Rebecca Boenigk admits she’s not good at hiring. That’s why she has someone else do it for her at Neutral Posture Inc. But she’s not afraid to admit that hiring at the company, which posted $24 million in 2008 revenue, is an area where she is weak as a leader. In fact, leaders who can recognize their weaknesses will be a lot more successful than those who turn a blind eye to their faults, she says.
“This is true whether you are an entrepreneur or somebody in the corporate world,” says the co-founder, chairman and CEO of the furniture company. “Most people don’t like to talk about their weaknesses. I think that is why some people fail at being leaders just because they don’t know when they need to delegate to someone else. Then, once you do delegate, you have to give that person the power and the authority to do the job.”
Smart Business spoke with Boenigk about how to delegate and create the type of culture to empower those whom you’ve delegated to.
Ask employees. I would think that most people can at least be honest with themselves to know where they succeed and where they don’t.
Usually the people around you will tell you if you are willing to ask and you can do it in a way that’s not confrontational or threatening to them. My office is always the worst place to have a conversation because there is something about walking into the CEO’s office that just puts people on edge. I’ve never yelled at anybody or screamed at anybody, but I think you just have that persona as the CEO.
I think that sitting in the break room having your lunch or even having a beer — sometimes you can ask, ‘Tell me who you think would be good at taking on more responsibility, and what do you think that they could take?’
It gives them the opportunity that they can include themselves in that conversation if they want or they could just recommend other people that they think are able to take on those responsibilities knowing that some of those responsibilities are yours.
Monitor what you delegate. If you delegate something that is huge, you have to follow up. But your follow up is more of a, ‘Why don’t you give me an update of where we are on that?’ One of the things I tell my staff is, ‘I don’t want a dissertation. I want the key things that are helping you or hurting you. Let’s fix the things that need to be fixed. Are you stuck on anything? Do you need additional help somewhere?’ But very nonconfrontational. More along the lines of, ‘Just give me an update.’ If you give somebody the job and responsibility, you have to let them do it. You have to let them fail and succeed.
