How to feel valued as a manager when delegation and coaching means there are less tasks for you to do

A manager’s job is not to DO all the DOING, but to delegate more and more downwards.  Lots of good reasons for this:

• your people learn how to do more
• they feel challenged; and as a result, more fulfilled
• decisions are pushed down the pyramid, freeing you up to make the tougher decisions that involve more risk
• the autonomy for them of being able to make those decisions is also more fulfilling
• you free yourself up for work that is commensurate with your experience and your pay

So, we’re not saying that you have nothing left to do when you delegate.  Far from it.  You pass down as much as you can, without over-stretching your people…and that frees you up to DO DIFFERENT THINGS.  Things that are more appropriate for your level.

So you won’t be producing the same deliverables as you did when you were at the level below.  You may have different deliverables, or maybe you don’t have any deliverables at all…maybe you are now expected to spend more time building relationships with key stakeholders.  That’s not a tangible deliverable in itself, but it leads to outcomes that you wouldn’t get if you were paying attention to the lower level work instead of spending time on those relationships. 

Besides which, you now need to spend time developing your people so they can take on even more.  saying nothing of planning the work for the short and medium term.

So you are adding value in two ways:

1. In the more advanced brainpower that you are applying to higher risk decisions, and/or relationship building you are able to do, and/or high level deliverables and planning

2. In the way you develop your people to deliver their deliverables more efficiently and effectively, and to make more decisions

Sure, the latter is harder to measure, but there WILL be a difference between the quantity and quality of how your people work if you spent time with them versus not investing that time.  You’ll get more done as a team than you could ever have got done had you kept those deliverables to yourself.  That’s your leverage.

To summarise, Ram Charan wrote about the differences in skills, time allocation and values for supervisors vs individual contributors, and it looks like this:

Individual Contributor	Supervisor
Skills Technical or professional proficiency Team play Relationship building for personal benefits, personal results Using company tools, processes and procedures	Skills    Planning – projects, budget, workforce Delegation Coaching and feedback Rewards and motivation
Time Allocation Daily discipline – arrival, departure Meet personal due dates, usually short-term by managing own time	Time Allocation   Annual planning – budgets, projects Make time available for subordinates – both at your request and theirs
Work Values Getting results through personal proficiency High quality technical or professional work Accept the company’s values	Work Values   Getting results through others Managerial work and disciplines Success of unit

 

It makes sense for you to think about how you will “prove” the value you added when it gets to the end of the performance year.  I’ve been having the same conversations with my boss and his boss this week, as it’s also hard to measure innovation and thought leadership, which is part of my role.  But just because it’s hard to quantify the impact doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be spending time on it.  It’s the right thing to do if we want to grow as a business and  keep our best people.  And others will notice the difference you’re making, as I discovered this week too.