Delegate effectively in 5 steps

10 pages, to download and share.

Download the PDF

Why delegating should be your priority

Delegation is an essential condition for employees to be successful and fulfilled. It benefits everyone:

• Managers: no longer being responsible for everything all the time protects you against burnout and balances your time between management, reflection and action.
• Employees: autonomous people are much more engaged and unlikely to leave overnight. According to a 2016 LRN study, giving employees autonomy multiplies their satisfaction by 9.
• The company: a manager’s role is to deliver the two Rs of management, results and retention. According to the same study, autonomy increases creativity by 5 and divides turnover by 3.

By delegating more, you get more performance, less turnover, and a more interesting job.

How to measure how good you are at delegating

When I want to measure the maturity of a manager, I visit their team in their absence. If the team’s performance drops, it means they do not know how to delegate. Great management is often measured in the absence of the manager.

Don’t fall for the classic mistake

The classic mistake is to start delegating straight away. Delegation is not natural: you build towards it. You don’t start building a house from the roof but from the foundations, and add floors as you go.

See your management system as a multi-stage rocket: trust, then performance, autonomy, coaching and finally delegation. Its basis is the 1:1 meeting, which evolves with each stage of maturity in your relationship.

1Build trust with 1:1 meetings

You build trust with someone by spending quality time with them. The perfect tool for that is the 1:1 meeting. During the first 3 to 5 weeks, your only objective is to get to know each team member better.

A 1:1 is an individual meeting with each of your team members, scheduled for the whole year, half an hour long, every week. Key points:

• let them speak first
• don’t interrupt
• once they are done, ask them questions about them
• take notes
• don’t lead the conversation

Your questions are follow-ups that help them express themselves, and questions about them: their preferences, what they like, their current challenges. Once trust is established, you can add the next stages.

2Talk about performance using feedback

Talking about performance is simple: your team member must know at all times whether they are performing or not, whether what they do has a positive impact or not. Get into the habit of giving feedback in your 1:1s, positive or for growth, without falling into the traditional punishment-reward scheme, which is ineffective and harmful. Feedback has four parts:

1. The question: “Can I share some feedback?”
2. The facts: “When you…”
3. The impact: “This is what happens…”
4. The request: “Can you…”

Add this tool to your 1:1s gradually: three weeks of purely positive feedback, then growth feedback. In the 1:1, start with what is going well in their performance, then move to where progress can be made.

3Accelerate autonomy

1:1 meetings already stimulate autonomy: this regular, scheduled meeting grows your team member’s confidence, and they can work on their own between meetings because they know they will see you every five working days.

Accelerate this autonomy by changing how you respond. When someone comes with a problem, you don’t take ownership of it, you don’t offer your solutions, you don’t suggest ideas. You ask the magic question: “Indeed, this is a serious issue. What are you going to do about it?”

To measure each person’s progress in autonomy, rate it very simply:

• 0: tells me about the problems they encounter
• 1: thought about solutions before the 1:1
• 2: offers me several solutions
• 3: offers me their best solution
• 4: explains which solution they implemented

Your questions in the 1:1 then focus on developing their autonomy and on the initiatives they take with the team.

4Start coaching

By rating your team members’ autonomy, you have already set foot in coaching: you have implicitly told them you would like them to grow. That requires new skills. Coaching means:

• agreeing on the progress expected in an area of improvement
• reflecting together on the action plan to get there
• supporting them as they carry it out

Supporting does not mean training: you are their manager, not their trainer. You make resources available to them and check in regularly on their progress against the plan.

The 1:1 becomes a coaching follow-up tool. Your questions focus on the new initiatives they have taken and on their progress in the skills or areas of improvement you identified together.

5Make a first major delegation

This time, you entrust a team member with a mission you currently carry out yourself. It is much simpler at this stage, because trust is established, you can talk calmly about performance, your team member has become autonomous and you are able to coach them. The five keys to a successful delegation:

1. Delegation is not a one-off: it is a process with a beginning and an end. Your team member starts at level 1 and aims for level 5.
2. Don’t compare their current level (1) with yours (5). Remember your own level when you started. The challenge is to get them to level 5 as quickly as possible.
3. Define standards: decide what levels 1 to 5 mean, in standard and autonomy, for the mission entrusted. This also sets your level of assistance.
4. Create a timeline: agree together on the date each level will be reached. Your support and control are inversely proportional to their level.
5. Organise the follow-up: track their progress every week in your 1:1, making sure they keep moving forward and developing their skills.

Once a first delegation has succeeded, you can repeat the process with the other members of your team.

In short

Delegation is the key to positive and effective management. Implemented gradually and built over time, it becomes one of a manager’s most powerful tools.