|
Improving delegation skills
In this article, Simon Tupman outlines some effective approaches to improving your delegation skills.
How much of your time is spent doing work that a less experienced (and less expensive) person could do? 10%, 25% 45%?
This is a question I ask participants before my seminars. Their answers tend to vary between 10 and 50%! However, taken as a whole, they show that law firms could be much more efficient and profitable if they taught and encouraged their senior lawyers how to delegate to more junior less experienced staff,
Consider some of the benefits:
- opportunities for clients to meet a broad range of staff;
- opportunities for less experienced staff to build their skills;
- opportunities for supervising lawyer to get on with high-value tasks.
While the reasoning is not difficult to grasp, the application can be very difficult. During one session, a managing partner pulled me to one side and 'confessed' that he was fearful that he would become 'redundant' if he got good at delegating. In other words, if he passed on files to more junior staff, he would have a gaping hole in his turnover. As a consequence, his fees would be down and he might not be able to justify his existence at the next partners' meeting. A very human response, especially when you consider that many firms only place value on financial targets.
Additionally, he lacked confidence in his abilities to actually delegate, believing that generally it would be quicker if he completed the task it himself. In the short term, maybe so, but in the long term definitely not.
By placing precedence over other wealth-building exercises such as coaching, mentoring and business development, law firms are shooting themselves in the foot.
There are two method to make your delegation more successful:
- Give clear instructions
- Give and ask for feedback
Let's deal with the first method. It sounds straightforward but so often, things go wrong because of miscommunication right at the beginning of a task. I recall interviewing the company secretary of a multinational corporation who told me how the relatoinship with his legal advisors had deteriorated, simply because his intitial instructions were misinterpreted by the supervising lawyer who then gave erroneous instructions to his supervisee. The end result: a long opinion written by the supervisee with an equally long bill. Not the outcome the client was expecting. It is incumbent on all lawyers taking instructions to be clear about the outcome as expected by the client. It is equally important that when delegating internally, the supervisee is equally clear about the outcome. It is incumbent on the superivising lawyer to ensure that the delegatee understands:
- The background to each matter
- What is expected of that person
- How much time should be spent on the matter
- When they should report back
- Where to get help
- Who is responsible for communicating with the client
It is worth the time asking the delegatee to repeat your instructions so that they have not misunderstood anything.
Now let's address the second method. My research continually suggests that delegators are poor at giving feedback let alone asking for it. Feedback is not an annual event. It is something that should be done continuously. Make sure it is
- constructive - focus on the positives first
- consistent -give it on a regular basis
- current - give it soon afetr performance
- comprehensive - discuss all aspects
- candid - be open and honest
Runing a feedback session can challenging for many lawyers unused to having to fill such a role. It can also be very rewarding and beneficial for all concerned!
Join Simon's mailing list
Do drop Simon a line. He'd like to hear from you.
Back to Articles Index
|
