2 powerful tools for effective delegation

Imagine the following scenario: Jane asks Paul to design a poster that showcases a new product. Paul goes away, makes the poster, and then comes back to show the result, proud of delivering ahead of schedule and under budget.

Instead of congratulating him, Jane says that he should have checked with another department before deciding on the colour palette and that now the poster has to be redone. The project goes over time and over budget.

Delegation is one of the skills with the broadest range of applications, yet we rarely practice it consciously. Seldom we take into account the steps we could have taken to prevent the miscommunication from happening in the first place.

Below are 2 simple, yet powerful, mental tools that you can use to improve outcomes. The first, one addresses the structure of the communication. The second one addresses the content.

The three steps communication process:

In any conversation, it is hard to judge when your counterpart is actively listening. They might be giving an automated response or suffer from self-confirmation bias (a mechanism through which we privileged information that confirms our current world-views and ignore what contradicts it). And to complicate things further, we can often attribute different meanings to the same words.

The three step process bypasses these problems by constantly bringing the attention of your counterpart back to the conversation and using multiple wordings. When executed with confidence, it shows professionalism and saves a considerable amount of time and pain.

As the name implies, it has 3 simple steps:

1. Person A explains ‘the thing’ to person B and asks for them to rephrase

e.i. “I would like you to [do X]. Could you explain to me how you see that happening pls?”

2. Person B rephrases and summarizes their understanding to person A

e.i. “yes, I will [rephrase], correct?”

3. Person A confirms* what person B just said

e.i. “yes, I’m glad that we are on the same page with [rephrase again]”

Of Course, if A doesn’t agree with the summary made by B, it is essential to restart the process.

The 4 elements of any task:

The next step is to make sure that no part of the content is left unaddressed.

For that, we divide content into 4 categories (each with the most common questions) that you can use as a mental or physical checklist:

The Fundamental Question: What is the underlying question/need this seeks to address? Why is this important?

The Method and Constraints: Is there a defined process or values? Is the person being delegated to completely free to choose his/her own? Deadlines? Budget? Risks? Any other constraints (e.g. place, legacy systems, dependencies)?

The Vision: What does success look like? What concrete outcome or characteristics would a “job well done” have?

Reporting and Coordination: When should the topic be discussed again (e.g. upon choosing the method, upon achieving a milestone, upon completion, only if there is a problem)? Who, when, and how needs to be informed?

By combining the set of questions with the 3 step communication process, you get the best chance of success from the start. Just make sure the answers to the questions are not forgotten! (next article on effective note-taking coming soon)