Newly promoted supervisors and managers often struggle with delegation, and they are not the only ones. Almost without exception, people who become managers were once outstanding individual performers. They know they can perform certain tasks with excellence, but, to be optimally effective as managers, they must trust others to perform those same tasks. This shift in what it takes to succeed pushes many managers outside their comfort zones. Are you in this situation?

Learning more about how to delegate can certainly help, but it is much more important to learn as much as possible about your people. Just as betting on talent helps you find the right players for your team, identifying the right person will make you most successful at delegation. And the right person is not only someone who has the aptitude to do the task with excellence, but also someone you trust.

The first part, finding the right aptitude, may be the easiest part. Like the best coaches and trainers, you should build your plays around your players. First, think about who will do the task with excellence. The more you know about each of your people, the easier it will be to make this decision. Make sure you know:

1. Their strengths and weaknesses
2. What they are passionate about
3. What motivates them
4. What their career goals are
5. Whether they will find this assignment attractive and engaging

If you know these things about each of the people on your team, you will be able to match the right person to the right task or responsibility and create an optimal fit. When you make a good match, you will have confidence in that person's capability and motivation to perform with excellence. But going one step further will make you an even better delegator.

This additional step may be more difficult, as it is a question of trust. Assess your personal relationship with each individual on your team. How close are you to these people? Aside from the aptitude and fit considerations, how much do you trust each person? If trust is low, knowing all there is to know about a person's strengths, weaknesses, motivations, and goals is not enough to ensure successful delegation. Why? Because if trust is low, you will not be able to fully release responsibility to that person. You will constantly wonder whether, despite the person's capability and motivation, she will follow through and be loyal to you, or put the interests of the team above her own interests. If trust is low, ask yourself, “Why do I not trust this person?” and, “Am I willing to work on building trust?” If you cannot both identify why trust is low and also do whatever it takes to increase trust with a member of your team, you will never effectively delegate responsibility to that person.

Delegation always involves risk. No amount of knowledge about how to delegate will eliminate this risk. People will make mistakes. Things will go wrong. But when trust is high, you will know that mistakes are innocent, not calculated. In the context of that trust, when you delegate to the right people, based on what they do best, you will find that they do some things even better than you would have done. When it comes to delegation, that is where the treasure is buried.

Growth always involves going outside your comfort zone. You might be apprehensive about delegating, but you do not have to let that feeling control your behavior. Identify the right person, build trust, and take a risk. Where would you be today if someone had not taken a risk on you?