Core leadership skills: how to delegate effectively

• What is delegation?
• When should you delegate at work?
• Choosing the best person for the job.
• Setting up the team for success..
• Staying in the loop, without micromanaging.
• Building team loyalty.
• The dos and don’t of delegation

In a workplace context, delegation refers to a people leader giving one of their team the ownership and responsibility for delivering a specific task.

For example, if you have an overarching goal of increasing user interaction with your website, you might delegate to your design lead to conduct a review of the assets currently on site, and where they think improvements could be made.

As a manager, you might worry have some concerns about delegating tasks to other people, which may include:

• Thinking someone else might not get it right: it’s natural to worry about maintaining high standards for the work your team produces, and you might be tempted to do everything yourself because you know you’ll do a good job.
• Could people think you’re being lazy?: this is another common one. Managers often worry that they need to lead by example by taking on impossibly heavy workload, and so don’t want to be seen to be piling tasks onto their teams.
• Because you think it reduces your authority: by handing this responsibility to someone else, you might feel that your own position is being somewhat undermined.

It’s perfectly legitimate to have these worries, but effective delegation is actually the sign of a good manager because:

• It allows your team to grow: if you keep all the high level tasks for yourself, and only let your team do the grunt work, they aren’t going to develop as professionals. Given the importance that staff place on learning and skill development, you’ll probably start to see team members heading for the exit if they don’t feel they’re getting skill building opportunities.
• You aren’t super human: running around trying to do everything yourself isn’t an effective way to run a team, nor is it good for your mental health. You have a team for a reason, so use them.
• You likely have specialists in your team: one of the hardest things, especially if you’re new to management, is accepting that you probably have people in your team with greater subject matter or technical expertise than you. The reason you’re in the leadership role is because you’re good at getting the best out of all these experts. Choosing to do everything yourself isn’t only going to frustrate these specialists, but could end up with a worse end product.
• It shows trust: handing over responsibility for a task to an employee is a vote of confidence in their abilities. This is a good feeling for that person, that will only serve to improve your relationship.

If you can’t clearly and succinctly describe the project aims, scope and deadlines, you can’t expect your team to produce the deliverables you’re hoping for.

In the first instance, you’ll want to schedule a meeting to discuss these parameters, and to allow for any questions or comments your delegates might have. However, it’s also a good idea to create a one-pager or a slide deck that can act as a point of reference or one source of truth for both you and them to refer back to as the project progresses. This way, there can be no ambiguities about peoples’ understanding of what’s required.

As the senior partner in the relationship with your team, it’s one of your responsibilities to ensure that they have the tools and support necessary to carry out the tasks you’re assigning them.

For example, this might involve talking to your superiors about additional funding if you need subscriptions to digital tools that you aren’t currently able to access. Equally, you might need to talk to another departmental head about borrowing some of the time and expertise from their team to help you achieve what you’re aiming for.

Importantly, this isn’t about setting and forgetting. While you should expect your team to get on with the work without constantly needing your help, you need to be on hand in case unforeseen roadblocks arise.

We’ve mentioned the dangers of becoming a micro manager, however, you don’t want to be totally detached from what’s going on. Ultimately, while you’ve delegated responsibility for the work, the buck still stops with you.

As the project draws to a close, there are two essential things you need to do. Firstly, you need to acknowledge the hard work and effort that your team has put into what you asked them to do. Not only is this the polite thing to do, it also helps to deepen your bonds with your team by showing that you don’t take them for granted.

The other thing you need to do is provide feedback. Obviously, the nature of this feedback will depend to an extent on how the project went, but it’s important that you pick up on both the things that went well, as well as those that could be improved. You want to provide learning opportunities that your team can put into practice next time around, without being so negative that they feel they didn’t achieve what you wanted them to. 

To provide good feedback to your team, you need to dedicate sufficient time to thoroughly reviewing it. While it can be tempting, in the middle of a busy working day, to simply tick the task off as done and move onto the next thing. it’s in everyone’s best interests that you do this – your team gets the quality feedback they deserve, and you get the peace of mind that their work has ticked all the boxes.