How to Master the Art of Delegation

Effective delegation for effective management

Good managers can move mountains, but it becomes a little more challenging when multiple mountains need to be moved simultaneously. That’s where the art of delegation comes into play.

Effectively delegating tasks can boost productivity, meet deadlines, and inspire creativity and innovation in the workplace.

If you master delegating, you can move an entire mountain range much sooner than you might have previously thought. In which case, let’s run through some key delegation skills for management success.

Delegation Skill #1 Overcome stubborn impulses

Asking for help isn’t easy for a lot of people. People who take pride in their resourcefulness, productivity, and ability to solve problems might feel slightly wounded when it seems too difficult to accomplish something alone.

But the fact of the matter is: nobody got to be a CEO by keeping helping hands out of the way. If you wait until the last minute to raise the white flag, it will only be harder to accomplish the tasks that are piling up.

Managing others also comes with managing yourself. So, ask for help when it’s needed! Recognize tasks you know you will inevitably need help with, and delegate them early enough to be successfully completed on time.    

Delegation Skill #2 Evaluate the importance of tasks

When it comes to successful delegation, don’t overload your employees. You don’t want to ask too much of people. So, prioritise! Create a priority list of everything that needs to get done from most important to least important.

This delegating rule of thumb is how you can ensure the most important tasks are with the proper amount of energy, organisation and timeliness. Then your team can gradually ease into the things that are less important.

Using a priority system assures that menial tasks aren’t getting done while large, time-sensitive projects are sitting on the back burner. Prioritising is absolutely crucial for time management and streamlining projects for best possible outcomes.

Delegation Skill #3 Understand the strengths of others

As a manger, you need to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of your team if you want to reap the benefits of delegation. When it comes to delegating your want to dispense tasks in the best possible way. So, delegate tasks to the right people. 

Always try to delegate tasks to the individual most suited to completing them. If Elizabeth is a skilled artist, don’t ask her to balance the books. If Ann is amazing with numbers, don’t ask her to draw up a new company logo.

Though it may be tempting to arbitrarily delegate tasks to people who seem to have less to do. The end result may not be as great as it possibly could be when their skills don’t match the job at hand. Be strategic in the way that you delegate. And, by assigning responsibilities with a task=abilities rationale, you create optimal project outcomes. 

Delegation Skill #4 Empower tasked individuals

When you’ve delegated a task to someone who is perfectly qualified to do an excellent job, there’s no need to micromanage that person!

You might be stressed or concerned about the timely completion of a task. Nonetheless! Constantly interjecting without being asked for help might inconvenience the person who is already knocking it out of the park.

When you delegate tasks with the right completion framework, you set it free to the bestowed. So unless someone comes knocking, let it be. Let people come to you when they need help or have questions. And make yourself available.

In doing so, you empower team members to make decisions using their own best judgement. If you delegated the task on a strengths-based approach (pairing the appropriate task with the appropriate person) the risk of failure is too low to concern yourself with.

Delegation Skill #5 Don’t forget to show gratitude

If you’re delegating a lot of tasks and you aren’t appropriately showing gratitude, your team members might begin to feel a bit used. They’re going above and beyond to help the team win. So it’s safe to assume that they don’t want to be treated like this extra effort is merely par for the course. 

Great delegators recognize every completed task as a team victory. They celebrate with their employees. They have lunch delivered for the people who worked overtime to help everything come together. They always say please and thank you. If you express your gratitude, people will feel more inclined to give you their best effort.

Final words

Every successful manager has a lot of people to thank for helping them achieve their fullest professional potential. So, delegate a task or project in a way that reflects this! Know when to ask for help, ask the right people, get the help you need, and appreciate the individuals who give it to you.

Alex Lawson is a Financial Team Leader and a blogger, working together with other experts at Brighter Finance. Whenever not working on another project or helping customers with their financial issues, Alex may usually be found online, reading money-related blogs and sharing his tips with other experts.