What It Is

How to Delegate

I was working at my desk not long ago when I had the realization that it was so late that I had actually just started the regular work day for my team in Asia. I had been working these US/Asia double shifts for so long that my frustration, with the project and with my team, was rising. However, the team was bewildered by my reaction. They were doing everything I assigned to them. How could I be upset?

Why indeed. I had fallen into a common trap. I thought I was delegating, but instead, I was simply assigning tasks and retaining ownership of everything. It was during one of these marathon work sessions that I realized I needed to make big changes - and fast. I began to look at when projects worked, seemingly without my intervention and when they didn’t. Breaking it down, the solution jumped out clearly. There are five steps to successful delegation.

1. First, you must clearly define the task. What is it that needs to happen? What is your desired result?

2. Second, select the team or the individual that you want to accomplish this result.

3. Third, inform the individual of what’s being delegated. And also let other people in the organization know that this person is now responsible for this task, so they know this is the go-to person and they don’t keep coming to you.

4. Fourth, keep in place a monitoring system, so you can ensure that progress is being made and they’re not getting off-track.

5. After the task is done, complete a final review. Look at lessons learned and ways to improve moving forward.

These five steps are logical enough - the key is putting them into practice. I started with the project that caused the most work hours for me. I looked at my Asia team to determine who had the ability to lead the team on-site, then, before assigning the team member the task, I set clear objectives and goals. Successful delegation requires a clear end result.

I selected Helen for the role. She had strong skills and a willingness (and band-width) to take on additional responsibilities. After I determined the right person, I knew I had to provide the authority to the individual, so that she could actually achieve it. This is an important point. Don’t retain the authority and then expect her to deliver. If necessary, you need to teach her how to do it. This might be a training method. You can’t just delegate it and walk away. You also need to ensure the rest of the team understands this shift in ownership.

After you’ve delegated, you need to monitor progress. Make sure that there are some scheduled goals and meetings to ensure that tasks are being completed. I usually do this in a 1:1 meeting. This is a time for us to talk about upcoming due dates and milestones as well as anything that may be of concern. Provide feedback and, if necessary, direction. Give your team clear objectives and goals and then provide encouragement to keep them on track. Boosting morale helps make sure that people are making progress. A good way to do this is by monitoring milestones.

Create small, interim deliverables to serve as checks-and-balances on the forward movement of a larger task. These milestones can provide a self-regulating form of monitoring, and a basis for progress reports (1:1 sessions).

What happens when you do have problems? You need to learn to manage by exception. When it comes to delegating, you need to keep it organized. Make sure you know where they are and that they know and can track their milestones. In my case, when Helen started slipping on a key deliverable, we worked closely together until she was back on track. It was difficult for me, personally, because I just wanted to fix it. In the short term, it would have been much faster to simply fix it and hand it back. However, I wanted Helen to retain authority over the Asia team - this required her to find the solution and implement it. How?

The key is developing a structure. If the people you’re delegating to are having trouble, help them, train them. Make sure that they understand that if they run into a problem, they can contact you. This extra effort should be short term and the long term benefits are many. They include not only the deliverable at risk, but the entire delegated ownership and who knows - maybe bigger and better projects in the future. With Helen, that was the case. She overcame the short term concern and the project went on to deliver on time. Even better, I was back to just working the US shift!

Ultimately, performance and deliverables are in your control. Are you ready to make it happen? Go to http://www.delegatesuccess.com and take the readiness quiz.