Delegation broaches many areas of professional expertise, and now we step on the shoes of recruitment as we think about the importance of ‘who’ in our delegation process.

The ‘who’ sits in front of the ‘how’ in this book and also in the process I take clients through when it comes to delegation, because if the ‘who’ is wrong, then successful delegation is less likely to happen. Being human completely gets in the way of selecting the right person and, in my opinion, so it should. Let me explain…

Over the years, both as a corporate manager and executive, and as a direct employer through my own businesses, whenever I have compromised – for whatever reason – on the recruitment for any role, I have largely paid the price. Naturally, there are many hoops to jump through, mechanisms for the measurement of a prospective employee, psychometric profiles, GMAT and a plethora of creative questions and riddles used to sift the wheat from the chaff and all have their place and are credible in their own way. They are variously employed within my own businesses, but for me the alchemy in recruitment is in the ability to predict the extent or even existence of a positive psychological contract.

I've heard it said that we recruit ‘people like us’ and I go for that every time. I do not want to do down the art of recruitment and the professionals involved in it as well as the psychology, expertise and erudition involved in this area of business operation. I do not reduce it into my own layman's speak or somewhat on occasion apparently laissez-faire approach to hiring people. But when I can find people I connect with, relate to, get; even when they are of very different character and approach to me, I get on better with them, they understand me more deeply, I open up to them in many ways (not least in terms of vulnerability and humour) and vice versa and communicate better with them as a result. In my experience, when this happens, you have a far better chance of understanding the common goal, what you are both aiming for and what makes both sides tick.

To add more gravitas to my point, I defer to this excellent summation from CIPD.

The psychological contract on the other hand looks at the reality of the situation as perceived by the parties, and may be more influential than the formal contract in affecting how employees behave from day to day. It is the psychological contract that effectively tells employees what they are required to do in order to meet their side of the bargain and what they can expect from their job. It may not – indeed in general it will not – be strictly enforceable…

A positive psychological contract typically supports a high level of employee engagement. However the concept of engagement goes beyond employees' attitudes and underlines the need for managers to draw out employees' discretionary behaviour.

Two-way communication, formal and informal, is essential as a form of reality check and a basis for building mutual trust.

More of which can be found at http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr-resources/factsheets/psychological-contract.aspx

As an MBA student I appreciated the informality of the theory of the psychological contract, but it is only as a student of delegation that I come to love it and live it, but I believe when it truly exists to the benefit of the organization it is in a much deeper form than the CIPD defines it.

The promises the employer is expected to give the employee as their side of the contract largely comprise pay and benefits, job and personal security, training, interesting tasks, feedback, recognition and promotion prospects.

To this end, in the same way that being clear about the ‘why’ is vital to the delegator it is vital to the delegation recipient. Whatever motivates them is their own concern but if they're able to be honest and open about it with their employer or line manager and the employer is able to fulfil the employee's ‘why’ through the achievement of the tasks and as a reward for that then that hackneyed phrase ‘win–win situation’ comes to mind.

In essence, to me the psychological contract is about a multitude of hackneyed phrases: hearts and minds, being on the same page, singing from the same… it means that you get each other. Once unified in this way and clear about each other's motivations and those of the business then, put simply, delegation just works.

For me the psychological contract is about chemistry – no romanticism intended here, like a love affair – born of a desire to make each other happy (a couple or manager/employee), while also achieving the aims of those within the remit of the nearer context (nuclear family or team) and promoting the well-being and happiness of the far context (extended family or department) to the benefit of the wider context (community or organization).

To get back to the ‘who’ in our delegation pathway, it is important – as the CIPD extract emphasizes – to communicate well. Throughout this book and its associated learnings, I stress the importance of great communication (for ‘great’, read honest, open and frequent).

Delegation and the team

While many of the principles of delegation apply on a one-to-one basis as well as to the team as a whole, it applies slightly less clearly when delegating to a new team whose members have not worked with you or each other before.

This is different from the notion of being a new leader. This is the opposite. It is about being part of and leading an entirely new team put together for the specific role of taking on your delegated work or aims. It therefore feels relevant here for me to include the thoughts of my colleague and team expert Tamsen Garrie. My reasoning here is that in the context of successful or unsuccessful delegation there are team dynamics at play. Sometimes even when all parts of the delegation process have been executed well and with all due consideration to all that this book holds dear (including team members playing to their apparent strengths), a new set of people required to work together, even with the most pristine of procedural instruction and accompanying training, can present as a gaggle of warring politicians when they're new. A team that doesn't work is simply a bunch of people and they can feel as related as the members of a bus queue until they start to get each other and find their place and feel their space.

There are recognized theories on team dynamics and I am fond of one put forward by Tuckman.¹ I've seen his theory in action as a team player and as a manager and entrepreneur. Tamsen, in her extensive work with clients from a diverse range of companies, establishments and industries, adapts Tuckman and applies its learnings to help teams perform better, sooner. Her observations are fascinating and she shares a snapshot of her expertise here.

Teams are a complicated thing; simply managing a group of humans to perform decently together is tremendously tricky, even for the most experienced of leaders, let alone motivating them to rock in an independent way.

Tamsen's methods are pragmatic and, I find, calming and reassuring, because there is a precedent a leader can look to and take confidence from. Delegation requires huge trust, especially when one's own performance or, arguably more risky, one's own business' performance (not to mention brand and reputation) is on the line. So when things appear to be going wrong, it is a natural response to panic and start to take work back, to not trust things will get done or believing mistakes will be made. It is important at this stage for a leader to think and retain a delegation mindset, to hold their nerve to manage the energy, focus and direction of the team through its agreed culture, goals and aims as well as to manage their own energy and emotion and avoid being dragged down into the realms of lost confidence and short-term thinking.

This takes courage and faith. It is a big reason why I was motivated to write this book. One can easily fall out with delegation because of other factors and barriers, many of which have been mentioned already in this book, but when it comes to team dynamics, it is easy to muddy the waters and assume that somehow it is the leader who has delegated or managed badly, when in fact, as Tamsen points out and rightly concludes, such discord amongst within team is simply part of the process.

Tamsen's focus is on the team dynamic here. She makes it clear that the leader has clear requirements of him or her through the stages of team development. Should you choose to further your knowledge of her work, she also delves into the symptoms and remedies of each team stage. My fascination lies in this area. It is so very practical and so very reassuring from a confidence perspective that, as a delegator, it isn't necessarily your delegation that will cause this angst, you haven't made a sure-fire mistake, but you nonetheless have to be well equipped and emotionally strong to deal with it and pull the team through.

When I align my own theory and experience with Tamsen's over-view and overlay the delegation Venn diagram (Figure 12.1) on, in particular, the kicking phase of team development, I see huge synergy in our thinking. When cliques and strong opinions form in the first instance, it is distressing for the leader. They know what they are meant to do but if this is expected it can throw the leadership dynamic as much as the team one. It can result in a different response from the leader too, depending on their instinct, emotion and/or delegation type indicator profile. Mostly the team is at risk of the delegation and responsibility being taken away from them: their behaviour suggests they might not be trustworthy. If the leader loses their confidence, or feels ineffective in their attempts to unite the team, quality and frequency of communication can be affected. Where the manager begins to abdicate or at least avoid the conflict, the feedback loop becomes lost, and a move away from agreed protocol and standards of operation (process) results as the manager stops managing and the team's divisive situation influences their approach to their work.

Much of the latter is mitigated if the team play to their strengths, which Tamsen rightly defines as something which combines both enjoyment and skill. I agree wholeheartedly and firmly believe that when the team is genuinely recruited to this prerogative, and the manager has delegated properly according to a Task List Profile (as opposed to a linear job description), to pick up on Tamsen's somewhat unpalatable analogy, it is amazing actually how fast you can boil a proverbial frog. Things are more liable to pull together and rock if no one involved (including the leader) can disagree with the fact that they love what they have been asked to do.