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As you progress along your career track, and your life, it’s important for you to become a great delegator so you can get more accomplished yourself. That means you’ll have to task someone else with doing something that you used to do yourself. As a manager or team leader, you’ll need to know how to determine the individual strengths and talents of your team members, and match the tasks to the person. If you aren’t able to delegate effectively, then you won’t be able to lead properly or manage others competently, and you’ll certainly restrict the opportunities for growth that might otherwise become available.

Ask any new manager what they feel is the hardest thing to learn, and they’ll tell you that learning to delegate is close to the top! When you’re used to doing something, and of course you believe you’re the best for that task, it’s hard to give it up. Will it be done right? What if a mistake is made? What if something isn’t done because they just didn’t know they needed to do it? All of your own experience and processes in your brain guide you and trigger reminders, but when you delegate, you lose control of this. This fear of losing control of all of the aspects of a task from A to Z (micromanagement) is what leads to the failure of some managers and prevents them from growing into leaders.

The key to successful delegation is in how you train your team and hand off tasks. Consider each person’s role, level of pay, and skillset. Be sure they understand not only the role they’re currently playing, but what success looks like. It’s a common misconception that practice makes perfect—it doesn’t! Practice only promotes familiarity—practice makes permanent! To improve through practice, you must study and analyze your performance during practice, and then improve on your past performance.

Before you can delegate a specific job to another individual and let go of the responsibility, you’ll need to train them to do it. Make sure they understand the goals and the vision. Make sure you take the time to show them your process and how you make your own decisions. If you happen to not be available when a decision needs to be made, and you’ve taught your process to your team, then they’ll know how to make it themselves. You want the business to be able to be maintained in your absence, with the same spirit and values as if you were there.

Letting go can be difficult, but the key is to know that you’ve done your part by training them correctly. Let them know you believe they can handle the job and that you’re available to help if they run into trouble. Training builds confidence and various tasks become second nature. Delegation doesn’t mean you give up responsibility and control. You should continue to provide input in a timely fashion, but only when necessary. When you’re delegating, it’s okay to include your recommendations, but remember to leave that person some creative space too. Monitor their progress without hovering or micromanaging.

It goes without saying that effective delegation requires clear communication. If those points are understood, the delegation will prove to be successful.
1. Clearly Explain How the End Result Should Look. Spell out the details, deadlines, and objectives and explain why the task might need to be performed in a specific sequence and manner. If possible, give a model or an example.

2. Explain Why the Project is Important and How it Fits Into Overall Goals. Success involves understanding the objectives to be achieved, and the resources that are available.

3. Make Sure They’re Trained. If the task is something they’ve never done, you’ll probably need to tell them how to do it and then be sure it’s done properly, but you shouldn’t need to do so more than once or twice.

4. Put it in Writing. The task might initially be overwhelming. Notes will provide clarity and a point of reference.

5. Check in Fairly Quickly to be Sure They’re on the Right Track. Once your team has started a task, check in after a few minutes to see how they’re doing. This will give you the opportunity to be sure it’s being completed properly and to correct them if it isn’t—before the project is complete. It’s much easier to fix something early on than it is to redo the task.

6. Set a Deadline. Everyone works better if they know how much time they have to complete a task.

7. Let the Person Put Their Own Spin on it. As long as the final result is what you defined, and the person knows that he or she has the authority and responsibility to perform the task, you shouldn’t be telling them how to do it, or standing over them while they do it. Each person’s creativity and input should be allowed to come through.

8. Handle Any Resistance. Find out what’s really going on. If you see any struggle or conflict, check to see if it’s fear, or lack of knowledge about a particular part of the project. Explain the project again to make sure a lack of understanding isn’t the problem.

9. Give Lots of Credit When the Project is Completed. Praising the people responsible for a task well done validates their efforts. Remember that those who are appreciated, tend to do more than is expected!

10. Address Any Failure. If the project misses its deadline, or wasn’t completed as planned, analyze the situation to determine if you were the problem; learn from the issues, and if your decision was at least partly the cause, improve your methods of delegating. Remember, it’s not necessary or professional to publicly discuss any problems or errors that have been made. Corrections, directions, and constructive criticism should be made privately in a conversation between the two people involved. In regard to criticism (whether giving or receiving), the way you react to it will be remembered more vividly than the argument you present. Raising your voice or using inflammatory language should never be done. These reactions hurt your chance for future effective communication.

11. Start Small and Leave Room for Errors. Make sure everyone knows what you expect of them and encourage them to approach you if they have too much or too little to do. That way tasks can be reassigned, or new ones created by you delegating additional projects. Urge your team to take advantage of any downtime between tasks or jobs by thinking about ways in which they might be able to improve the process. You might not be managing your projects properly if you find that they do in fact, have too much downtime. Pay attention to the smallest details and use them to help grow the organization.

It’s true that what occurs during training is important; but what occurs after training is even more important. Training attempts to change something. Leaders must know what was covered during a training program and follow up to ensure the training is being applied; that is, that the desired change has occurred. If not, the training activity failed, or the trainee failed the true training test.

Effective delegation is one of your most important leadership skills. You can improve morale, increase productivity (your own and others), and ease the stresses of your job and life—if you delegate wisely.

The above content is extracted from Mike Holt's Leadership Skills textbook.