Clarifying Your Role and Empowering Your Team
“When you delegate tasks you create followers. When you delegate authority you create leaders.”
I would guess that 90% of founders or owners or even CEOs have never had a formal position agreement to be held accountable to.
This is largely historic as when they started out they simply did a lot of many things and were accountable for everything, so no agreement was required.
But as they scaled and added people they have probably overlooked the need and importance of defining their role alongside that of the other leaders they have onboarded. This won’t have been deliberate; they just haven’t got around to this task as they probably don’t see this as either important or urgent.
We would challenge this view, as in our experience the leaders that sit alongside the Founder/Owner/CEO need to know who is accountable for what and what specifically falls under their remit. Ambiguity causes misunderstandings and/or duplication. Neither of which are desirable outcomes.
One of the first tasks we do when we start working with a new client is to clarify accountabilities. Who is ultimately accountable for achieving the desired outcomes in each service and business function?
Lets break this down into our 3 core elements
Reframe: Do I need to slow down?
This is needed by you as much as them.
If you want to empower others to lead more so you can lead less, then you have to be clear which parts of the business you want them to be accountable for going forward. This is a crucial part of the transition from founder-led to a leader-led company.
Start with the areas they have most understanding of or competence and agree with them what the expectations are and when you would like to be informed or consulted.
Remember they can’t step up until you create the space.
Rethink:
So three questions to ponder:
What are you actually great at?
What gives you the most satisfaction?
Where can you add the most value?
Ideally there are areas of the business that tick all 3 of these boxes and if so that would be a good element to create your revised role around. The objective here is to create a more concise list of accountabilities that you take on so you can go deeper in those areas which give you the most fulfillment, and ideally add the most value to either the team or clients.
The question you need to consider is if you were an employee where would you the CEO use your skills and expertise.
Refocus:
Once you have crafted your revised role and decided who is going to take on some of the accountabilities you previously had, this need to be communicated to others to ensure that everyone is clear on the revised accountability structure.
One way to do this is to create a RACI document.
A RACI is a tool for clarifying roles and responsibilities on a project or process.
It stands for:
R — Responsible: The person(s) who do the work to complete the task.
A — Accountable: The person who is ultimately answerable for the task and signs off on the work. (There should only be one A per task.)
C — Consulted: People who provide input, advice, or expertise before the task is done.
I — Informed: People who are kept up-to-date on progress or decisions, but don’t do or approve the work.
There are lots of templates online which you can use to get started here
or let us know if you would like us to talk you through this one.
It’s time to build a leadership team that doesn’t just support your business — they lead it.
Ready to take the first step? Start here →
