Success means learning to delegate and trust the team

MANAGERS ON MANAGEMENT:FAILURE TO delegate is the oldest management failing in the book. A manager who can't trust his team to get on with their work without interference will never get the best out of them. And in a company that's facing hard economic times, that tendency will become evermore apparent and disruptive.

“I would say that’s broadly true,” says Prof Tom Begley, dean of business schools, including the Quinn School and Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, at UCD.

“When a company is doing poorly, rather than trying to become more imaginative about their circumstances, most managers become very rigid in their thinking, and that compounds their problems.

“Everyone has a natural tendency under pressure to revert back to familiar habits. We all do it. The problem for managers in a pressurised situation, though, is that they become far less receptive than they might normally be to innovative solutions. They become less likely to think: ‘maybe what I’m doing isn’t working . . . maybe I should try something else’. And that can be destructive.”

Even when it’s not compounded by an economic downturn, the inability to delegate is “a serious weakness” in a manager, says Begley, an American expert on organisational behaviour who has advised governments, Fortune 500 companies and not-for-profit organisations.

“Perhaps strictly speaking it’s not something that can be learned, but it can certainly be improved by coaching and mentoring,” he says.

As is so often the case in business, trust is at the heart of things. A team of professionals who take pride in their work want to feel trusted enough to take the initiative when they need to. If they’re not, they feel undervalued. And that leads to dissent around the water cooler.

“A good manager will encourage his team to pick up the ball and run with it,” says Begley.

“I’m not saying he’ll let them do whatever they want. They’ll sit down together and agree exactly what it is they want to achieve. But having identified the objective, he’ll never prescribe the methods they should use to get there. He’ll leave it to them to decide how best to organise their work to that end.

“That’s why you want a talented team. The problem is that there are many managers who are much more controlling. We’re all familiar with folks who think the only good job is the one they do themselves. And if you’re that kind of manager, you’re not going to provide enough leeway for your team to develop as it ought to.”

It’s perhaps the same sort of managerial insecurity which leads many senior managers to surround themselves with like-minded underlings. “There hasn’t been much research done on this, but there would be a belief in academic circles that there’s more than a grain of truth in it,” Begley laughs. “It would be connected to yes-man syndrome . . . or maybe that should be yes-person syndrome nowadays.”

However, during his time in Ireland, he’s found his own as yet unnamed syndrome: the tendency to avoid telling the whole truth in order not to offend.

“One of the things I’ve found most difficult managing here is that Irish people want more than anything else to get along, to please the people with whom they’re interacting. And I don’t just mean they’re trying to please their managers. So it’s difficult, for instance, to get feedback that’s not 100 per cent complimentary.

“In my opinion, Americans are not as direct as people think, but if you ask someone for feedback, and you indicate you really want it, chances are they’ll give it to you. That’s by no means always the case here in Ireland. You’re still on shaky ground.”

Next week: Simon Wainwright, chief executive of HSBC Ireland, on climbing the corporate ladder

petercluskey@yahoo.fr