Training Effective Followers

by Jack
(Chile)

In my experience, one area where people who want to lead fall down is is not delegating enough.

To delegate effectively means to have people who will take responsibility and solve problems.

I've done this in three steps.

First, when people come to me and ask me what we need to do about some situation, instead of responding, I ask them what they think should be done.

If they are not used to having responsibility they may hesitate, but I insist until they give me their idea.

If I agree with it, I'll tell them to do it, if not I'll explain why it should be done differently and get them to put that into action.

After a while of doing this, I slowly insist that they start out by always including their recommendation in any report of a problem or question about some new situation.

When I notice that most of their ideas are following my thinking, I tell them: I don't want you to bring problems to me unless you see it as a major catastrophy threatening. What I want is for you to report to me telling me about the problem which happened and HOW YOU SOLVED IT!

It takes an extra amount of effort to get this process going, but once a person has been trained I can virtually forget about ever having to deal with routine matters on a daily basis.

I run a business using this approach and can often go away for weeks at a time and not discover any problems when I return.