What is delegating?
To delegate is to change the collaborator's contribution by giving him or her an activity (task/project) and the means to do it. Delegation is an agreement to transfer, for a limited duration, a power of autonomy over an activity you are responsible for.
In short, delegating means:
- Assigning an activity that is geared toward a specific goal.
- Providing the means to succeed.
- Retaining full responsibility.
- Manage time effectively
- Train and motivate your team
- Strategically increase the productivity of your organization
You know who they are. They call on your busiest day, when you’ve got lots of calls to return, an important deadline to meet, and that project to complete. They’re the callers who don’t want to end the call, the ramblers, the storytellers. They want to tell you about their lives, their coworkers in minute details, and to recount the story of their last vacation in real time.
Worse – they’re your customers. And you don’t know how to get them off the phone without being rude!
Talkative people are often interesting and entertaining on the phone, but they can also eat up a lot of your time. To avoid wasting precious time, you should be able to manage the endless call with a talkative customer. One of the following simple techniques should help you:
With a talkative customer, ask closed questions, as much as possible. Closed questions will prompt short answers that will help you maintain the flow of the conversation. Opt for open-ended questions only when you need further details.
Offer minimal response. Do not encourage pointless conversation. The talkative customer may try to engage you in a non-work related conversation. To prevent this from happening, answer with minimal information and promptly redirect the conversation on the matter at hand.
We use presentations all the time in our work, both inside and outside the organisation. Every time we need to make a case, whether to one person or a thousand, we are presenting.
We present when we are:
A team is a system where relations and interactions between its members are just as important as the technical abilities of each individual. A high-performance team forms a cohesive and indivisible whole, made possible by a balance that must be understood to be maintained.
A high-performance team is composed of two distinct yet inter-related levels, and the team’s success depends on the group’s ability to embrace and harmonize these levels.
The first level culls the specific operational (technical) skills required.
• Clarifying goals
Why are we working together? You don’t put a team together only to group individuals so they can work together; there is a finality to it: an objective and a desired outcome, a finish line to cross, a group target, a raison d’être. A good goal should first and foremost be clear; all group members should interpret it the same way. Clarity is the main quality a goal can have; an unclear goal will be understood differently by each team member, to the point where there will be no common goal but a set of individual objectives.
• Clarifying roles and duties
What should we do? You must make a distinction between goal (which defines the “why”) and tasks (which define the “how”). Roles, contributions, and duties are what you have to do, the work you have to accomplish to achieve the goal.
When many people are involved in teamwork, everyone needs to know what’s expected of them. Usually, your technical contribution is the main reason why you have been selected to be a part of the team. Your expertise provides the basis for your participation.
But you have another role: being a teammate. Do you have duties ...
