4 Best Practices for Delegation, So You Can Stop Micromanaging Your Team
If micromanaging your team is something you’d like to overcome in 2023, then learning best practices for delegation is at the forefront of your learning and development. Oftentimes, in an attempt to not give employees more than they can handle or take personal responsibility for meeting important goals, managers too often bite off more than they can chew. This “do-it-myself” mentality is not only impossible for even the hardest hustling managers, but it strips away an important opportunity for the overall professional development of your team.
What is delegation, and how is it related to leadership?
In general, delegation describes the process of dividing and conquering tasks among team members. This leadership tool usually comes into play in order to free up the time, energy, and resources of managers, but its benefits span beyond just this. While at face value, delegation appears as a simple way to spread the workload of one across the plates of many, it actually doubles as a source of autonomy among your team. Ultimately, active delegation in the office enables team members to take ownership of their work, build their experience, and further develop the skills that will take them far in their careers.
What are the benefits of delegating to your team?
Harvard Business Review’s Women at Work Podcast echoes many of the same benefits of delegation. Guest Deborah Grayson Riegel, author and communication coach, states, “As [a manager] delegates, she gets to lighten her workload and gets to crossing off her to-do list. She’s going to challenge herself, improve and increase her value to the organization– and there’s benefits to the team as well.”
In fact, tasking employees with greater responsibility signals trust in their skills and belief in their success. Delegating also presents the opportunity for teams to adopt new skills, collaborate more effectively, and leverage the resources that they already have at their disposal. In many ways, it heightens employee’s reliance on self-sufficiency and collaboration, all while lessening their need for constant supervision.
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Because of these things, Deborah advises, “The idea of delegation isn’t just good for you, it’s critically important,” and we couldn’t agree more.
The 4 best practices for delegation that you can implement now on your team
Of course, establishing a team culture where delegation is fundamental to overall success takes time and plenty of communication. Effective delegation is dependent on clear expectations, as well as the collective belief that the new task owner can meet these expectations to the best of their ability. That’s why we believe that successful delegation is staked upon the following practices:
Communicating context
As delegators, managers have the responsibility of providing important context for other team members to complete tasks successfully. This includes elaborating on the importance of the task and who may benefit from it being completed– all of which presents an opportunity for managers to recognize the skills that employees possess that make them a good fit for the task.
Laying out clear expectations
In order to truly set another team member up for success, it’s vital that a delegator communicates the desired outcome of a task in detail. Managers may fall into the trap of assuming that an employee may just know what this outcome should look like, which usually only results in disappointment and wasted resources. That’s why we make it a standard to communicate expectations with great clarity.
Checking in and offering support
Just because you’ve handed off a task doesn’t mean you get to check out from it completely. After delegating, be sure to check in consistently by asking employees how they feel about their progress or if they need any support along the way. Not only does this approach enable managers to avoid micromanaging their teams, but it continually empowers employees to take full ownership of their task(s) and ask for what they need when they need it.
Making time to debrief
After a task is completed, managers should always make an effort to reflect on delegated items with their teams. Opening conversation about the experience can inform future delegation, including which employees may be best suited for certain tasks and projects.
Delegation is the #1 tool we have in the workplace to develop our teams.
It is fundamental to balancing one’s workload and building confidence in teams, but implementing it for the very first time may seem incredibly daunting. Fortunately, with time and practice of effective communication and emotional intelligence skills, managers can free their bandwidth, boost employee morale, and develop efficient workflows.
Leadology programs like Activate empower managers to do exactly that through purposeful conversations and toolkits for leadership.
Ready to take more off your plate AND be admired for it? Schedule a call with us to learn more about how Activate can give you the specific tools to take back your time and empower your team in the process.
