How to Develop Strong Delegation Skills On Your Team Right Now

A critical skill for every employee in every business is understanding the delegation process and honing the leadership skills to delegate successfully to others.

An effective team understands that job satisfaction increases when everyone has clearly defined tasks. The goal is that they can win at each project they touch every day. The assignment of responsibility for tasks often stems from an effective leader who utilizes delegation criteria to decide who should handle a project, and then clearly communicating the task to be handled. Other times, the delegation is left to team members, and it is less than ideal.

In fact, all too often, improper delegation skills drives a huge divide in team members and creates strife that doesn’t need to exist.

By understanding delegation and the framework to delegate effectively, teams can quickly flourish and thrive.

What does delegation mean?

A quick internet search gives insight into the wide spectrum of definitions that are out there.

Merriam Websters: the act of empowering to act for another.

Wikipedia: Delegation is the process of distributing and entrusting work to another person.

Cambridge Dictionary: the act of delegating a particular job, duty, right, etc. to someone.

Oxford Dictionary: The action of handing something over to a person, or of allocating something (esp. money, resources, etc.) for a particular purpose.

Empowering, entrusting, distributing, handing over, allocating, these are all vital words for conveying that we are allowing ourselves to let others take tasks off our plate.

For teams, this is crucial to building a culture of collaboration where teams thrive on getting things done through helping one another.

How We Can Help Our Team Use Delegation Skills

A key to success is to arm your team with “management essentials” in the form of an easy blueprint to help them hone their delegation skills. Here are 5 key elements of delegation skills:

1. Plan Your Project.

While it should go without saying, planning is vital and needs to be done every single time. A little goes a long way. A few minutes of planning allows us to get clear on the project and get clear on your expectations. It gives one a moment to consider who should help with the project and consider existing workloads on the team and how to manage this additional task or project.

Even if you can spend just 2-3 minutes on this step, this is critical to setting the team up for success.

2. Identify a Qualified Person to Manage the Task.

First, consider who on your team is qualified to manage the task. While many people might be capable, try to identify who would best be equipped to handle the project or task. You will want to explain to the person why you have selected them so it is good to spend a little time considering why you are choosing them.

Second, identify who else may help on the project. The key here is to recognize that if you assign to everyone, then on-one is ultimately responsible and the likelihood of the project getting completed goes down.

Plan what you will say and how you will clarify the lead person and your expectations for others to participate or help in sub-tasks.

3. Articulate the Project and Define the Delegatory Authority

Finally, it is time clearly articulate the project to the team. This is a great time to cover these elements.

Scope of Project
Scope of Authority
Tools and Resources
End Product

This is where we want to share some flavor with the team of what we have in mind. Describe the project or task with reference to how the task ties in with other projects and the scope of what you are asking the person to do. Do they have permission to make final decisions, or do they need to come to you for approvals?

In addition, there are often management tools and resources that can be used be used but unless you explicitly state that those tools could or should be used, the listener may or may not know to use them. This alone could either save the company dozens of hours, or possibly cost the business lots of money.

We cannot expect people to read our minds so add these elements to your discussion right when you are assigning the task.

4. Ensure the Job Gets Completed the Right Way by Setting Milestones/ Check-ins. 

A key to getting an “end product” back in a timely fashion is to be clear on the time frame and if there are any milestones or check-in dates. By incorporating required elements of deadlines into the delegation process, you have the opportunity to discuss ultimate deadlines and opportunities for questions and approvals.

5. Debrief and Feedback.

Vital to honing the skill of delegation is to give the team a chance to discuss and give feedback at the completion of the task. Where were there mishaps due to lack of clarity at the initial delegation? Where was there confusion due to poor communications? What deadlines were missed and why?

Taking the time to debrief gives the team a chance to confer and find ways to improve in the future.

What Are Some Examples of Delegation Skills?

The most frequently thought of delegations are where a supervisor assigned a project or task to others and asked that the project be accomplished within a set period of time. Ideally, all elements of the projects are clearly defined, and explained to set up realistic and successful outcomes. In reality, that’s often not the case.

The fact is delegation, happens in all different manners and effective delegation and effective communication are set as part of the culture and the work environment.

For instance, acute medical care and even routine care by a medical team are great examples of assigned tasks that are precisely carried out. This is partially because the risk to client safety is so high if a task is only partially completed, but also the applicable regulations set such high standards that non-completion of a task is not a choice. If you don’t do your tasks completely you could lose your license.

In other industries, like administrative offices, the environment can be less dire and the weight given to the completion of delegated projects may be less obvious.

Here are some typical types of day-to-day delegations:

• Simple: Asking a staff member to schedule a meeting
• Advanced: Handing over Strategic Calendar Management
  
• Simple: Asking a team member to call a client or convey information to others.
• Advanced: Requesting a team member to research, make a decision and then provide a summary of actions taken.
  
• Simple: Asking a team member to undertake a specific minor task and return with the completed task.
• Advanced: Assigning Full Project Management to a team member.

Ultimately, you want to build a culture where all additional tasks from administrative tasks to discretionary tasks to vital tasks are all treated the same… completion is mandatory every time. That said, it takes time to build up your team and set the standards.

The Excuses that Stop Us from Delegating

Despite understanding the benefits of delegation, many highly intelligent individuals will forego their professional judgment and do the task themselves. Why is that? Often, it is the internal voices in our head that cause us to second guess the need to delegate it.

Here are a few excuses that routinely come up:

• reluctance to impose more work on someone else
• time constraints
• not trusting people
• appear weak if ask for help
• lack of clarity of the project so hard to describe what we want done
• perception that no-one knows how to do what we need help with

It is important to discuss with your team these types of excuses and recognize them so we can overcome them. The more they learn to delegate, the more they will overcome the noisy “neighbors in our head” that try to talk us out of delegating the task.

How Lack of Delegation Skills is Hurting your Business

When the CEO keeps everything on their plate this commonly leads to increased stress and a lack of completion of tasks that could otherwise move the business forward. Talk to any staff person who works for a stressed-out CEO and they can tell you volumes about this.

Interestingly, once a leadership team is developed and involved, the team is much more aware of essential delegation skills. Perhaps this is because when the owner is alone on so many tasks, there is no-one to question them as they do too many tasks themselves.

Delegation is a vital element to allowing the right person at the right level to take care of the tasks so each person can stay in their zone of genius and complete the tasks the business needs them to complete. This creates greater efficiencies for the entire team, and greater efficiencies create greater profitability.

How We Can Help Our Team Use Delegation Skills

Empowering our team to delegate between one another improves decision-making and increases engagement. Delegation training allows the team to build trust between one-another while also developing our people to feel valued and appreciated. Establishing the framework for successful delegation allows the team professional growth opportunities and personal development.

Outlining the advantages of delegation skills to them can also create a greater sense of desire to hone these skills since it touches on the “what’s in it for me” element.

Ultimately, we want our team to work continuously on these essential skills because it is not a simple “one and done experience”. It takes time and intentional focus to fine-tune these skills but by having open conversations, providing them with a framework like the above and working on it as a team, we can empower our team to thrive.