Mastering Effective Delegation: 10 Tips for New Managers

Unless you plan on not sleeping and not taking vacations, you will need to leverage effective delegation to offload some of your tasks to your team. Remember, your job is to achieve results through others, not be a hero or martyr. From my experience, trying to do everything yourself will leave you exhausted and hinder your ability to achieve great results.

Effective delegation is one of the strongest signs of a good manager , yet it’s particularly challenging for new managers. As easy as it sounds, this is one of the skills most new managers struggle with. Why? The reasons vary. They may not know their team, want to control everything, or want to protect their team from overwork (very common). Most likely, they don’t know how to delegate because companies rarely train anyone to develop this skill.

Mastering delegation will help you manage your workload and avoid burnout while simultaneously improving the productivity and efficiency of the entire team. Effective delegation also allows your team to develop new skills and gain more experience.

However, merely assigning tasks to your team members isn’t true delegation. Effective delegation comes from giving your team autonomy to do what is needed to successfully complete a job on time. When done effectively, delegation achieves business growth, increases revenue, and creates job opportunities.

The big question is, how can you best distribute work to achieve optimal results from your team through effective delegation?

The 10 Commandments For Effective Delegation

I was fortunate to work with Darren Nerland , Senior Leadership and Learning Development Manager for Amazon. He lived up to his reputation as a disruptor and helped me look at the art of delegation through a slightly different lens. The list below comes largely from his input.

1. Determine what tasks can be delegated

Ask yourself: “Does this task require my direct involvement or personal expertise, or could someone else handle it?” As you write your list, you’ll need to accept that sometimes you will have to delegate tasks you really like to make room for managerial responsibilities. It can be challenging, but when you keep the big picture in mind, you’ll see how you’re helping your team grow and become more productive through effective delegation.?

2. Set clear goals and define the desired outcome

Without a clear goal in mind for the task, your team member can’t complete it successfully. Before you delegate a task, define your goals, deadlines, targets, and standards for that task and what you want to see as a result when it is complete. SMART goals will help you clarify those desired results . From there, you need to communicate the goals to your team members clearly and concisely (don’t use corporate jargon; it’s not clear and concise. Sentences like “We must ensure cross-functional alignment through high-level interaction” are the verbal equivalent of junk food.)?

3. Choose the right person for the job

For each task, identify who is best equipped and has the bandwidth to complete the job to your expectations. As a new manager, that might be a challenge, even if you have spent some time getting to know your team members before your transition. Rest assured that you will come to know your team members’ unique skills, capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses through effective delegation.

4. Provide resources

When evaluating the task, consider the resources needed to complete it successfully. Ensure your team members have access to those resources and are aware they have that access. This could include access to information, tools, and training.?

5. Define the scope of the task

Clarify the scope of the task by explaining what needs to be done, how it should be done, what resources are available, and when it needs to be done.

6. Provide context

Make sure your team member understands the importance of the task and how it fits into the bigger picture.

7. Communicate expectations

Clearly communicate your expectations for the outcome of the task, including quality, quantity, and timing. Emphasize that it’s their responsibility to keep you informed of their progress rather than your responsibility to check in with them.

8. Confirm understanding

Before ending the meeting, make sure the team member understands the task as well as you do. Invite them to ask questions and have them repeat back to you what they heard. This will allow you to fill in any gaps or correct any misunderstandings. It is much better to invest a few minutes in this exercise than to let a team member spend a lot of time and effort producing a result that isn’t what you want.

9. Provide supervision and monitor progress

The challenge here is to resist the urge to micromanage the person . You’ve chosen this person carefully, so give them the right amount of autonomy and trust to complete the task and—as I said above—tell them up front that you expect them to keep you informed of their progress. A good approach to this would be to set up a timeline or checkpoints along the way to ensure that the task is progressing as planned and provide feedback as necessary.

10. Follow up when the task is complete

Based on how you’ve defined the desired outcome, follow up with your team member to ensure that it’s been achieved. Evaluate the team member’s performance and identify lessons learned. What did they do well? Where can they improve? How can you, as the manager, do a better job of helping them succeed? Opening the door to this kind of two-way feedback builds trust and helps both of you do your jobs better.?

As I mentioned before, effective delegation is more than just assigning tasks—it’s an investment. You will undoubtedly spend more time teaching them to do a task and managing them through it than if you’d just done it yourself. However, as that team member’s capabilities improve and they gain more and more autonomy, the time you save through effective delegation will far outpace the time spent getting them ready. They’ll grow, you’ll be more efficient, and your whole team will be more effective.