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The Practice of Delegation

Not long ago I was working at my desk and realized that it was so late that it was actually the regular work day for my team in Asia. Unfortunately, this was common. I had begun working so many hours, that I was actually working two shifts (US and Asia). I was growing increasingly frustrated with the project and with my team. The team however was bewildered by my reaction. They were doing everything I assigned to them. What could I be upset about?

I had fallen into a common trap. I thought I was delegating, but really I was just assigning tasks and not relinquishing ownership. It was during one of these marathon work sessions that I realized I needed to make big changes to how I was working. I looked at when projects worked, seemingly without my intervention, and when they didn’t. Once I broke it down, the solution jumped out clearly. There are five steps to successful delegation.

1. First, clearly define the task. What is it that needs to happen? What’s the desired result?

2. Second, select the team or the individual that you want to accomplish this result.

3. Third, tell the individual what’s being delegated to them. It’s also important to let other people in the organization know that this person is now responsible for the task, so they know not to keep coming to you about it.

4. Maintain a monitoring system, so you can ensure that they’re not getting off-track.

5. After the task is done, complete a final review. Look at lessons learned and ways to improve moving forward.

The steps above are logical enough - the key is putting them into practice. I started immediately with the project that caused so many work hours for me. I looked at my Asia team to determine who had the ability to lead the team on-site and drive the deliverables per the plan. Before assigning the team member the task, I set clear objectives and goals. Successful delegation requires a clear end result. And everybody needs to understand what results are expected.

I selected Helen for the role. She had the skills necessary as well a willingness to take on more responsibilities. After I determined the right person, I knew I had to give her the authority she needed to meet her objective. This is an important point since you can’t expect success without a willingness to give up some authority. You also can’t just delegate it and walk away. You may need to teach new skills and also ensure that the rest of the team understands this shift in ownership.

After you’ve delegated, you need to monitor progress. Make sure that there are some scheduled goals and meetings to ensure that tasks are being completed. I usually do this in a 1:1 meeting. This is a time for us to talk about upcoming due dates and milestones as well as anything that may be of concern. Provide feedback and, if necessary, direction. Give your team clear objectives and goals and then provide encouragement to keep them on track. Boosting morale helps make sure that people are making progress. A good way to do this is by monitoring milestones.

Often, it helps to create a series of small, interim deliverables that will serve as checks-and-balances on the progress of a larger task. These milestones can then be used as a basis for progress reports (1:1 sessions).

What happens when you do have problems? You need to learn to manage by exception. When it comes to delegating, you need to keep it organized. Make sure you know where they are and that they know and can track their milestones. In my case, when Helen started slipping on a key deliverable, we worked closely together until she was back on track. It was difficult for me, personally, because I just wanted to fix it. In the short term, it would have been much faster to simply fix it and hand it back. However, I wanted Helen to retain authority over the Asia team - this required her to find the solution and implement it. How?

Structure. If the people you’re delegating to are having trouble, help them, train them. Establish the monitoring systems we talked about. Have milestones in place that will keep the task on track. Make sure they know that if they run into a problem, they can contact you. This may seem like extra effort but it will be short term and the long term benefits are many, including not only the deliverable at risk, but the entire delegated ownership and, who knows - bigger and better projects in the future. As for Helen, she overcame the short term concern and the project went on to deliver on time. Even better, I was back to just working the USA day shift!

Performance and deliverables are, ultimately, in your control. Are you ready to make it happen? Go to http://www.delegatesuccess.com and take the readiness quiz.