Delegating Work – 10 Steps to Getting Things Done the Right Way

Why is delegating important? Learning how to effectively delegate a share of your workload to other people is a strategy that can help you free up your time and focus on the more important tasks that require your expertise and energy. In addition, it can help you build a strong and successful team of people with high level of commitment to their work and their organization.

Delegating is more than simply giving assignments to others. Make it part of your work process and empower your employees through effective leadership.

Delegate like a pro following these 10 concrete steps:

1. Reflecting and Choosing

Reflect on your tasks and identify what needs to be delegated. Of course, not everything can be delegated. Find out which tasks can be easily done by one of your team members. Divide these tasks further into tasks that don’t need training and tasks that do. Also, assess which team members will excel the most when given the chance to perform the tasks independently.

2. Training & Mentoring

Provide training to the employees and team members that will perform tasks that require mentoring. Plan for these sessions and answer these questions: How long will it take for them to learn a new tool or process? Are they fully-equipped with these tools? Who will do the teaching?

3. Setting Expectations

Set clear expectations on what needs to be done. Once your team members are armed with the knowledge of processes and tools, communicate what you expect from them. It’s also best to map out the bigger picture (say, quarterly business goals) and convey how each delegated task fits within this main objective.

4. Owning Responsibility

Explain to each member why you chose to delegate a specific task to them. This will help promote positive responsibility and pride.

5. Milestones & Deadlines

Be explicit on milestones and deadlines. Vague timelines will eventually haunt you back through missed deadlines or unperformed tasks.

6. Withdrawing

Learn to let go and avoid micromanaging. After you’ve provided the appropriate tools and mentoring, it’s time to back away from the project and give your employees the freedom to do it their way. You can sometimes check in on the progress of the agreed project milestones.

7. Contact

Make yourself accessible for questions, clarifications, explanations etc. Inform your employees that they can get in touch with you through a specific medium (email, messages, phone) and during specific hours.

8. Feedback

Review the completed tasks with your employee. Be specific with your feedback (both positive and negative) and make sure that your feedback is in accordance with the expectations you set out earlier.

9. Acknowledging

Give credit where credit is due and thank the members who have made significant contributions.

10. Documenting

Learn from your mistakes and work on improving the delegation process. This is where documenting the entire process will come in handy. Documentation allows you to reflect back on what went wrong and who did what.

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We encourage you to use the aforementioned steps as a checklist and see where it takes your business!

Delegating is a critical skill and one of the most important tasks you have as a manager, so it is crucial to be able to do it effectively. The LPC course Delegating will help you recognize its important benefits and understand why it is an essential part of being a leader.