Everyone loves to delegate.

Unfortunately, we make a lot of mistakes in this process. I want to give you some tips how to do it in the more efficient and fun way. Let me share my experience with you. Maybe you will avoid some mistakes that I made in the past or improve your delegation skills.

It’s all about trust and empowerment.
Delegation is one of the an essential skill of the manager. It has a big influence on a lot of things, starting from your managerial abilities through team trust/building to people development and empowerment.

Managerial abilities
I know; you are THE manager, and you know what to do to make things happen. It’s good…

Not really…

I love to delegate because with a proper approach to this method, you can be even more sure that your colleagues will be more engaged in their daily tasks.

Team/trust building
I believe that together with a task delegation, you delegate responsibility. When you start delegating responsibility, you show to the people that you trust them. This has a big impact on strengthening of people relationships, especially your relations with your team.

Empowerment
Who doesn’t like to be empowered? You are a manager, so probably you have all necessary tools to make things happen — the trust of the team and management, access to the tools and data, and above all, decision-making ability. Try to give all those things into the employee’s hands, try not to be afraid that someone will break something. Try to trust him, and support when needed.

People development
Last but not least, people development. In my opinion, the best experience is the “hands on” practice. Give the team some part of the responsibility and see how they grow, how they play with the tasks and try to find their own (maybe better) way to solve the task. This can be also a good lesson for you.

OK, you did it!

You fell in love with delegation, or you just want to take some part of your duties from your shoulders. Cool, keep going, but please remember, every action can lead us to unexpected and undesired results. To avoid such a situation, I prepared for you some ideas how you can improve this process and be sure that things will go in the right direction.

1. Choose the right people for the correct tasks.
You probably know aspirations of your colleagues. You know what “drives” them, and in what direction they want to develop themselves. Try to use this knowledge, and remember that it can be a really big non-financial motivator for them. Proper empowerment and self-development in desired areas make people very satisfied.

2. Be clear and transparent in your expectations.
Confirm that everyone is on the same page. In this process, there is no room for conjecture. Make your expectations clear, explain why this task is an important one for you and how this job can positively influence the rest of the team. A small task can be a part of some big fancy idea. Remember to provide all necessary resources like time, knowledge, data, approvals (and many others) to make this task doable. This is two-way commitment!

3. Monitor and support if needed, but always give feedback.
During the first meeting, on which you will delegate tasks, set ground rules. Make a gentleman’s agreement on progress checks, the frequency of the follow-up meetings, deadlines, deliverables. Remember, garbage in, garbage out!

Ok, you saw the “delegation triangle”. You probably noticed that feedback is in the middle of this chart. Frequent but not persistent feedback is a message to your colleague that you really care. This will give him a sense of security and in further relation build the environment of trust.

4. Avoid micromanagement.
You need to be very careful with implementing the previous point, especially the monitor part. In my opinion, micromanagement is one of the biggest weaknesses of the managers. Unfortunately, this tendency is frequently shown in this process, and from my experience, it’s related to the lack of trust and mutual understanding.

And please don’t be the donkey from Shreck.

“Are we there yet….?”

5. Don’t give ready-made solutions and encourage proactivity.
You have 100,000,000 ideas how to solve this issue in a fast, efficient and reasonable way. You have probably solved 5,000,000 such cases, and this one is a “piece of cake”.

No.

The guy who is struggling with this job has maximum 0–2 ideas and for him it is probably the first time, when someone has given him something important to do. Stay calm, instead of giving him 100–200 ideas (and acting like a boss not like a Leader) make him come about with his own solutions. Guide him and use your experience to avoid bad decisions. You will see, it will be fun for both of you, and maybe you will find 100,000,000 and 1 solutions to deal with such a case.

6. Give space for mistakes, but avoid catastrophe.
Be patient, most probably the person who is responsible for the tasks will not be 100% efficient. It’s ok. You also weren’t “Alfa and Omega” at the beginning of your journey (and I hope that you aren’t right now). As THE manager, avoid being reactive in a “Rambo Guy style”, who jumps in the middle of the action, takes things in his own hands and rescues everyone else.

Learning process can be unpleasant but overprotectiveness can lead us to unexpected and unwanted behaviors. Take immediate action only when you identify catastrophe risk. We don’t like serious trouble.

7. Recognize effort and do a “post mortem”.
After the potential success (or failure), thank for the effort. Highlight all important aspects of the actions and ask about lessons learnt from them. Ask for feedback on your input. It can be also a good lesson for you.

That’s all.

Easy, isn’t it?

(Last time) No, unfortunately, no.

It’s not easy to remember about all those things during daily mess. Try to prepare yourself a little bit to this process, take a few minutes, create a checklist with the things you want to discuss. Think about potential profits and risks. You can lose a bit of time, but the return from the investment will be much, much higher.

Did you enjoy this post? If yes, please share it or/and give me a ❤. Every view, read, and recommendation is for me great praise and motivation.

Do you want to read more about some other interesting stuff related to Agile, management, look HERE