.
Delegating with
Confi dence
Delegating is one of your most important responsibilities as a manager.
Your role is to ensure the right people are doing the right work, at the right
time, and in the right way. That includes what work you’ll do and what
each member of your team is responsible for. The most effective manag-
ers spend less time “doing” and more time planning work assignments,
organizing resources, and coaching people to achieve their best possible
results. While most managers never get away from “doing” altogether, the
goal is to ensure that your work is high priority and high impact for the
organization.
Still, it can be hard to give up control over specifi c tasks, especially if
you like doing them and you’re good at them, even if your workload is over-
whelming. You may also hesitate to delegate an item that’s something of a
stretch assignment for your staff (won’t it just be easier if you do it your-
self?). And once do you make an assignment, you must maintain account-
ability for the work without crossing over into micromanagement. Chances
are you also worry about overburdening your very busy team members.
140Managing Individuals
In this chapter, you’ll learn why it is important to delegate, how to
make a delegation plan and share it with your employees, how to track
progress and provide support, and how to avoid the most common mana-
gerial mistakes.
Benefi ts of delegation
One of the common misconceptions managers have about delegation is
that delegating signals weakness—that they should be able to do every-
thing on their own. But effective delegation can have real benefi ts for you,
your people, and your organization.
When you delegate, you remove tasks from your to-do list that oth-
ers are qualifi ed to handle. This gives you more time to focus on activities
that require your unique skills and level of authority: planning, business
analysis, coordinating operations, obtaining resources, addressing per-
sonnel issues, and developing your employees. If you can give these core
tasks the time they require, your performance and your job satisfaction
will improve.
For your staff, delegation creates new opportunities for growth and
boosts motivation. Imagine that you ask an employee to prepare the agenda
for an upcoming meeting. The person will help set goals for the meeting,
draw up a blueprint for the conversation, recruit presenters and seek ad-
vice from other stakeholders, and create and circulate relevant materials—
tasks that may seem routine or bothersome to you, but will give your direct
report increased visibility and new insight into how your company works.
From an organizational perspective, delegation helps you maximize
your company’s resources and improve productivity. The math here is sim-
ple: if you make the most of each team member’s abilities, you’ll maximize
the group’s output. Less simple are the intangible benefi ts you’ll create in
terms of group dynamics. Trust will deepen across the whole team—trust
in you, for extending meaningful opportunities to grow and have infl u-
ence; trust in each other, for performing well and getting results; and trust
in themselves, for mastering new challenges.
Delegating with Confi dence141
Developing a delegation plan
Once you have identifi ed a task to delegate, start by making a written del-
egation plan before you talk to your employee. It should detail everything
from why the assignment is important to the deadlines involved.
Making a good plan is important. If you assign a task to someone who
lacks the right skill set, for example, you’re setting both of you up for fail-
ure and disappointment. Or if you fail to make accommodations for an
employee’s extra-heavy workload, you might push him into burnout. And
without a clear, comprehensive description, you don’t know that the em-
ployee will actually do the work you need done. A written delegation plan
creates a record that you and your staff can refer back to as the work pro-
gresses. You can use it to hold your employee accountable, troubleshoot if
the project goes awry (did you describe the work inaccurately?), and bolster
your argument for the employee’s promotion.
Here’s how to create your delegation plan.
Step 1: Decide what to delegate
To decide what you should delegate, assess your workload and identify
tasks, projects, or functions that don’t require your specifi c set of skills and
authority. Identify work that could easily be done by other staff members
or outside resources with a minimum of coaching or on-the-job training.
If a task, project, or function is too important to delegate to someone
else, think about sharing responsibility. You may be able to subdivide work
so you handle one part and delegate the rest.
Avoid delegating if:
• You can’t precisely explain what you want the other person to do.
If you can’t articulate what problem needs to be solved or what
exactly needs to be done, it’s best to wait to assign responsibility
for the work until you can clarify these things.
• You’ll put your own development or ability to lead in jeopardy
by delegating. For example, suppose you need to develop your
142Managing Individuals
interpersonal skills so you can interact more effectively with your
team members. Avoid delegating work that requires extensive
inter action with your team, such as leading meetings or talking
with employees to learn about their career goals.
• You’ll undermine a project’s success by delegating. For instance,
let’s say you have extensive experience developing marketing plans
and you were hired for these skills. Your unit is launching a major
new product line, and the marketing plan will prove critical to
the line’s success. You decide to retain responsibility for defi ning
the strategic elements of the plan, but you delegate the tactical
components.
Step 2: Why—clarify your purpose
Why are you delegating work? Think about the specifi c problems you want
to solve or benefi ts you want to achieve. Questions to consider include:
• Why do you want to delegate this particular slice of work?
• How will delegating affect your own work experience? Will it
lighten your workload, lower stress, or let you focus on other man-
agerial responsibilities?
• What impact do you want this assignment to have on your em-
ployee? In what sense is this work an opportunity for the person?
In what sense is it a burden?
• Are you facing a trade-off between time and project scope? If so,
is it more important to meet a deadline or to create a stellar fi nal
product? How will delegating help?
Step 3: What—defi ne the work
What exactly do you want your direct report to do? Be as specifi c as you can
about the activities you’ll hand off and the outcomes you want to see. Is the
assignment a task, project, or function?
Delegating with Confi dence143
• Tasks are discrete activities, like writing a report or planning a
meeting. They usually have a clear timeline, work process, and out-
come. For example: “I’d like you to administer a customer survey.
We need the results (data plus analysis) by next Friday.”
• Projects encompass multiple tasks that fulfi ll a specifi c objective,
like assessing customer needs or developing a new code of conduct.
They require more time, resources, and coordination than a single
task.
• Functions represent an ongoing activity in your unit, like staff
training or interfacing with IT. Unlike tasks or projects, functions
don’t have a start and end date; they’re a continuous responsibility.
That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re more onerous, though. Plan-
ning an annual training session involves less work, for example,
than a major project or high-profi le task.
You should be able to name the overall task, project, or function you’re
delegating and list all the associated subtasks and deliverables. You also want
to have a clear sense of what skills the work requires. Here is an example:
• Project: Develop a new employee code of conduct.
• Tasks: Review the current company code and industry stan-
dards; hold a focus group or administer a survey; meet with HR
and a company lawyer; circulate a draft for input; present fi nal
recommendations.
• Skills: Research, planning, analytical thinking, written and oral
communication, and knowledge of group scheduling and survey
apps.
• Deliverables: A complete and fi nal draft of the new code of con-
duct, around forty pages. A presentation on the proposed code to
the company leadership.
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