Moving Right Along: Tips for Maintaining Meeting Focus
When a participant hijacks a meeting, energy dissipates and attention drifts away from the focus of the meeting. (more…)
Preparing for a Meeting: 8 Must-Do Items
When meeting leaders take time to thoughtfully prepare before meetings it increases the likelihood that meeting objectives will be achieved and participants will be engaged. (more…)
What’s wrong with meetings?
The #1 complaint about meetings is that nothing happens. When there is no action or forward movement, frustration mounts. And, we wonder why people don’t show up to meetings or develop blackberryitis during an endless meeting! (more…)
Hitches, Glitches and Stumbling Blocks
At one time or another every mentoring relationship faces hitches, glitches or stumbling blocks. Here are five of the most common problems and some possible solutions. (more…)
Creating a Path to the Future
Vision
Good mentors invite, empower, and inspire their mentee to step boldly into the future. In describing how her mentor accomplished this, one mentee said, “. . . seeing you move always to higher ground… gives me a vision of my future.” (more…)
Bridging the Gap with Challenging Assignments
It is a mentor’s artful balance between support and challenge that creates the momentum that enables the mentees to make significant progress toward achieving his or her goals. (more…)
Delegation Dos and Don’ts
Before you delegate, consider …. (more…)
Ten Strategies for Supporting Mentee Learning and Development
1. Spend sufficient time getting to know your mentoring partner. (more…)
To Delegate or Not to Delegate? That is the Question!
Once you have overcome “Delegation Excusititis” you then must answer the question, “When should I delegate?” (more…)
Do you have a case of “Delegation Excusititus”?
Here is what business strategy consultant, Paula Singer observes:
“In our work with clients on their organizational and staffing structures, we often remind them to push work down to the lowest possible level. This may sound like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised to find out how many high-level managers are routinely doing tasks that two, three or even four levels of staff reporting to them could (and should) easily be doing. There are many reasons for this non-delegation, including micro-management tendencies ranging from ‘this is how we’ve always done it so why change now’ to more harmful control-freak traits.
According to the Harvard Business Review (9/21/10), another reason that new managers might not delegate is that they think they will be the “hero” if they do everything themselves. Not delegating, for any of these reasons, can not only make the manager a stressed-out mess, but can cause staff to check out, since they aren’t really being given any challenging work.”
Delegation is a leadership competency. Improve yours by overcoming your reluctance to delegate. Here are common excuses for trying to “do it all” yourself. Do any of these apply to you?
- It takes too long to explain.
- No one on my staff is capable of doing it.
- If I want it done right, I have to do it myself.
- I don’t have the time to show anyone how to do it.
- There is no one else to delegate to.
- I can’t dump another thing on my team members.
- I don’t want to give up this task because I like doing it.
- I don’t know if I can trust anyone else to do it.
- My subordinates are not sufficiently motivated to perform well.
- I have to retain close control of every detail to have a job done right.
If any of the above reasons resonate for you, please see our Eight Step Process for Delegation [LZ will insert link ] to learn how to improve your leadership delegation skills.
For more on excusitits, Identifying and Curing Excusititus.
Mentoring Resources
