Guidelines for Successful Delegation

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Why do we have teams anyway?

Have you ever noticed how the team leader or manager is the hardest working person in a team? This isn’t surprising. After all, they’re responsible for getting the team’s work completed. However, this ‘busyness’ often prevents them from leading the team effectively. In fact, instead of being a leader, they become just another individual contributor.

Think about it. A team only exists because all its work cannot be done by one person. And delegation is essential in any team. At its simplest, delegating is the task of distributing the work among team members. And, very importantly, it also involves supporting the team members to do their tasks successfully. 

Guiding principles

When you delegate, keep in mind some guiding principles. First, delegating is easier when people’s roles are well-defined. Also, if a team member needs to build competence, delegating can assist them to do so. And third, if the team’s work is complex and includes frequent changes in priorities, delegating and tracking tasks and projects becomes more essential.

Instead of just being busy by being busy all the time, an effective manager will focus on delegating as much as possible. They will balance supporting colleagues in doing the delegated work with doing parts of the work that can only be done by the team leader.

Core guidelines

To delegate effectively, leaders should follow these core guidelines.

Be clear about each team member’s role and responsibilities

They need to ensure this information is communicated to team members. When delegating, many leaders or managers miss the blindingly obvious value of clearly telling each direct report what they want from them. 

Consider this example. A team leader conducted a review with her team about their outputs. The aim was to have team members talk to other teams who depended on what they delivered. The idea was to improve perceptions of their internal services by verifying if what they delivered met expectations. And they would update their processes and procedures if they did not meet expectations. She was also calculating that this strategy could help her overcome some performance issues. She’d have the relevant team members learn from others – their internal ‘customers’ – rather than from her about what they were not doing well.

Her biggest shock and surprise was hearing the different perceptions of her team members about what they were delivering and why. She had mistakenly assumed that they all knew what was expected of them. After all, they were all subjected to objective-setting and annual performance reviews. What she had also not taken account of was that all of their job descriptions were out of date following a series of organizational changes over the past five years. 

She was now uncertain about how best to brief or delegate to her team. She realized that she had never explained to each of them directly what she wanted from them. She tended to deal with many things herself “because it is quicker and easier.” She was also thinking that the performance issues might have been created by her mistaken assumptions, and by team members’ convictions that what they were doing was right.

Be open to delegating all of your work, except what only you can or must do

This will leave them free to support each team member and to stay on top of what the team is accountable for.

Here’s an example. A Regional Manager in charge of local government Adult Care Services had a team of ten managers and team leaders. All of them were busy with heavy workloads. And he was busiest of all, finding it difficult to manage spending time with each of them. He recognized he found it hard to delegate, feeling that he would be overloading already super-busy team members. Several of his colleagues felt he was hard to get to for support, advice, or as a sounding board for their suggestions. They found him sensitive and thoughtful when they did make contact and they liked him as a manager. However, they felt they frequently lost time waiting for his approval or in being uncertain of what he expected.

With his deputy, he took advice and chose to look at the total workload and range of team activities. He then separated out those activities of his own which only he could do. These were defined by actions that required his personal presence or authority, some that required his skill and experience, and other key deliverables. He realized he felt slightly embarrassed at how much of his work did not fit into those categories! His decision was to call a meeting to discuss his discovery and to confess his embarrassment. He also wanted to discuss how he might transition to delegating everything else, especially with his concern to avoid overloading people.

To his surprise, his team colleagues suggested that he should share more of his work! This would allow him to be available to support or help when they needed it. In fact, they could work more efficiently and lose less time waiting for his approval. He agreed to meet each one, and discuss what he wanted to delegate and how. His team members agreed the best part was asking them, “What do you need from me to help you make it easy and doable?” He was able to distribute 50% of his workload, leaving him free to supervise and keep ahead of events and it improved everyone’s efficiency.

Make clear how the tasks complement the team

Leaders should help each team member to recognize how the tasks delegated to them complement the whole output of the wider team or organization.

Remember the team leader’s strategy in the first example? Having her staff talk to other teams or stakeholders about the acceptability of the team’s outputs is one way to achieve this. It is also a powerful way to connect and build synergy with other teams who depend on you.