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Did you recently transition into a management role?
Do you ever feel overwhelmed with work?
Perhaps it's time to delegate some tasks.
What Is Delegation?
Delegation means assigning tasks or responsibilities to another person.
Delegating effectively has many benefits:
Showing your trust in other team members.
Giving others an opportunity to perform specific tasks or roles to improve their skills.
Sharing your workload with other team members.
Reduce Involvement But Remain Essential
Don't hold on to tasks you did as an individual contributor.
Guide those who work with you and inspire them to do their best.Share a perspective that others in the organization want to seek out.
Make others care enough to take action and initiative.
Quiz
Miriam, a newly promoted team leader, has seen her team struggle to keep up with their current project. How can she make sure the project gets back on track?
Miriam should investigate why the tasks are lagging and provide advice on how the work can be done faster.
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Strategies To Delegate Effectively
Talk about how the delegated task fits in the overall project and how other tasks depend on it. Share the business need for the task and why it's important.
Communicate the scope of work clearly and give clear directions to complete the tasks.
Check back regularly and provide guidance when needed. Discuss and agree with the team members about what level of involvement works best.
Say "yes" only to tasks where you can contribute the most. Delegate ones that others in the team are skilled at and where your efforts and involvement don't add enough value.
Choose The Right Tasks To Delegate
Niam is an experienced technical writer. After his manager left the company, he was asked to lead a team with a mix of experienced and new members.
He quickly realized that his daily task list was unmanageable. He made a list and ranked the tasks by their importance, and by how much value he could add to the tasks.
The list looked like this:
Share skill development metrics for the team.
Plan weekly work for writers in the team.
Interview candidates for the growing team.
Coach new team members.
Review product manuals.
Quiz
Which of these tasks can Niam delegate to his team members?
Niam can delegate tasks 4 and 5, since his team has experienced writers who can review and coach other team members.
Take Action
Delegating effectively will balance your workload and make you a better leader.
To become better at delegating:
This Byte has been authored by
Leejo John
Instructional Designer/ Technical writer