hour discovery session.

This week’s action items:

1. Be very clear with your delegate on the outcome and value that the meeting should be delivering.

2. Have a conversation with your delegate to determine the best approach and timeline of removing yourself from meetings.

3. Encourage them to make the entire meeting process their own, starting with ground rules.

4. While you're in meetings, defer to their authority at every opportunity.

5. Be intentional about the feedback you are providing.