Clearly define expectations and outcomes. Assign tasks based on strengths and skills. Trust your team—resist micromanaging. Provide resources and support upfront. Encourage autonomy with decision-making. Set check-in points, but give space between them. Offer feedback and celebrate successes to boost confidence.

One way to empower your team without constant oversight is by clearly defining roles and responsibilities, setting clear goals and expectations, providing the necessary training and resources, encouraging open communication and feedback, and trusting your team to make decisions autonomously within their defined scope. Additionally, implementing regular check-ins, performance reviews, and recognition for achievements can help motivate and empower your team members.

There is an old principle of 60-10-70. Find someone who is atleast 60% as good as you, train them for 10% and make it 70%. Nobody is going to be perfect on Day 1 just like you were not. Give them guidance and for the first few days do a daily check on the progress and gradually stop asking questions but build a culture where they circle back to you. Like when I was leading a sales team, i would assign a monthly target and then break it to weekly and daily. For the first few days I would have daily calls to monitor lead generation and conversions, and then as we progressed, we stopped the calls but Eod, the team will report the daily progress.

The balance between micromanaging and delegating is one I’ve often thought about and is crucial to get right. You must make peace with things not always going exactly the way you want-it helps teams grow independently. With new team members, periodic check-ins and scheduled updates allows for delegation with limited oversight. When team members are upfront about their struggles one can facilitate problem-solving, but new team members can sometimes hesitate. It’s good to have informal networks to problem solve for this. No one likes bad surprises – finding our own recipe for ‘knowing’ how things are progressing, and being prepared with a back-up to hold what slips through the cracks when we delegate has worked well for me.

The team needs to be upto speed on the goals, direction of the organization. If they align and understand what is expected it gives them a better understanding and enables eff drive decision making