How to Delegate: When Is Delegating Most Effective?

Delegation is the act of empowering other people to take on specific tasks or make specific decisions. Effective delegation involves choosing the right tasks to assign to the appropriate team members, making the best use of their natural competencies.

The opposite of delegating is micromanaging. A micromanager may struggle to let go of control, and they may not fully trust their coworkers to make sound decisions and produce good work. A good leader must burnish their delegation skills and also hire an employee team worthy of the trust that is core to the delegation process.

It is crucial for all team members, from project managers to higher-level executives, to learn how to delegate tasks to their coworkers. The benefits of delegating include:

• Time management and efficiency: Even the most skilled executives and project managers cannot singlehandedly tackle the full scope of tasks needed to run a business. When you delegate work to others, you ensure there will be enough manpower to accomplish all needed tasks in a timely manner.
• Employee morale: When you grant responsibility to members of your team, you provide a gesture of trust and appreciation. This can help new managers bond with staff members, and it can help established managers quickly integrate a new contributor.
• Financial benefits: Successful delegation improves a company’s bottom line. It helps ensure that paid employees will spend their time working and not sitting around waiting for their manager to give them a task to complete.
• Professional development: Employees learn by doing. When you task a worker with new duties, you call upon that worker to refine their existing skillset and pick up new skills along the way. This valuable experience will help them thrive in future work, and it will make managers feel more confident about entrusting them with important tasks.

Despite the clear benefits of delegating, some managers struggle to follow through with the process. Here are some reasons why:

1. 1. Micromanaging tendencies: Some managers can get bogged down in the minutia of how a task is accomplished while missing the big picture about a corporate mission. Good managers focus on final deliverables and do not get overly involved in an employee’s specific work process. If a new manager struggles to see that big picture, letting go becomes very difficult.
2. 2. Lack of trust. It can be hard to trust new people, particularly the first time you are working together. If a manager cannot let down their guard and take a minor leap of faith in a coworker’s abilities, the act of delegating will be strained and painful.
3. 3. Employees in the wrong roles. A manager may have good reason to not delegate if their direct report is not suited to the task. If you find that you’re not delegating because your direct reports lack the requisite skillset, it may be time to create a new role or work with your existing team members to expand their skills.

On the spectrum of management skills, learning when to delegate is as important as learning how to delegate. Here are some guidelines for the ideal times to delegate.

• When a direct report expresses enthusiasm for a task: As a good manager, it is your job to check in with your employees to suss out the kind of work that inspires them and brings out their best performances. Delegate work that fits an employee’s natural competencies and aligns with their own interests.
• When you’re at capacity: It takes a lot of time to attentively lead a team of workers. If you’re doing your job as a manager, you simply won’t have the bandwidth to immerse yourself in the granular day-to-day operations of your department. If you find you’re behind on your core duties because you’re too immersed in workflow minutia, it’s time to find ways to delegate.
• When a direct report is excelling: When your direct reports earn top-notch performance reviews, reward them by offering them more responsibility and decision-making input. This can strengthen your personal relationship with that employee.

Consider these four guidelines for successful delegation:

1. 1. Focus on end results. When you delegate work to a team member, your primary focus should be on the final deliverable. Was the work done to company standards and delivered on time? If so, then the employee has successfully completed the task and reached the desired outcome. If they didn’t use the exact same methodology you might have used, that’s okay. What matters is the final product.
2. 2. Grant latitude without being fully hands-off. Effective leaders do not micromanage, but they also do not become completely hands-off. Set a schedule of regular check-ins to see how the delegated work is progressing. Use those check-ins as communication hubs. This keeps you engaged without veering into micromanagement.
3. 3. Set people up to succeed. The best managers delegate tasks that specifically fit an employee’s natural strengths and interests. By choosing such tasks, you set the employee up to succeed. This leads to self-confidence and personal growth for the employee. It also leads to success for the company. On the flip side, if you give an employee tasks that do not match their skillset, you might set them up for failure, which in turn leads to low morale and diminished trust.
4. 4. Combine responsibilities with decision-making authority. Managers may find the delegation of responsibility to come more naturally than the delegation of authority. Yet to show an employee that you fully trust and respect them, it helps to include a level of authority along with that responsibility. When possible, include your direct reports in decision-making processes related to the tasks they will handle.

Get the MasterClass Annual Membership for exclusive access to video lessons taught by business luminaries, including Howard Schultz, Chris Voss, Robin Roberts, Sara Blakely, Daniel Pink, Bob Iger, Anna Wintour, and more.