What a big conversation looks like

With delegation you give up the hard control that comes from doing everything yourself. It gives way to something better: influence.

Your delegatee needs advice and encouragement to have confidence and make good decisions in the field. She’ll also need to be challenged from time to time. All this is feedback.

Feedback needs a medium – a pipe – which is conversation. But it can’t be just any old conversation, a bit of a chit-chat, an occasional word in the ear.

This conversation has a big a job to do. It must cover all the bases, namely:

1. 1. She reports on progress made in reaching agreed milestones.
   2. You both assess that progress.
   3. Barriers to success are explored.
   4. Strategies for overcoming them are adopted.
   5. Ways you can help are identified.
   6. She is challenged where needed, and so are you.
   7. Milestones are reassessed, with some dropped, and new ones agreed.
   8. She departs with new ideas, clarity, and refreshed confidence and energy.
   9. So do you.

This is a big conversation, of a sort we rarely have in organisational life today. It can’t be a once-a-year conversation. Think monthly, or even weekly.

A simple technique for holding such a conversation is detailed in my new book.