Welcome to the APM podcast. APM is the childhood body for
the project profession. My name is Emma DaVita and I'm
the editor of Project APM's quarterly journal and your host.
In this podcast, I'm speaking to leadership and management expert
Joe Owen and Andy Alder, Managing Director of Major
Infrastructure Delivery at Anglin Water, about how to
delegate well. It's something every project
manager and leader needs to understand and practise
successfully if they want their teams to achieve what needs to
get done. So they give us their insider
do's and don'ts so that you can hone your mindset and learn how
to delegate better and actually who better to help us?
Andy was Thames Tideways Programme Director until 2023
and has spent his career managing and leading mega
projects and infrastructure projects.
With such impressive expertise under his belt, he tells me that
actually he first learnt how to delegate on camping trips and
scouts. Meanwhile, Joe is the founder of
Teach First and a go to expert and all matters to do with
leadership. He's the author of numerous
business books, including Smart Leadership, and is about to
publish How to Change the World, how social entrepreneurs can go
from initial ideas to global impact.
So we discuss everything from why you have to be able to
delegate to have successful projects, what usually goes
wrong, and how you can't delegate unless you can trust
your people. Listen on for their advice and
practical. Tips that you can use in your
projects, right? From today.
Andy and Joe, welcome to the OPM podcast.
It's nice to have you here. Thank you.
It's. Great to be with you.
Great. Well, I think an interesting
place to start would be for each of you to give me a bit of
background about your career. So, Andy, let's start with you
if you want to give me a brief overview of your career and the
kind of role you do now. So I'm a civil engineer by
background. I studied civil engineering and
the kind of first 6-7 years in my career were in design and,
and construction of, of major civil engineering projects,
particularly tunnelling projects in the UK, some internationally.
And then I was, I was getting to a point where the kind of
designer projects to, to bring together different aspects of a
multidisciplinary project needed more and more project
management. And I felt that was an area I
wanted to kind of take my career in.
So I did a project management master's at Reading University
and then spent the next kind of 10 years managing
multidisciplinary design and engineering projects.
And then Crossrail came along. So I so I moved on to, to
Crossrail and I started in a technical role and then LED
procurement and then delivery of some of the tunnelling contracts
on, on Crossrail moved on to Thames Tideway in 2015.
I ended up as programme director there.
So I was at Tideway for eight years where we did a lot of
work. I'm sure we'll come on to around
how do we really empower teams to deliver of their work and the
role of a project management programme management to
coordinate the work, but really empower and delegate so that
people can, you know, get that sense of their own in their
their part of the project. Since then, I now work at Anglia
Water, I'm managing director for our major infrastructure
delivery. So looking ahead at the next
investment programme and how we coordinate a £7 billion
programme over the next five years.
Thank you, Joe. Tell us a bit about your area of
interest. So, background.
I'm living evidence that career is a verb, not just a noun.
I started at Procter and Gamble and Brand Management, but the
belief Speckling Daz became the best nappy salesman in
Birmingham. Arguably my career had been
downhill ever since then. I think I decided to get into
consulting and which made me land up building a business in
Japan without speaking Japanese. I decided that was all far too
exciting, so I then decided to start a bank.
I got sued for $12 billion when a billion was worth something
along the way. And then I thought maybe I
better do something a bit better than that.
And so I start, I started to Teach First, which is now the
largest graduate recruiter in the UK, and eight other NGOs
since then, eight other NGOs with a combined turnover over
over 100 million a year. So I'm a sort of accidental
social entrepreneur, which has also led me to become an
accidental leadership guru because for Teach First, we had
to discover what leadership was all about.
So I've spent 20 years sort of looking at leadership right
around the world in all different contexts, all the way
from the nuclear deterrent through to 15 years worth of
hanging out with tribes around the world to see how they're led
and organised. And, and obviously delegation,
if you don't delegate, you're not a leader.
In fact you're probably not going to be a manager and you're
not going to survive. So delegation is absolutely at
the heart of it. And I'm now a fully fledged
leadership anorak. But when somewhere along the
line I became a became the head of research for the for one of
the political partisan in Westminster.
So yeah, it really is careers for not announcement.
Hey, the right is fun. I'd like to dive in with the
question I've most like answered, which is what do you
need to get right to delegate well and are there any myths
that need to be busted? So, Joe.
Yeah, we're talking about professionals here and
professionals are pretty smart and they've got, you know, they
want to do well. And is there a skill set around
delegation? Absolutely there there is.
But most professionals can get it pretty quickly and can do it
pretty well with without too much time, effort, training,
etcetera. The really biggest sue isn't the
skill set because you can train that.
The biggest sue is having the right headset and there are
there's a positive and negative here.
The positive is you've got to be able to trust your team.
If you trust your team, you will delegate to them because you
know you can delegate to them. OK.
If you don't trust your team, you're never going to delegate
them to them and either you've got the wrong team or the team
has the wrong manager. It's probably the second.
It's more likely to be the case. The trap on this is the headset
which says that the manager has to be the smartest person in the
room, which might have been true in the 19th century, possibly
throughout the 20th century, certainly not throughout the
21st century. Your job as a manager of
professionals of highly skilled professionals is not to be the
smartest person in the room. Your job is to get the smartest
people into the room and let them solve the problems for you.
And that requires very clear thinking about what your role is
as a manager versus their role. Do not try to be the smartest
person in the room. Do not take on the most
challenging problems all for yourself.
Show trust in your team, delegate to them, and they will
respond really positively because people respond when they
are trusted. They know when they're trusted.
They want to rise to the challenge.
They will be motivated to do well for you, and then when you
delegate them, they will learn and develop and become even more
valuable team members. Andy, would you agree with Joe?
100% agree. I think absolutely that that
being able to trust your team is is, is a hugely important part
of this. And that that comes from
selecting the right team in the 1st place, making sure you've
got the right people in the team.
But I think there's a, you know, starting out from a point of, I
think people come from it, either you, you, you don't trust
someone until they earn the trust or you, you trust someone
until they get to a point where, hang on, this is, this is not a
work win. I'm, I'm definitely for the
latter, you know, right, get the right people and trust them and,
and see how that works. And 99.9% of the time that that
is really effective. There's another part of, of
recognising that small projects are long term things often and
mega projects are very long term things.
And part of your role as a leader is not just to get the
job done, but to develop the team for, for that project and
for future projects. So accepting that some of the
process of delegation and empowerment is going to be a
learning process for, for everybody.
And that's in the long term, that's a, that's a, that's a
very valid part of what, what project management is all about.
And, and then exactly as Joe says, you're not there to be the
smartest person in the room. Often you're managing a team of
experts of different disciplines.
You can't possibly know more than they do about those
disciplines. Tide Waver was a good example.
We had 21 sites, project managers for each site.
They knew far more about that site and the challenges and the
issues and the risks and the stakeholders and and so on than
than I could ever think to try and learn.
So it's a kind of, it's a servant leadership thing in some
way of recognising those folk know most about that project.
And your role as the the overall leader programme manager is to
support those project managers in delivering their projects and
then to make sure they're being integrated and, and sharing
practise and learning, etcetera between them and, and
coordinating things. So and, and the point there is
really good the the manager has to be really clear about what
her or his role is, which which sounds obvious, but it isn't.
You know, often managers think their job is to take on the the
biggest and toughest challenges that the team faces.
They often have this problem of that I talk about as the leader
in the locker room that it's like the football player that
gets promoted to manager because they're a really good football
player. So they get promoted to being
coach and they're so excited. They go around thinking, oh,
I've now got to run twice fast, you know, score twice as many
goals, make twice as many tackles and then they get fired
and they go, well, what went wrong?
Well, the job of the coach isn't, you know, run onto the
pitch and tackle everyone and try and score goals.
The job as a coach is to, as Andy said to me, pick the right
team, the right tactics get get the right people to get the most
out of them and probably wave their arms on the sidelines a
bit. If it's football in in
management, it's a little bit more complicated because you're
surrounded by all these very smart people on your team who
can sort of do all the heavy lifting for you.
So if they do, if you delegate everything away, what's left for
you? And I think this leads to one of
the traps of delegation that people ask the wrong question.
They say, what can I delegate? And the answer is a very short
list actually, if you if you look at it that way.
So I tend to encourage managers to ask the opposite question,
which is what is it that I absolutely cannot delegate under
any circumstances whatsoever. And again, you come up with
actually a very short list, and that short list defines where
you as a manager really add value.
And if you just focus on that, then everything else goes and
you can do quite radical delegation.
I really like that I haven't just to flip it like that makes
such sense and to focus on what is unique to what you're doing.
What cannot be delegated? Andy, how did we learn how to
delegate? I learned to delegate when and
leadership generally. I learned when I was in the
Scouts way back and, and you know, the kind of training at a
time then was your, your role is to, and it, I mean, it would
have been fairly informal training, but you're, you're
there to get, you know, a particular task done.
I don't know that's to hike from A to B or get a tent put up or
cook a meal for the whatever it might be, but you're there to
get it done. You've got a group of five or
six, you know, others with you and part of your role is to make
sure they've got things that are useful to do and they're part of
the team. You're not doing everything.
They're, they're involved, they've got a role, they
understand what their role is and how that all fits together
and that they're enjoying it. And if they're struggling that
you're helping them out and if they're doing well, you're
recognising they're doing well. So it it cut it for me, it
stands right back to 40 years ago.
I didn't think you were going to say that.
I was thinking the first project you managed not to go all the
way back to the Scouts. But I mean, that's fantastic.
It it truly is. And then you, I guess you just
grow and build from and of course, I've had opportunities
through career to as managing teams and teams get bigger to to
do that. I was going to go back to the
point that Joe made there about when, particularly when
challenges come along, when, when projects have got some
challenges or where there's something a really tricky
interface or, you know, a really difficult piece of work.
And that's the time you have to really trust your ability to
delegate because there's this kind of tendency of this is
really difficult. And when it, you know, someone
needs to come in and more senior take over the thing because it's
more difficult. And that's the and you can do
that is the time to just lean in and support the team more.
But really trust that the team who do this day in, day out and
are really good at what they do and you've empowered them to do
that. You stay there and support them
when it's challenging rather than potentially take that
empowerment away when things get a bit difficult.
And Andy, that's absolutely right.
Those are the moments of truth where you, you define how you
are seen as a leader because it is often so tempting to throw
all the good behaviours out around delegation.
And as you say, just take control.
And if you want a job doing, you've got to do it yourself.
All that kind of good stuff. And you do that in a crisis and
basically all, all trust in the team disappears because they'll
go, all right, we know that, you know, this boss doesn't actually
really, really trust us. So we we just do as do as we're
told. On the other hand, if you're
brave and you do trust them, it is amazing what these people can
do. I mean, people are just so good.
And actually, COVID was a great example where in one weekend,
yeah, we, we went from working from home, being sort of
shirking from home to being standard operating procedure.
No leader knew how to do it, but no one knew how to do it.
So everywhere people just told teams, well, you know, get on
with it and tell us what you need and tell us how to work it
out. And guess what?
You know, people did work it out.
You know, that that was a massive national experiment in
delegation under extreme circumstances and it worked very
well at the time. It's now unravelling for all
sorts of reasons. That's fine.
But you know, it just showed that, you know, professionals
and experts are good at what they do and as you say, trust
them, support them, and they will 99% of the time repay those
dividends that trust to you massively.
I think Joe Covid's a good example where if we had tried to
manage the detail of every site that was ongoing through Imagine
COVID, then no one's looking at what is the bigger picture and
how does it all this coming together and what do we do next
week, the week after and how do we work our way through this?
So the other part of delegation, whether it's things are going
well or more challenging, is it allows you to have the headspace
to look across the horizon, which is really part of our role
as leaders is to be looking around the corner, looking
across the horizon, what's coming up next and supporting,
coaching the team through some of those challenges rather than
being we're stuck in the detail, stuck in the weeds.
We're never going to be able to do that and then we're failing
our teams by not helping them to see see ahead.
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Because when projects succeed, society benefits.
As a leader, as a project leader, a project manager, that
there must be the right sort of culture to create on a team
where delegation and trust, I think they go hand in hand,
starts to embed itself amongst everyone, even those who are
reluctant to let go. I wondered if that's something
you found Andy and and have you got any advice on creating a
culture that that promotes delegation and trust on the
project? In, in through delegation, if
you're responsible for accountable for for a programme
or project and you're delegating, of course you need
to know what's going on because you're accountable for it.
So I think I think part of that is set in the kind of the make
sure that through delegation you've got the objective is
really clear. So there's 100% alignment
between, between the team as to what you're trying to achieve
and what success looks like. Alignment as to what the kind of
guardrails are, what the boundaries that say, look, if,
if it's staying within those boundaries, that's fantastic.
We'll have the, the weekly reports, the monthly reports,
etcetera. If it's straying outside of
those boundaries, that's the time to to flag up that there's,
you know, something that's not going as as planned and the
leader needs to know about it or, or you know, and it's a you
need to know about it. And it might be, I need a bit of
support. So I think being really clear on
on those boundaries or delegation authorities, however
that's, that that's framed is important.
I think there's a real bit about the kind of relationship
building and the, and the, and the culture where people, you
know, you're, you're, you're conversing on a regular basis,
you're, you're having, you're, you're taking an interest in, to
what's going on and, and asking the right questions about, have
you thought about this? What, what you know, are you
concerned about this? I've, I've noticed this, that
you're seeing the same thing, not to take responsibility away,
but just coaching folks to the coaching A-Team to see what the
challenges might be and be aware of it.
And through that, that kind of, you know, culture of trust or
psychological safety that, that people are comfortable to say,
look, I'm, I've got a bit of an issue here.
I'm a bit worried about this. I think you ought to be aware of
it. Or can you have a look and see
what you think about about it and a comfortable raising that.
And I think delegation is, is two ways that you you and
empowerment, particularly people want to be empowered and and
rightly so. But that does come with the
responsibility of doing doing the right thing.
And, you know, being able to demonstrate that you're doing
the right thing and, and working in in line with the, the values
of the organisation, the culture of the organisation, what's
really important. And being able to flag up when
there was when there are things of, of concern or of, you know,
or various of deviation that the the leader ought to be aware of.
So trust has to go two ways. In every organisation I, I've
started and chair and what have you, I encourage a culture of
radical honesty where issues can get raised and they get raised
early so that you can act on them and deal with them.
And that means you do have to create a safe space where you
know, if there is a problem, people don't get their head
bitten off. It's like, no, thank you very
much. That is incredibly helpful.
Now let's talk about how we fix the issue.
So that safe space is really important.
That comes down to the manager. And that's a cultural thing.
OK. The second piece is is that that
Andy mentioned is that delegation is possibly a two way
St. So let's talk about that
delegation downwards, obviously is good.
What I see some teams do is they try to delegate stuff back up
and they'll keep on coming to to the manager saying, oh, look,
you know, I've got this monkey on my back.
What do I do with the monkey? All right.
And so, you know, the manager being a very smart manager, very
good manager, says, I'll tell you what, you know, I'll, I'll
sort the monkey out for you. All right, fine, you take the
monkey and then realising that the boss is in a good mood, you
know, everybody else in the team come, you know, goes to the
manage with my mum. And by the end of the day, you
know, the manager has a room full of monkeys wreaking havoc
and, you know, managed thinks they've done terribly good job
by being very nice to each team member and sort of sorting out
their problems. But what's been going on is the
problems just been delegated upwards.
The better manager stays true to delegation and doesn't.
They can take the problem off their shoulders, but can help
talk the problem through, ask the right questions and coach
the team member to help them discover the solution that they
need. So they take the monkey away and
if their manager is really clever, they can give the person
another monkey to look after as well.
So that you know that room is inquired at the end.
But it's so Jeff be beware of the upwards delegation.
Yeah, I see nodding your head. You're agreeing, Andy.
Absolutely. So I think they're they're
they're sort of, you know, we all want to be empowered.
We want to have responsibility and have the freedom to choose
how to solve our problems. But that comes with a
responsibility that you do take ownership of those problems and
you, you inform where there's issues, but, but you don't pass
responsibility back up, You know, try to coach people in,
you know, whether that's in the general, you know, conversation
or updates or the regular project reporting is report on
the issues, but then report on issues, Say this is an issue,
but I'm dealing with it. This is an issue you need to be
aware of, but I'm dealing with it or this is an issue.
And actually I need some help with it.
And, and just kind of differentiate those out a bit.
And, and I totally agree with the psychological safety piece
where if people do raise a flag to say they're worried about say
it's concern or something's not gone gone well, the worst thing
you can do is bite your head off because you know very quickly
you're not going to find out what's going on.
There's a bit of a problem, isn't there, with a bit of blame
culture on projects when you've got different stakeholders
involved and partners. I mean, I'm sure you've
experienced that and I'm definitely detecting a move away
from that to a much more trusting and open and
transparent culture within projects.
But are things moving to a better place now?
And if you find yourself in that kind of projects or dealing with
other partners who have that mindset, how do you deal with
that? Feels less common now, but maybe
I've just been lucky as as Joe said earlier, I think you've got
a big role as a leader, you know, if pressure's coming onto
you. So I don't, you know, people are
getting a bit annoyed or frustrated.
They're blaming around the status or something.
You've got a responsibility as a leader.
Soak that up and, and then, you know, provide the, the air cover
to the team to let the team carry on doing what they're
doing. Because, because ultimately, if,
if things aren't going as planned, the last thing you need
is the team getting stressed about that.
The best thing you need is the team needs to stay confident and
stable and, and managing their way through the issue.
So you got to kind of shield them.
I mean, often that is, is reporting back up to say, look,
I know this isn't in the greatest of shape, but this is
all the stuff that people are doing.
You know, everyone is doing their very best and some
examples of, of what they're doing.
So you can, you know, go in, make sure the team are being
recognised for what they are doing in often under difficult
circumstances. And I, I see this a lot in
coaching people where it's always the fault of the other
person. Always, every single time.
And yeah, you get this long sort of story about how unfair the
world is and the I said, she said you meant and he didn't,
and they should have and I could have and they didn't.
That discussion is a completely redundant and useless
discussion. I let people dump that just
because they need to dump it so that they feel personally
vindicated. But then very quickly you just
have to move on to, OK, So what do we want to do about it?
If you really want to sort of you look back a little bit, you
may say, well, OK, what would the other person be telling me
about this situation? And they often find that very
difficult to respond to. But even that's a slightly
dangerous, just move it forwards to what do we want to do about
this? Where's the solution?
What are your options? And then you quickly get a much
more productive and positive space and you can say, look, we
can do the post mortem later and they go OK, fine.
And later comes, later goes, you don't bother with the postmortem
because who cares by that point here?
By the time the problem is solved, don't care.
Yeah, I mean, 100% agree with you that with this challenge is
let's understand the facts of the situation, what are our
options, what's the way forward and move forward.
There may well be some useful learning to say, well, how do we
get in this situation and what learning do we need to to take
from that to to to share out. And, and that was another part
of our kind of philosophy on on tideways, we had 21 sites.
If you took health, health and safety as a particular example.
And we all share the view the most important thing we do every
day is make sure our teams go home safely.
You know, that that's that's fundamentally core, particularly
on big construction projects. So there's been a challenge, you
know, situation that's that where where safety's been put at
risk or potentially compromised on one side.
We need people to be comfortable to raise that there's been an
issue and report it. We need to then do the proper in
that safe environment, understand actually what
happened and what's they're learning from it, because then
we can share that with the other 20 sites and make sure they
don't have a similar problem. Because if it's happened
somewhere good people have found have have, you know, had a
problem on some on one site, you know, they've, they're
experienced, clever people and they've still had a problem.
It's, you know, highly likely that others would have the same
problem unless we share that. And that was part of back to
your point about the leaders role is not to deal with
everything, but it's to step back and make sure that we join
in the dots. I really wanted to get some
practical tips from how to delegate any hacks or tips
because Andy, one of the reasons I want to speak to you was, was
for your work on Thames Sideway and this idea of around decision
making and understanding what decisions could be made by
various people, by project managers and and surprising.
Can you tell us a bit about that?
And do do you have any real life examples where where delegation
works really well that you've learnt and would pass on to
other project professionals? Yeah, no, absolutely.
So, yeah, situation on type way, £4 billion projects spread
across 25 kilometres, three different construction joint
venture companies, 21 sites, project managers for each.
Quite, quite obviously we need to empower the teams to manage
their sites and their delivery areas that that's the only way
we're going to deliver a project at that scale.
And one of the things we did sort of practically is, is the
book turned the ship around. We used that as a kind of good
guidance, good kind of point of reference about delegation and
and really getting value out of the team and and how to empower
people. Is that?
Turn the ship around. By David Marquette.
That's it. That's the one.
Yeah. So just looking here that he's
U.S. Navy captain.
Yeah, the story of the book is U.S.
Navy captain trained to to operate one type of submarine,
but was deployed to to to lead a a different type of submarine.
And in the, the kind of expectation is every decision
needs to be made, needs to go up to the captain and say how do I
do this? And captain tells you exactly
what to do. It's so well, that's not going
to work. So into this kind of intent
leadership where captain sets out the vision, what the
objective is, what the what the kind of guardrails are.
And then people are coming and saying, look, this is a
situation, this is what I think I want to do about it because
they're the expert and the captain says, have you thought
about this? Are you, you know, have you
considered that? Yep, Yep, you know, have that
discussion. I said, OK, very well, that's
the that's the way to go forward.
So that balance of knowing what's going on with leaving,
you know, really empowering the team.
So we kind of use that as a kind of discussion book for coaching
and discussion about what we want to do and then set some
rules around what level of decision making flows from
project manager up to, you know, area delivery manager, programme
director, chief exec. And but then it kind of felt
like we weren't, it was working, but it wasn't really working as
well as we wanted. And I think there was a bit of,
you know, and over a fairly short period of time where
people think, well, am I really empowered?
Am I really trusted to do this? So we ran 2 workshops, one with
the chief exec and the exec committee that went down a list
of different scenarios that said which ones of these do we want
the CEO to have the decision on? Which one do we want the exec
committee, programme director, project manager and there.
And there really were only, you know, a couple of things where
the chief exec said, that's, that's a red button that only I
can press and the rest of it delegate down.
And then we had the same workshop with the project
managers on the same set of scenarios where some they say,
well, we want to make that decision and say, you know,
Jeff, guess what? The chief exec agrees that you
can make that decision. There's some they say, well, I
think the CEO should make this decision and say, well, the CEO
thinks that you should make the decision.
And we kind of talked those things through.
So we got that alignment where decision making played.
And of course, over time, we would need to coach that and,
and keep talking to make sure we're keeping things in the
right place. But that was a, that was quite a
useful exercise to get everybody aligned in kind of decision
making and authority. I finally learned the art of
delegation, not from the Scouts, because I didn't join the
Scouts, but from two sources. First, the laziest manager ever.
And he was brilliant, which meant he was brilliant at
delegating. He delegated everything.
So he had a very nice easy life. I mean, and so here, the art of
lazy management, I sort of thoroughly subscribe to, if
you're really, really good at this and you know, where you add
value. And he always talked about
successful conversation. You know, how do I set you up
for success? Which is great.
Isn't that a lovely conversation?
How do I set you up for success? And the essence of the success
conversation, I learned from the James Bond film where at one
point the villain, and it calls the story of how he started out
as a journalist on a rag in Hong Kong or somewhere.
He said all journalists had talked to answer The Who, what,
where, when and how. And he said, but by far the most
interesting question is always why?
And that's the success conversation.
Who, what, where, when and how. It'd be really clear about
those. But by far the most interesting
question is always why are we doing this?
What why are we really trying to do this as opposed to other
things? And once you understand the why,
then then the team member can make all those trade-offs
around, you know, do I go this way or that way on on those
marginal calls? But if they don't understand the
why, they're going to keep on coming back to you and saying,
should we do this or should we do that?
So I just always now just think of the success conversation.
And then at the end, I always explicitly say, yeah, so are we
set up for success? Is there anything else you need?
Can you see any obstacles that will stop you?
Oh, and then I always say, well, you know, why don't we just come
back in 24 hours and talk about it again because inevitably you
think you've done the delegation.
Delegation is not an event where you just say here it is and go
away. It's a continuing discussion
where people are trying to really internalise what to do
and how to do it because you've thought about all the trade-offs
in your mind, you're very clear about it.
Your team members are not mind readers, so you have to make it
a conversation where it's a slow process of discovery and you
have to be patient with that. And talking about why, one of
the questions I wanted to ask is why delegate?
If your early career project manager and you've been doing
very well and perhaps that's your first chance to manage the
team or your manager going up into a leadership role, why
should you be a good delegator? Because you you will fail 100%
if you don't delegate. It is that simple.
The rules of survival and success change at every level of
So you know when you're in the front line, it's all about doing
it yourself and showing you the good and you've mastered your
trade. You know, just like the
footballer on the football field show, you can kick the ball and
run around. Your job as the coach is not to
kick the ball and run around. Your job as the coach is to
select the team, train the team, develop the team, make sure
they've got the right resources to term the tactics, all that
kind of good stuff. It's a fundamentally a different
job, which is why you know, so many great footballers are not
great managers and you know, journeymen footballers often
become great managers. They're different jobs and
equally becoming a director of a football club is completely
different again. So you, you just have to learn
it And, and if you can't delegate, the first signs of
trouble are you will be working far too long, you will be
getting far too stressed and your team will be getting
alienated and antsy. And if you want to find what the
problem is, look in the mirror, OK?
And the problem is fundamentally that you're not not delegating
and you're not trusting. So, but equally, if you do
delegate and trust, your team will respond.
Their motivation will go up, their performance will go up,
their learning will go up. They'll be better and more
valuable team members. Andy, I wanted to ask you, what
have you learned over the years about how to let people get on
with the job, but equally they feel supported and you get the
best from them? What?
What's what advice did you pass on?
I think there's, I think back to something Joe said right at the
start is this, there's a, there's a mindset thing to start
to start with. And just, if we remembered back
in our careers a bit when you were, when you're first trusted
and you're empowered and you, you own a project and you're
responsible for this thing. But you know, the feeling you
get the, of being trusted to do something and this task, this
activity, this, this thing is, is yours to manage.
You've got the flexibility to decide how it's done.
It's really empowering and, and you and you want to put your
best into it. So I think there's a bit of
remembering ourselves and, and passing that on, you know, the
mindset of passing that on and and we all know when you we've,
if you've had a micromanaging boss who then starts telling
you, no, I don't want it done like this.
I want it done by that. You're like, it's pretty
demotivating and you know, you feel like the point so well,
just you just tell me how to do everything or what you know, why
don't you do it yourself then? So not being that that person
is, is a mindset thing. I think knowing as a leader or
manager that if you're spending all your time micromanaging
someone, you're actually not doing a thing you're really
there to do, which is to, to look at the bigger picture.
But I think it's just that conversation that you're
agreeing with someone. This is what the purpose, the
objective of the, of the task or the activity, you know, making
sure they understand what that is and what good looks like.
And if you're, if there's things that you're saying, well, you
know, this is what you need to do, but the, the budget is that
or the time frame it is this or the standards we need to comply
with are those so that people know what boundaries they can
operate in. And, and having that
conversation, it's clear. And it's as much about listening
as it is about talking. So people get the chance to play
back their understanding and what their, what their thinking
is and what they're worried about and giving people the
opportunity to come back and having looked at the tasks
they've got to come and say we're at, well, this is, this is
how I'm thinking about doing it. This is the steps I'm planning
to take. So you can have the sort of
conversation that that doesn't direct them how to do it, but
asks the right questions to make sure that risks are being
considered properly, opportunities being considered.
You can coach people through that without micromanaging it.
So you're getting the right kind of control and guidance and
support. But people are, you know,
enjoying that you have the opportunity to to own something
and be empowered to to do it. And then the, as as we said
earlier on, that's that the relationship so that people, if
they are a bit worried about something, they can, you know,
put their hand up, give you a ring, come and tap you on the
shoulder and say, look, can we just have a chat about this?
Because I'm a bit bit worried about this.
Was there any other bits of advice you haven't had a chance
to give, or anything you'd like to mention?
Any thoughts? Just trust your team, That's it.
Fully agree with that. And, and I guess also we, we
come into our industries and Koreas thinking we want to
achieve something. In my case is I want to build
projects that are making a difference in the world.
And then you get to a point in your career where you realise
actually there's only so many things you can build in your
career. But what you can do is if you're
coaching and training and developing the next generation
of leaders, they're going to be building stuff way past your
retirement and doing the same for for others.
So there's a massive part of our of our role as leaders is to
develop the next generation of leaders rather than just doing
what we can in our career. Andy, that's a great way to end
this podcast. Thank you so much for your time.
That's been brilliant. Thanks again to Andy and Joe for
joining us and to you for listening to the APM podcast.
I hope they've given you much food for thought and practical.
Advice on how you can delegate better.
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