Delegation is a core leadership skill. After all, if you can’t delegate tasks and responsibilities to others, then you can quickly become overwhelmed and bogged down.
Yet, delegation can be tricky. If you delegate too much, you may be just passing your burden on to others, overwhelming them, and making them feel undervalued. If you don’t delegate enough, then you may end up micromanaging and not getting the most out of your team.
Tips for effective delegation
So, how can you strike the right balance? Here are six tips for effective delegation.
1. Delegating can empower your team
Delegation plays an important role in building team capabilities and development. It helps your team to learn new skills and grow. This can broaden an employee’s job skills and give them an opportunity to shine.
Delegation empowers your team in more ways than one. Gen Z and Millennial workers rank learning on the job as the number one thing that makes them happy at work. Delegation can improve morale and may also help with employee retention. 94% of employees in a LinkedIn study said they would stay with an organization longer if it invested in learning experiences.
Delegation, however, is not an abdication of your responsibility. As a leader, you still must ensure the job gets done right. While you don’t want to hover or micromanage employees, building in regular checkpoints to assess progress and provide any necessary coaching can help keep things on track.
2. The act of delegation is not a sign of weakness, but rather of strength
Strong leaders know when it’s time to delegate. When you delegate with purpose, it’s not a sign of weakness, admitting your failures, or even laziness.
When considering what you want to delegate, it’s important to ask yourself why. Is it because you want to help your team learn new skills? Is it so you can work on pressing projects or higher-level projects? Is it because you need time to think more strategically or solve complex problems? If it’s for reasons like these, not delegating would be a sign of weakness and poor leadership. Strength comes from recognizing when you need help or when your team needs new challenges.
3. For a leader to grow and succeed, he or she needs to let go
No matter how smart you are, how hard you work, and how much time you’re willing to put into your job, you’re only one person. While giving up control is difficult, great leaders know they have to let go of some things to succeed.
This can be especially difficult for leaders that know they can personally do a better job with a particular project than their staff. That may be true — and it may even be the reason you’re the boss — your staff will never be able to handle more complex tasks if you don’t give them the opportunity. One reason delegation is hard for so many leaders is that they see skill gaps in their team. Delegation can help fill those skill gaps.
One common reason leaders give for not delegating work is that they could do it much faster, so it’s just easier to get it done than explain to someone else how to do it. That may be true for today, but it also means leaders will never be able to delegate. Take the time to train someone on how to do the job. Even if it takes you two hours to train someone to do a job that takes you an hour, you’ll recoup an hour every time that job needs to be done.
Leaders also need to grow. The only way to do that is to clear some things off your plate to give you the time to stretch and explore.
4. Trust and relationships are built through delegation
Delegation provides a clear signal that you trust your team members. When employees feel trusted and respected, they tend to do a better overall job. When team members take on challenging and meaningful work, they are more likely to be engaged at a higher level.
Providing tasks that are outside of your team members’ typical assignments shows this trust in a demonstrable way. By increasing responsibility, it helps build stronger foundations for relationships.
5. Effective delegation requires a clear vision from leaders
When employees have a clear vision and the required expectations, deliverables, and guidelines, it helps guide their actions and provides a roadmap for the work to be done. One mistake leaders often make is telling employees exactly how to get the job done.
Since delegation is about learning opportunities to grow organizational capacity, employees will learn best by working their own way through challenges to deliver results. While leaders should be available for coaching and guidance, letting employees do it their way may also lead to more efficient or effective ways to complete tasks.
Effective delegation also means providing team members with the authority that goes along with the responsibility. Make sure employees also have the right tools and enough time to do the job right.
6. When delegating, be aware of unintended consequences
Not only do you need to ensure employees know the details of what you expect, but you must also explain why you are delegating tasks. Otherwise, you run the risk of employees seeing delegation as a way for you as a manager to shirk your responsibilities. They may see you as disinterested and create what researchers at the University at Buffalo School of Management call “dysfunctional resistance.”
Dysfunctional resistance is when employees are passive-aggressive in response to tasks. While employees may not overtly push back, they may not embrace tasks with maximum effort or they may just ignore them.
If you are delegating tasks because you view them as learning opportunities for employees, let them know. If you’re delegating so you can focus on higher priority jobs, let them know that, too. Let them know the purpose and avoid confusion.
Delegation Can Empower Your Team, Build Trust, and Improve Efficiency
When leaders delegate to empower their team, they are not only demonstrating strength but also trust in themselves and others. Delegation builds trust and develops relationships — both of which will help them grow and succeed.
Leaders must have a clear vision before delegating, so that the task can be done effectively. If you want people on your team to be excited about coming to work, you have to delegate.
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