As promised, this week’s post is a follow-up from last week’s post about using inclusion as a means of broadening “your” leadership skill set.  In that post I stated that by drawing on the knowledge of their team members leaders can understand all aspects of the problems they are facing, and find the best solutions.  By doing so they improve their effectiveness in making decisions and gaining support and commitment for implementing those decisions…two important leadership skills.

In this post I am writing about the use of delegation as a means of broadening “your” leadership skill set.  Delegation enables you to access and utilize skills that you may not possess.  In my recent post on Delegation, http://www.scottneilson.com/?p=397, I discussed the importance of delegation from the perspective of improving productivity, motivating employees, and reducing costs.  In that post I noted that your job as a leader is to orchestrate the activities of your team to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization, not to DO them all.  That means that as a leader you must find a way to access the special skills of your team members and deploy them effectively in reaching those goals.

To do so, however, you must first acknowledge that no one possesses all the skills required to be the best leader in every situation…not even you!  There are some skills that others will have that you will not.  There will be situations in which someone else possesses a set of skills which are better suited to the situation than your own.  This is NOT a flaw in your makeup as a leader, it is simply a reality.  However, it is also an opportunity.

As an example, I was once a part of an organization in which the CEO had an undergraduate degree in marketing and had started working her way up the corporate ladder in marketing functions until she had moved into general management.  She was not technically trained, but was highly effective in leading the operations of the business.  Her challenge was in understanding all of the technologies of our business and remaining abreast of advances in those technologies. 

To supplement this skill shortfall she relied on her Chief Scientific Officer to keep her informed of the relevant technical issues facing the business and industry.  She knew enough, and had the CSO explain enough of the details, to enable her to incorporate that technical information into the decisions she was making to lead the business. 

She also followed this approach with all the key functional areas of the business.  She was not expert in any of them, except perhaps some aspects of marketing.  However, even in that area it had been more than a decade since she had had daily direct responsibility for marketing.  She had become expert in orchestrating all the activities required to move the organization in the desired direction…leading. 

In this example the skill she accessed and utilized to help her lead the organization was remaining abreast of industry knowledge, although there are many skills you can draw upon by delegating.  As Peter Drucker said in his book “The Daily Drucker”, know the strengths of the individuals on your team.  To further that thought I would add that you must use those strengths wisely.  You must be clear on who possesses what leadership assets.  Those assets are at your disposal and they are just as much assets as your technology, equipment, facilities and processes. 

As a leader, it is absolutely one of your responsibilities to draw on ALL those assets, and to orchestrate their effective use to move the organization forward in meeting goals.  Recognize the areas in which your employees may be better suited to accomplish certain tasks than you.  Leverage those strengths to supplement your own skill set.  By doing so, you expand your own set of leadership skills, not because you have instantly developed that skill yourself, but because you have accessed them in one of your team members and drawn upon their skill to meet a certain business need of the moment.