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Effective delegation: How managers can empower their teams

Delegation requires preparation and communication of the big picture and desired outcome — coupled with the time and tools to achieve it.
IMAGE BY JGI/JAMIE GRILL/GETTY IMAGES
IMAGE BY JGI/JAMIE GRILL/GETTY IMAGES

Managers can multiply their capacity and impact through the actions of others by delegating effectively. Effective delegation frees you up for more important tasks and empowers your team members, but not all managers delegate effectively.

Common reasons why managers fail to do this are that they:

  • Underestimate the capabilities of team members, giving them fewer responsibilities than they can take on.
  • Overestimate team members’ capabilities, giving them less guidance than they need.
  • Are insecure and do not want their direct reports to outshine them.
  • Start to delegate but do not tell the team what they are doing and why.
  • Enjoy doing the work themselves and believe that they can do it faster.
  • Don’t have the luxury of time to explain things to a team member.
  • Feel guilty about giving more work to an overworked staff member.
  • Delegate but fail to take responsibility for the results.

Delegation is certainly not equivalent to abdication or dumping unpleasant tasks on others.

Let’s consider some key benefits of delegating work well:

  • It will likely take you less time to do something yourself versus teaching someone else, but isn’t that self-sabotage since one of your key performance indicators as a manager is to develop and nurture people?
  • By systematically delegating tasks and developing people, you will have also prepared your successors. After all, if you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.
  • When people feel that they are trusted and respected, they tend to have a higher level of commitment to their work, their business unit, and their manager.
  • Delegation frees up a leader’s time to carry out broader responsibilities in the areas of determining direction, aligning resources, and energising people.

Delegation means assigning responsibility and authority to someone to complete a clearly defined and agreed-upon task, while you retain ultimate accountability for its success.

Preparatory work before delegation

Preparing to delegate includes being conscious about your primary motives for delegating (for example, to decrease your workload or to motivate team members). So, determine exactly what work to hand off (and, what not to), decide how large a slice of the work you will delegate (just a task or an entire function), and specify the skills (thinking, technical, and interpersonal, etc.) required to successfully complete it.

You’ll also need to identify the best person for the assignment and determine the level of authority to be delegated. Here are five helpful tips:

  • Delegate to people whose judgement and competence you trust.
  • For less skilled staff members, seek to develop them by delegating highly structured assignments (eg, compiling figures for your monthly report). Start by delegating small tasks or projects so you can gradually build their confidence — and your own in the process.
  • Seek to provide visibility and career advancement opportunities to team members by delegating work that involves face time with your own manager or with a high-level manager in another division.
  • If you delegate to the wrong person, you may spend too much time instructing and supporting them. If you delegate too much to one person, you risk incomplete results and an unhappy, stressed team member.
  • When you have a pool of resources to choose from, pairing people with complementary skills can help you achieve the best results. For example, a team member with good writing skills may be tasked with drafting the content for a new sales brochure and asked to partner with another person with graphics and production skills who is tasked to complete the layout.

Things to keep in mind for effective delegation

As you proceed to delegate, you need to keep in mind the following factors to ensure positive outcomes from delegation. They include context, purpose, quantity, quality, timelines, resources and restrictions, dialogue, and follow-up and feedback. These factors derive from an approach created by Elliott Jaques, a 20th-century Canadian organisational psychologist.

Context and purpose

The manager must help the team member understand three things:

  • Why is solving this problem important to the organisation’s strategy, to me the manager, and to my boss?
  • Where does it fit in with other work being done by the team and others?
  • What other things might affect this work?

It is rare that a delegated task sits alone. Each small task is usually a step towards a larger vision. If you give your team members the context about what is at stake and help them understand how their task fits into the big picture, then you increase the relevance of the task for them and enable them to make better decisions around the task. They are more likely to take accountability for their actions and will work harder, not just to perform their tasks, but to achieve the larger goals.

As you communicate the big picture and ideal outcome, add a dose of motivation. Make it clear how accepting the challenge and doing a good job will benefit the person taking on the job. For example:

Instead of saying, “Please write a letter to our suppliers about our new purchasing and vendor policies”, say something like:

“I believe you are familiar with the rationale and details of our recent expense control measures. If not, feel free to ask me questions. I am happy to discuss and offer clarifications. I realise this job will add to your normal workload, but I am confident that this assignment will help you learn invaluable skills in managing supplier relationships.”

Quantity and quality

You need to know how much of what needs to be produced (for example, the number of manufactured units or length of report to write). In the case of professional work, this element of quantity may not be always relevant.

Quality refers to the specification of what “good enough” or “complete” means in this assignment. It is the most challenging part to describe because often it is subjective.

Be specific about the outcome you expect and don’t expect people to read your mind. If the finished output needs to be meticulous, the manager must be clear about this in the request.

Importantly, delegate the results, not the process. Most people learn and perform better when you give them autonomy over their work. So, unless the person you’re delegating to is inexperienced, allow them to determine how best to complete the task. If you dictate every aspect of the task, they won’t learn so much, and you won’t get the full benefit of their experience.

For tasks that need a particular protocol or procedure as per the organisational policy or client requirements, make this clear and explicit. However, if a task can be done in multiple ways and the outcome is key rather than the process, then allow for creativity and let go of wanting them to follow only your method.

Timelines

The manager must describe how time relates to the task. Avoid saying things like “as soon as you can” or “when you have time” unless you really don’t have a deadline. However, in that case, is it really a task?

Specify exactly when the task needs to be completed or how much time is allocated to complete the task. For example:

  • “My presentation at HQ is scheduled for 12 November. I need the draft presentation from you by 31 October latest. Can you do that?”
  • “Let’s schedule a meeting for you and me for 45 minutes at 3pm on 1 November to go through your draft so that I can give you feedback. I need to have the final presentation ready by 5 November so that I have a week to prepare. This crucial presentation will help us secure the additional resources we need to deliver on the stretch targets expected of us.”

Agree on due dates for interim milestones that lead up to the final result (scheduling periodic check-ins for monitoring progress of the task is covered in the “follow-up” section later).

Resources and restrictions

It is a major leadership failure to delegate and not provide the resources to make it happen. Ask yourself the following questions:

  • What does this mission really need if it is to be successful?
  • What are the things my direct report must have or may need to accomplish this task?
  • How am I, the manager, going to provide them?

Resources can be anything that can help employees learn and resolve issues on their own — people (additional staff or an introduction to someone they will need to work with), tools (such as software or training), information, or development opportunities.

Real-life situations are far from ideal, and managers may sometimes face legitimate resource constraints, yet work needs to be delegated and accomplished. For such situations, it is important to (1) try to manage expectations with stakeholders with respect to timelines and deadlines; (2) be prepared to be flexible and loosen up timelines to the extent possible so that the team member doesn’t feel like they are being set up to fail; (3) be as creative as possible in rustling up additional resources (it could be interns, temporary staff, borrowing staff from other office locations or departments); and (4) (when necessary) accept the situation without feeling defeated.

Remember that most people produce their best work when they’re under a little pressure, but those benefits fall away if that pressure becomes excessive.

Another critical point here is that there will be times when the team member hits a major roadblock or reaches an impasse. Unless it is time-critical or it’s an emergency that requires someone else to step in, treat it as a learning opportunity. Coach the team member through it and make sure they get the resources and knowledge needed to complete the task. That way, the employee will be better equipped to carry out similar tasks in the future.

Dialogue

Dialogue is the one of the delegation skills that is often missing with many managers. Because the manager already knows how to do the task, they may assume that the team member will know how to do it, too. Instead, once you have communicated about the above aspects of the responsibility being delegated, you should confirm the team member’s understanding, encourage them, and respond to questions. This becomes even more important with three generations working side-by-side in the workplace — Gen X, Gen Y (Millennials), and Gen Z.

“I had already mentioned to them how I wanted it done” or “Oh no, this is simply not what I wanted” are examples of the conversation when a manager has not taken the time and effort to have a dialogue with the team member to invite questions, offer responses, confirm understanding, and inspire commitment.

Seek to build confidence and competence of team members by asking good questions (adopting a coaching style of leadership) rather than giving orders. Encourage your team members to come to you with problems, but teach them to also bring their own ideas, observations, and possible solutions. Open-ended questions like “What other approaches are possible here?” will help them expand their thinking.

Follow-up

The manager should maintain engagement levels sufficient to provide adequate support while seeking desired accountability. Having check-ins allows you to determine if there are unforeseen challenges, answer any questions, or make adjustments to timelines as needed.

Schedule check-ins as part of the assignment by saying things like:

  • “Let’s meet for 30 minutes every Thursday at 1pm to talk about where you are in the project and what needs to be done and by when.”
  • “I want a weekly status update by Friday noon on each of these activities.”

The frequency and level of detail of the check-ins will often be determined by the following:

  • The size and complexity of the delegated task.
  • The amount of uncertainty and/or risk associated with the task.
  • Your assessment of the experience or skill level of the team member.
  • Your familiarity and comfort level with that employee.

You can’t escape failure by telling your boss, “I asked Brian to do that job, and he let me down.” Such excuses will only reveal your own failure to delegate wisely and monitor progress.

Feedback

Two-way feedback is an essential part of the delegation process. Show your gratitude and appreciation for the delegate’s commitment and efforts when the task is complete. As needed, you can offer constructive criticism paired with encouragement to help them tackle any shortcomings.

On the other hand, managers can also learn about their own areas for improvement. Consider asking yourself:

  • What worked?
  • What didn’t work?
  • What can I do differently the next time?

Making delegation work

For delegation to be effective, you need to put in the upfront work to train, clarify, and set expectations for the outcomes you need your team to achieve.

The beauty of this stepped approach is its simplicity and versatility. Although it can simply be used by the manager to ensure all the correct information has been conveyed as the task is being assigned, it can also be used by the team members as a checklist for whether they have all they need to do the work.

Effective task assignment is all about starting with the big picture, moving to the specifics, and ending with responding to questions to confirm common understanding. Learn to develop your delegation skills, and you will multiply your managerial effectiveness.


Raju Venkataraman, FCMA, CGMA, is a corporate trainer and a leadership and career coach with more than 30 years of experience in finance, strategy, media distribution, and leadership development across various industries. He is based in Singapore. To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Oliver Rowe at Oliver.Rowe@aicpa-cima.com.


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