Be smart when delegating tasks

You're trying to be a proactive leader, and you delegate an important task. You ask one of your fellow officers to go to the Student Activities Office before Friday and fill out an important form to register your annual fundraising event. Without this form, you cannot reserve the one space on campus that will work for the event. This officer has done these forms a couple of times before, so you don't consider this a high risk delegation.

Fast forward to next Tuesday. You find out that not only did the officer fail to get the form in by Friday, he didn't fill the form out properly, didn't get a required signature, and now the space you desperately needed for the event has been snatched up by another group on campus.

Damn it. Another case of delegation gone wrong. If you had just done it yourself, everything would have been fine. As you shift into crisis mode, you swear that you're never going to delegate an important task to him or anyone else for the rest of your term.

As much as your advisor and guys like me urge you to delegate tasks, the truth is that sometimes it goes well, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you delegate (or "hand over") something complex, and the person does an amazing job. Sometimes you delegate something seemingly minor, and it blows up in your face. It all contributes to that most destructive syndrome of student leadership: the "it's easier if I do it myself" syndrome. We all know that just leads to burnout, falling grades, failed relationships, and stress.

Here are a few ideas that might (and I stress, might) lower your risk of delegation failure.

• Follow up a day or two later with the person, thank them for taking on the task, and ask him or her if they have any questions about the task. Use phrases like, "It's so great to have people like you I can count on."

• Only delegate to people who ask for something to do. Handing that form to a young, eager leader instead of your overworked and easily-distracted secretary might have yielded better results. Before you delegate, ask yourself, "Does this person stand to gain anything from doing this well?" If not, don't give the task to him or her.

• Ask for a confirmation, perhaps by text message, when the deadline is met. If you had asked your fellow officer to text you when the form was turned in Friday, and then you didn't receive one, you could have made a quick call to the Student Activities Office near the end of the day and scrambled, if necessary.

• Do the task with the person the first time. Don't assume that this member or fellow officer knows how to do the task. It might seem simple to you, but maybe it's intimidating to her. It's often best to do the task one time together, then trust the person to do it on her own the next time.

• Make sure the person understands why the task is important. If you had told the officer, "If we don't get this form correct and in by Friday, we might lose the ability to reserve the quad lawn, and someone else will probably grab it for that Saturday," the officer might have felt the urgency a bit more keenly. Let the person know that this is important, and she is more likely to treat it as important.

• Praise the person when he does the job right. It seems silly to celebrate someone for turning in a form, but if you want him to keep doing the job right, you need to give him some positive feedback. A public thank you at your next meeting wouldn't hurt.

• Reward work well done with more work. When someone has shown initiative and an ability to responsibly perform tasks, give that person increasingly important work to do. Let the person build on his or her success with increasing responsibility. People love it when they know you trust and depend on them. If you can build this over time, then you'll have several people that you can trust to do delegated tasks correctly and efficiently.

• Be cool if it doesn't go perfectly. If you had to run in on Friday afternoon and fix something on the form, don't overreact and chastise the person. Use it as a teachable moment and spend a little time with the other person so that the mistake can be avoided in the future. If you act like the world has ended because someone made a mistake, you're not being a good, nurturing leader. People make mistakes, and you'd be smart to worry less about punishing people than helping build their knowledge and abilities.

Delegation is an imperfect science, but you are more likely to be a happy leader if you do it thoughtfully. If you're doing everything yourself, you are not doing your job as a student leader correctly.

Dogs have bellybuttons

I have a 6-year-old son. Tim is at the age where the questions come non-stop, and usually, I can handle them. When I don't know an answer, I fake it admirably. However, this week he stumped me. "Do dogs have bellybuttons?" he asked.

Hmm... Dogs are mammals, and I've always assumed that all mammals had belly buttons. But, to save my life, I've never noticed a belly button on any of my dogs. I grabbed my terrier, flipped him over, and gave a good look. Dewey (pictured) enjoyed the attention, but I sure as hell didn't see a belly button on him.

I texted Cha Cha, which is what I do whenever I don't know the answer to a question (if you've never done it, text a question to 242242, and you'll be amazed). Here's what I got back:

"Although you may not see it, it's there. Dogs, like most other mammals, do indeed have bellybuttons or navels."

Well, I'll be damned.

These random events in my life are terrific fodder for blog ideas, it got me to thinking about all the "dog's bellybuttons" that help our organizations exist. You don't always see them, and they don't demand much attention, but they are there. The administrative assistant in the student activities office, the guy who sets up our A/V equipment at events, the advisor who always comes to events a few minutes early to help set up, the person at our national headquarters who processes all those initiation cards, the guy who mops up the locker room after we're done destroying the place.

These people frequently escape notice, but they play a big role. As a student leader, you should get in the habit now of reaching out to your dog's bellybuttons and saying "thanks." I'm big on saying "thanks" to the behind the scenes heroes – my mail carrier, the lady who serves my coffee in the morning, our bizarre UPS delivery guy, the secretaries at my kids' schools. It makes the world a better, friendlier place, and occasionally, these folks do something a little extra for you that makes a huge difference.

What are you or your organization doing to thanks the folks who play an important role and who get little or no recognition?

Your long term goal

I occasionally go back to Indiana University and visit my home fraternity chapter. When I go back, I notice that the chapter has changed a lot. The guys are significantly better looking, more athletic, and more socially adept than we were. They definitely have better grades. They enjoy a top-notch facility, and they run the chapter like a well-oiled machine. At last check, they had around 160 members, and a budget about four times greater than ours. They hang with whatever sorority they want to (we sure didn't), and they collect awards left and right.

When I go back and visit my chapter, I look around and think, "I honestly don't think I could even get into this chapter today."

You know how that makes me feel?

Fantastic. It makes me feel like my brothers and I did something right.

As a student leader, you should be putting things in motion and recruiting new members into your organization that will take your group to new heights when you're long gone. Your goal should be that you would come back in five to 10 years and be blown away. If you do your job as president today in 2009, you should come back in a 2019 and question whether you could have been elected president of the 2019 group.

We get bogged down in the short term goals, sometimes. Every now and then, you have to do some things that will yield benefits down the road. Remember to thing big and far into the future. Don't be short sighted.

What are you doing, right now, to make your group amazing for those students who will come along five years from now? What will the future rock star leaders on your campus see in your organization?

What can you do this year so that when your son or daughter walks onto your campus in 25 years, he or she will be blown away?

Put the building blocks in place so future leaders can take things farther than you were able. Lay the groundwork. Build the organization you wish you had joined. Dream a little about the amazing places your group could go. Then, start recruiting in the young leaders with the vision to take it there.

People

Dr. Lori and I were chatting yesterday, talking about the death of Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. Lori is married to a Republican, so she had to talk quietly (kidding). She said she was struck the most by the vast number of people with stories about the Senator reaching out to them personally at a time of need.

When 9/11 happened, Kennedy personally called the family members of every 9/11 victim with a tie to his state of Massachusetts. There were many. I saw a story on ABC News about how Kennedy invited one 9/11 widow and her young son to visit the Kennedy home in Hyannis Port to go sailing and talk about the husband/father they lost on that terrible day. For nearly 40 years, he called the family of every Massachusetts service member lost during war.

Kennedy was an important man who understood what was most important. People.

Lori and I talked about how some of the leaders who have shaped our lives the most did so by simply taking a personal interest and reaching out.

A couple times a year, I get a personal, handwritten card from Durward Owen. He's sort of the Ted Kennedy of our fraternity, although he would hate that comparison. Durward was our executive director for three decades, honorary fourth founder of our fraternity – the "lion" of Pi Kappa Phi. Every time I get a card from him, I save it. He doesn't just do it for me. He does it for every man who ever worked for him. People.

In my home office, on a bulletin board in front of me as I type this, are two more handwritten cards. One is from my business partner, David Stollman, in which he tells me he's proud to have built our company with me. The other is from Dr. Phil Summers, a former national president of my fraternity and a chapter brother from Indiana. In the nearly illegible handwriting of a man near 80, he tells me that my keynote was the best part of our fraternity's leadership school.

It doesn't have to be a handwritten card. Coincidentally, yesterday (before talking to Lori), I reached out to a fraternity brother who is going through a medical battle, and I asked him how he was doing. It was a Tweet, not a handwritten note, but I think it hit him on a day when he really wanted someone to care. I got an email from him yesterday evening thanking me for reaching out. He told me how much it meant to him.

Here's the leadership lesson. The things people tend to remember aren't the business decisions you make for your organization. It's not the meetings, or the power struggles, or the flashy event that was held under your watch as a leader. It's not the t-shirt, the party favor, or even the amazing legislation that you worked months to pass in your student senate. It's not how many friends you had on Facebook.

What they remember are the personal connections that you take time to foster. Dropping by to ask your advisor if her son is feeling better after having the flu. Driving your fraternity brother two hours to visit his ailing grandmother. Taking that friend out for fries at Denny's after he loses the election. Helping your girlfriend's best friend hook up her computer one night over a pitcher of margaritas.

Don't get so busy being a student leader that you forget what really matters. It's the moments you stop being a student leader and act like a real caring person.

People.