How to Effectively Delegate Tasks: The Basics You Need to Know

Teaser

Leaders at all levels have two choices: learn to delegate or fail.  Unfortunately, for many of us, we haven’t seen great examples of how and when to properly delegate.  We’ve seen peers, bosses, or other leaders delegate important tasks only to be disappointed or surprised in the results.  This is often the fault of the delegator, not the delegate.  Today’s post is intended to run through some of the basics of delegation, highlight some potential pitfalls, establish some basic run rules, and get you prepared to start delegating more effectively.

What is Delegation and How Do I Get Started

Delegation is an essential part of being a leader because you will quickly find yourself running out of time to work on the truly important things if you can’t get rid of less critical tasks effectively.  But, how do you know which tasks you need to do yourself versus the ones that can be given to others?  I’ll cover a framework for determining how to prioritize your work in a future article, but for now I will provide a basic example for you to use.

You can split up your work into buckets in a lot of ways, but today I’ll suggest prioritizing based on importance and urgency.  Oftentimes you will hear this referred to as the Eisenhower Matrix.  I will go out a limb here and say that I don’t really think the quote typically attributed to Eisenhower actually matches up with this “his” matrix.  Eisenhower is quoted as saying “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important.  The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”  I think that’s a great philosophy and one that I wish were true.  But I know this was not true for him neither as a commander nor president.  Leaders must focus their time on important and urgent tasks.  And the tasks that should be delegated are those that are important but not urgent.  Keep in mind, these are often subjective terms and you will need to determine what is important or urgent in your business.  Here is a basic example of this framework:

	Urgent	Not Urgent
Important	Must Do	Must Plan
Not Important	Must Delegate	Must Say “No”

We’re only looking at Delegation today, so let’s focus on Urgent but Not “Important.”  Take a second and think about your business and the work that typically comes across your desk.  Which tasks would fall into this category?  A simple example might be a customer complaint.  Is it urgent?  No doubt, it is.  The speed at which you respond to issues is a major component of your business reputation.  Is it important?  Um, yes.  Customers pay the bills, right!?  But is it important enough to make it onto your task list?   Probably not.  If you dealt personally with every single customer complaint, you would not have enough time to focus on the things that are truly important to the business.  So, part of your challenge is going to be parsing out what is important for you to attend to and what is important for someone else to attend to.

Delegation the Right Way

Still struggling with the idea of it being important, but not important enough for you to work on it personally?  I hear you!  If I had to guess at why you are uncomfortable with this idea, it’s because the way you’ve seen delegation done (or maybe even the way you’ve done it personally until now) is that you forward the email onto someone else and say something like, “Could you please follow up on this?”  Job done.  Onto something else.  Right?  Wrong.  

Verify Competence and Clarity

So, how do you properly delegate then?  First, you need to make sure the person you’re delegating to has the competence to handle the task.  Maybe you’re a growing start-up and you’re working hard for every positive experience.  Maybe you’ve just launched a new product that pushes the envelope.  You’ll want to make sure any feedback from the customer is handled the way you want it handled.  Ask yourself, “Have I created clear expectations of how this type of issue should be handled?  Have I set clear boundaries?  Have I properly documented, communicated, and trained expectations?”  If you can’t answer these questions, it’s a 50/50 chance that you’ll end up disappointed.  Delegation can’t be simply pushing paperwork from one desk to another.  You need to make sure the work will be done in the manner you want it to be completed.  

Set Expectations

Once you’ve ensured that your delegate understands what to do, how you want it done, and their boundaries, they should be capable of completing the task without further assistance from you.  Or, if further assistance is needed, they will know that they have hit one of the established boundaries and will seek you out for guidance.  But, you’re still not done.

Follow-up

You need to set up a process of following up on tasks.  There are few things as frustrating to a manager as not receiving follow-up.  Part of your expectation setting and training should be how and when you would like to be followed up with.  For the example of the customer complaint, you might want to know when:

• It’s been resolved

• The resolution exceeds established boundaries (e.g. Your customer service rep can handle issues up to $100 without approval, but to satisfy the customer complaint would cost $200)

• The problem identified is systemic and needs to be corrected on a large scale to prevent similar occurrences

If you haven’t heard back on progress, you shouldn’t assume it has been resolved.  As President Reagan would say, “Trust but verify.”   Part of your delegation process should include a realistic timeframe for resolution.  For your business this might be 24 hours, 5 working days, etc.  Whatever it is, if you haven’t heard back by that point in time, it’s time for you to go ask for a status update.  Allowing the issue to grow into something larger because it wasn’t resolved following your standards isn’t the delegates fault, it’s YOURS!!  So make sure you have an automated system in place for tracking open issues.

Keeping Track of Everything

I would love to hear in the comments about what cool tools people are using to keep track of tasks at work.  Whether it’s for yourself or your team, managing tasks and completion dates can become a major challenge.  I’ll offer a few simple, low-cost options for you to start tracking today.

1. Email - After speaking with the delegate in person, you may decide to send a summary email.  BCC yourself when you send it so the email ends up in your inbox too.  I use color coded tags in my inbox to indicate which emails require follow-up.  Some programs even offer the ability to schedule reminders, which can be useful.

2. One Note for Windows - Chances are that you have access to Microsoft One Note as part of your Office Suite.  I have folders for various things I want to keep track of and I specifically have a section for my staff.  In there, I keep a running list of all of the things I have asked them to complete, any specific details, and a due date.  Check this as part of your daily task list or one-on-one prep to make sure you remember to follow up.

3. KPIs - Key Performance Indicators, might be a useful way for you to keep track of follow-ups.  Going back to the example of a customer complaint, maybe you set up a process where all customer complaints are logged on a tracker.  Those get subdivided by Open and Closed.  Plan to review these KPI’s on a regular basis (informal, formal meeting, report, etc.) with the responsible parties and use that as your check to ensure things are getting done. 

Closing Thoughts

Delegation is a critical skill for a leader and one that takes practice to fully master.  Giving up responsibility and loosening your grip on the business will probably feel scary for many people.  Ensure your team is trained and understands their role, set clear expectations, and ensure you are getting follow-up.  Doing these three simple things will make you a delegation pro and will give you more time to focus on more significant issues facing your business or department.  You might even find yourself leaving the office on time more often.

Actions to Take Today

• Look at the last task you delegated and see if you missed any of the steps we discussed.  What would you change?

• Pick one task you want to delegate and put together your steps to make sure you are in a position to fully explain and follow up on the process.  Now go do it!

• Choose your accountability tool to make sure you don’t lose track of open tasks.  Create one today.  You can always change your mind later if it isn’t working the way you intended.

• Practice, practice, practice!

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