Successful Delegation in 5 Steps

Be it a dream company or a favorite sports team, why we see something as a world-class team is because they understand the way they have to deal with the situation ahead of them, and the skills required by their team in order to do what’s necessary.

To do so requires delegation; assigning the right roles to the right individuals, depending on their abilities and their experience. You wouldn’t ask a graphics designer to do analytics, would you? Quite simply, the roles are best defined to people depending on what they’re trained for.

Success in delegation comes down to utilizing the talents of everyone in the team optimally. Done right, this would allow productivity to rocket, with a streamlined workflow, and less troublesome task management. In fact, it comes down to just 5 steps.

Step 1: Break down team goals into individual tasks.

The first step to delegating effectively is deciding which tasks and responsibilities you want to assign to someone else on your team. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What are the deliverables that you currently have on your plate?
• Which of these are absolutely necessary for me to do?
• Which could be done in a far better manner by someone else?

Besides this aspect, remember that time management is also key. Keep your task list SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Measured). Ensure that you really have the time to do all these tasks. While you’re at it, it’s crucial to be totally honest about your current workload. Will you potentially miss critical deadlines in the process of trying to do them by yourself?

Remember, the core idea of delegation is to maintain a streamlined workflow, and prevent yourself from being overworked.

Step 2: Delegate tasks based on skill and experience

Once you’ve identified tasks that can be assigned to other members of your team, you then need to consider who the best person is to take them on. Make sure that the individual you pick is well-equipped in order to tackle the task. At the same time, make sure it’s not too easy for them either.

Just to clarify, we don’t mean that work should be difficult; it’s that they should be challenged while maintaining control of the work. This shouldn’t be to the extent that they’re overwhelmed and unable to concentrate.

Step 3: Provide thorough communication, direction and context

Simply listing and handing over tasks to your team isn’t enough. You will need to prepare and equip them with all the instructions and paperwork that they will require in order to ensure success. This may require all of you to come together on call.

With minimal facilities in the current work from home, clear conveyance to the team with regard to information and thoughts is needed. And that’s where a tool like MultiCall comes in. A MultiCall, brings people together, and gives everyone the right and ability to contribute value to the conversation.

In doing so, one of its most noted features is Call Scheduling. MultiCall’s Call-Monitoring feature lets you add or remove participants as and when you require them during a group call, and to also see who’s speaking.

Step 4: Take Onus

Just as expectations are clearly set, ownership and transparency in work needs to also take place, as this is critical to assessing a member’s capabilities before a task is allocated to them. Besides this, giving individuals full authority over the work is critical to ensure that they feel engaged in order to complete it successfully. Building a culture of accountability in your team is essential too.

This can be started by including team members in the review calls and meetings so you can work together to decide what the milestones for a task are, and to ensure that everyone’s understanding of the task aligned from start to finish is key.

Step 5: Set aside time for feedback and review

Last but not least, the ability to delegate with ease also is dependent on both the ability to give and take feedback. This means making feedback clear to everyone involved, and to document needed areas of improvement. With a quick response, greater receptivity of feedback would mean a faster and more effective allocation of tasks, and therein a more streamlined communication among teams.

Delegation is just as important in business as communication. Putting the right people in the right place and at the right time will mean the difference between success and failure for an organization and its ability to operate. Using effective people and tools like MultiCall for this, will pave the way to success.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it. — Theodore Roosevelt