One of the best ways to leverage your leadership influence is to delegate as much work as possible to competent team members. At the start of every day you should ask yourself is there anything that needs to be done that I can give to someone else with the appropriate investment of my time?
In the Industrial age model of leadership the leaders made all of the decisions about priorities and strategies and the team was responsible only for execution. This resulted in very little delegation and significantly reduced productivity.
In this type of environment the leader would walk into the meeting and tell the group this is the new program for the fall and hear are your individual assignments, are there any questions?
In the Information age of leadership the leaders still make the decisions about priorities but delegate the development of the strategies and execution to the team. This is a major improvement and gets everyone into the game.
This meeting would involve the leader saying to the team, this is a program that we are considering for the fall, what do you think?
In the new Idea age the leader is willing to delegate the setting of priorities, strategies and execution with reserving the right to make the final decision on all recommendations from team. A meeting would include the leader saying to the team what are your recommendations for programs for the fall and why?
The need for and the type of delegation is changing dramatically in the last twenty years. In the past the leader was suppose to know all the answers to all the questions. Today they need to know how to ask the right questions and the team is responsible for the answers.