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Delegation is one of the most important management techniques. It pursues two major goals:

• Free up the manager’s time to do more productive tasks (for example, accept the tasks delegated by her manager)
• Professionally grow the employee

In other words, delegation is the mechanism that powers growth and promotion.

Unfortunately, delegation is often accompanied by issues. Here are the typical ones:

• It is simply not done. Most managers don’t delegate at all and continue working long hours trying to do everything themselves. It negatively impacts their professional growth, because these managers cannot find time to start working on higher-level tasks.
• Delegating wrong activities. A good activity to delegate is the one that you understand very well, that is not central to your responsibilities, and is not critical to the organization.
• Delegating to a wrong person. Select a person who has the necessary skills, and who is willing to take more responsibilities. Usually, managers underestimate capabilities of their reports.
• Throwing the task “over the wall”. You cannot simply tell your report “starting from Monday you are responsible for X” and hope that from now on it will be done right. Successful delegation requires good planning, execution, and control. It is not a one-time event, it is a smooth transition.
• No follow-up. After the activity becomes the employee’s responsibility, there is not enough control and feedback.

Doing delegation right is not that hard, it just requires a little discipline. Here is how to start delegating in seven simple steps.

Step 1. Select a task

As with many other activities, it is hard to do it first time, but after the first delegation is a success, the second time is much easier. Therefore, to start, look at your responsibilities and select a simple recurring Activity that you know very well and that is not critically important. It does not have to consume a lot of your time – remember, the purpose of this first task is just to teach you how to delegate.

Avoid selecting a task that is too mundane, so that the Employee would think that the only motivation for you is making your life easier and unloading all “dirty work”.

Step 2. Select a person

Then select an employee you want to delegate the task to. You need to select a person

• Who is not satisfied with the status quo and who wants to do more
• For whom the task has the right level of complexity – not too simple, not too hard. Ideally, the task should be a little above what the person is regularly doing and/or carry some additional public authority.
• Whose character is compatible with the nature of the task

Step 3. Do some planning

Before talking to the selected employee, come up with the answers to the following questions:

• What exactly the task is about?
• What training/information should I give to my employee?
• How long the transition will probably take?
• How the success of this activity can be measured?
• How often do I need to follow-up on the progress?
• How to decide when the transition is completed?

Write the answers down.

Step 4. Discuss the plan with the employee and get commitment

Schedule a one-on-one meeting with your employee. During the meeting, follow the following scenario:

1. Explain the purpose of the meeting – basically “there is an activity that I need to delegate and I thought that it could be a good task for you”.
2. Briefly describe the activity, why it is important, and why the employee will benefit from taking it over.
3. Ask if she would agree to accept it. If the employee does not like the idea, try to understand why and discuss it. If even after the explanation, the employee still does not like it, maybe you have selected a wrong employee for delegating this task.
4. After you got the general commitment, discuss the plan you have prepared in the previous step. Make sure that you discuss the transition process, success criteria, expected timeline, and schedule for checking the progress. Provide the necessary information and documentation.
5. Ask the employee to absorb the information and come up with suggestions and improvements. Schedule a follow-up meeting in a day or two to kick-off the transition.

Step 5. Kick-off and make the announcements

Get together with the employee and discuss her questions and suggestions. If there are no major concerns or roadblocks, kick-off the Transition. If the activity involves other people in the organization, make sure that the change is announced. Make sure that the first time you do it together with the employee.

Step 6. Follow-up and provide feedback

Follow-up with the employee according to your plan. Make sure that you give a lot of feedback to make corrections and don’t forget about positive feedback!

Make sure you keep careful notes and use them for your follow-ups. Use some combination of your favorite calendar and task management systems.

Step 7. Complete the transition

Your original plan should have included some criteria on how to decide when the transition is complete. Usually it looks like “if after X months the activity is being done right…” (the definition of “right” shall be more specific).

When this condition is met, get together with the employee, announce the completion, and celebrate. It is a good time to send a “thank you” letter or make a public announcement at the team meeting.

That is it. Happy delegation!