16th of May 2011

Shying away from taking decisions and instead falling back on a senior is certainly not the path to growth.

One of my Finnish clients wrote me this e-mail the other day as a follow-up to our discussion on handling teams in India: “A phenomenon that surprises me is the attempt at reverse delegation. Even the most junior staff may come to me and request: ‘‘A’… we want you to do this….’ or ‘will you do that…’. Or, I might receive an e-mail saying: ‘You are requested to…’ It took me some time to learn how to deal with these situations.

This is clearly not what ‘A’ was used to back in Helsinki. In fact, this isn’t the norm in most parts of the Western work world.

But the truth is, it is something we come across repeatedly in interactions with people in corporate India. Recently, I even told the President of a small-sized company that this was something she needed to come to grips with, nay, resist, given her new demanding, national role.

I would like to share a series of real life instances, which show reverse delegation in a variety of scenarios.

Story 1:

Shyam didn’t feel he had enough information on the course that he was to run for the virtual team working with New Zealand. He referred back — in other words — reverse delegated to the manager who had the conversation with the team lead there, so that the appropriate needs were addressed. This could have been sorted out if the manager had equipped him with the data in a digestible, process-based format. The manager spotted the gap, wrote out the agenda the second time around and provided the bullet points of his discussions going forward.

Story 2:

Bharathi is insecure about the database that has been an ongoing challenge in the company. She doesn’t want to own responsibility for the outcome, so she takes the easy way out, referring the restructuring back to the manager time and again. The manager takes it on each time, as she doesn’t want to risk losing Bharathi, who she values as an employee. But that is a weak way of dealing with the issue. Sitting down and talking about the recurring pattern of reverse delegation, asking Bharathi to own responsibility for the database that forms an important part of her customer relations role and that she is best equipped to know the nuances of and assuring her she will not be penalised for attempting the database structuring, is the right the way forward.

Story 3:

Anita returned the travel file to Arjun as an indirect way of telling him that she doesn’t feel the task allotted to her was suited to her profile as Vice-President.

This is an issue that has to be discussed; either she has to realise that travel is an important component of the company’s success and her personal involvement, getting her hands dirty, is a good signal for the rest of the VPs, or, someone has to be appointed to assist Anita.

Story 4:

Vimal is a habitual shirker, he seems to have made a practice of giving excuses and easing out of jobs. He says he can’t get sponsors for the event as he is busy with the seminar. He can’t follow up the pending payments either, as he is tied up with the delivery team; he can’t retrieve the client details as he still has the financial reports to file. So he is always doing something else rather than what he should be doing. Just because he delivers some of the goods, he gets away with key components. It was clear he needed the pink slip, instead of the manager taking the flak all the time.

There are times when it is not the employee or team member’s fault, such as in story 1 or 2. Delegation without giving enough information, or when the employees feel they will be penalised, are instances in which reverse delegation is bound to happen. The buck gets handed back to the manager. It is up to the manager to assist, empower and ensure it is not repeated. Here are some tips I’ve learned from experience:

Give clear instructions

Give examples of how it worked and where to go for further details

Show the employees how they can take decisions

Show them where you will help

Provide templates and references where it is possible to empower them

Encourage and publicly applaud independence

If mistakes happen, encourage them to learn from experience Refuse to take ‘No’ for an answer

Reverse delegation is acceptable only where team work is involved and the manager can make the difference and value-add quickly, while the employee is productive elsewhere. So, other than in such cases, do let’s follow the seven steps above and encourage our teams to go ahead and accept responsibility for doing things the right way.

(The writer is CEO of www.globaladjustments.com. She can be reached at info@globaladjustments.com)