Managing Priorities – How to Get the Most Out of Delegation

Delegation is a natural part of any leadership role, but there is a difference between leaders who delegate as a tick box exercise and those who use it as an opportunity to get the most out of their team, maximise their own time and make effective prioritisation decisions.

Commissioning the ‘wrong’ people or teams to certain tasks, or choosing an inopportune time to assign projects can lead to a breakdown in team-working.

Effective delegation requires a deep understanding of your team, mindful consideration of all involved stakeholders, and a desire to provide a duty of care by way of creating a supportive, psychologically safe environment for your team to flourish in.

So how do you achieve this? Let’s look at how to get delegation right in your leadership role.

Understanding Your Team on a Deeper Level

Really effective delegation comes easiest to leaders who are instinctively in tune with their team: the leaders who know where colleagues are with their current projects, who know which ones have a little extra capacity right now, or those who have been struggling with a certain piece of work recently and would benefit from being given some time without the pressure of new added responsibilities.

Loading up a team member with more work when they are already feeling at capacity will have them thinking “does my manager even notice or care what I’m currently working on?” It can completely erode their trust in you and can quite quickly lead to them feeling overlooked and underappreciated – a fast track road to disengagement, and eventually checking out of the role, with the possible eventuality of looking for another job elsewhere.

Sometimes the extent of the effort managers put in to getting to know their team is asking them if they got up to anything nice at the weekend, does this sound familiar?

It can be tricky to get the balance right when trying to deepen relationships with your team members – it can sometimes feel forced when leaders try to get to know their team on a different level. Hint: it only usually feels forced when the motivation is false. There is no point trying to get to know your team better if you are doing it in a tokenistic way – it has to come from a place of genuine interest and a desire to be a better leader to help your team, not purely in the hope of seeing better results fast. It takes time to nurture deep relationships with your team, it is something that you as a leader should be dedicating continuous time to, every day and every week.

There can be a few different ways to make sure you are keeping employees engaged and safe in the knowledge that their work is appreciated by you. Schedule regular meetings with sub-teams in which you give them each in turn a chance to update and share any issues on their current work projects. You won’t always have the answers to their queries, but this forum-style meeting is a good way to develop collaborative working and get employees in the space where they are open to discussing their successes and failures that week. Hearing others share updates from their own work will also help develop relationships within the team, encouraging collaborative working. This is another area to focus on when it comes to delegation – let’s look at why.

Encourage Collaborative Working

Something that tends to hold leaders back from getting the most out of their team is underestimating the power of collaborative working , and overlooking the skills and abilities within individuals which have the potential to be shared with great effect.

This links to what I mentioned above – only leaders who really get to know their team on an in-depth level will know the extent of the skills and abilities within their team. For example, you might be working in a technical space with technically skilled colleagues, but a new project might require the input from a design or a marketing point of view, which some of your team might have previous experience with. Even colleagues with no specific training in a particular area, but who have transferable skills can have valuable inputs when it comes to problem solving and getting projects off the ground when they are at the development stage.

Be a leader who regularly gets teams together to share knowledge and ideas, this way you will build an inherent understanding of the way different team members work – which ones will be the right ‘fit’ for new projects and which have those valuable cross-functional skills.

Creating Mutual Trust

One of the key reasons leaders can be held back from effective delegation is a lack of mutual trust between them and their team. Leaders can sometimes suffer from the inability to let go and put their trust in others, to take a step back and put their faith in the abilities of their team – sometimes through fear,?or even arrogance .

Teams often work by going through the motions and following protocols long-decided, with little thought or consideration as to whether the way things are done is actually the most effective way, or just the way that it has always been done.

Sometimes when employees propose changes, managers are unwilling to take on-board suggestions due to the perceived power imbalance between the team member and the leader, likewise, changes that are proposed by managers can be met with distrust by team members – again due to the deeply ingrained hierarchical structures which create a ‘trust gap’ between colleagues and leaders.

The ideal scenario for both leader and employee is a space where all ideas are encouraged to be discussed and there is a genuine, open two-way dialogue between both parties where working can be shared and completed fairly and efficiently. This can only happen when there is an authentic level of trust within the team.

To build and maintain trust, it is essential that you create a team where fairness and respect are ever-present, where your team are empowered by you and given the autonomy to take ownership for their work – safe in the knowledge that you as their leader trust their skills and abilities.

Finally

Delegation is much more than a managerial tool, when used intelligently, it can strengthen the connection between your team members and can help spark new ideas and ways of working.

If you want to find out more about how to strengthen your leadership skills, discover our programmes designed to take you to the next level in your leadership career – view our leadership programmes by clicking here .

Until next time,

Julia Carter

About Julia Carter

Julia Carter is the MD of Zestfor?Ltd and specialises in working with leaders and managers of virtual and hybrid teams to improve team effectiveness.

Effective leadership involves numerous competencies, but it also requires a core mindset which is rarely explored in leadership programmes . Julia’s mission is to instil this core mindset into as many leaders as possible so that they can empower their people in their areas of specialty...and hopefully in their personal lives too.

In 2009, Julia founded Zestfor - a training consultancy and continues her mission.