There is something called elegant delegation that is when you are able to stay in control of the tasks you are delegating without being in the detail, and at the same time, you grow the person who you're delegating. let's look at how to do it.

Delegation Must Be Challenge Stretch And Motivate

You have to trust the person you're delegating to otherwise there is nothing in it for the person you're delegating to. Also, you must think through the job thoroughly before you delegate it. There is nothing worse than being too vague and saying yes I want you to do something like that, you'll figure it out then the person has no chance of knowing what is expected in fact.

You Must Agree What To Delegate, Not How To Get It Done

What's really important is that you agree with the other person, how you are going to measure what good looks like. Said in another way you must agree on the acceptance criteria when you come back to me having finished the task. How are we going to judge that it is good enough, that's what I mean by agreeing what needs to get done but not the how let the individual figure out, how to do it as long as it meets the acceptance criteria that's fine it is very motivating for the person to get the autonomy to figure out how to actually do it.

Hand Over The Entire Task

You must hand over the entire task, don't be a micro manager who hovers over the person all the time. In fact, what you might do that's really elegant is that you agree with a person up front when are we going to check in with each other. How often are we going to do that so that you both know what is expected?

Provide Support And Direction

Be available whenever the person you're delegating to has questions, but as we said before, don't be the hog who comes over and checks upon them next, what are you going to delegate well on a project there are numerous items that are obvious.

Administrative Tasks and Entire Roles

For delegation, we all know there are many administrative tasks on a project, for instance, keeping track of timesheets or what about looking after the budget. I'm sure that you could delegate that to a person who would find that very motivating because they would love to learn how to track a budget.

You can also delegate work streams or entire roles such as business analysis or testing. Another really good concept to keep in mind, when your delegate is Pareto's principle also known as the rule what are the 20% of tasks and activities that you do during a day or during a week that adds to 80% of your results, the 20% of activities you should not be delegating because that's your sweet spot, that's what you do really really well.

It's the other 80% that you can look to delegate as long as it generally challenges stretches and motivates someone else in that way. You have a win-win situation you delegate something, it frees you up to look after something else and it is motivating for the other person because it is an area they would generally like to get better at and learn about.

Song Song
Lemasky.com