Delegating is one of the most productive yet misunderstood managerial activities. Assigning someone work that is part of their job is not a delegation, it’s simply a work assignment. Neither is you redirecting a piece of work to a colleague who should have received it in the first place. The true power of delegation is delegating your responsibilities, projects, or work to a direct report to help them develop and free up your time all at once.
Manager Tools offers the best primer on Delegation I know of in this 40 minute podcast. Their step-by-step model is easy to adopt and they have a massive number of related podcasts sharing additional guidance on specific situations, what to delegate first, economical benefits, and more.
Recommended Resources
How To Choose What To Delegate: If you’re motivated to delegate but don’t know where to start, Manager Tools has you covered. This podcast episode covers both the kind of tasks that are easiest to delegate and how to choose among your directs who to delegate to first. (22 min listen)
Delegating To The Floor: As you learn about the delegation chain, the final step inevitably becomes delegating work “to the floor”. Manager Tools uses this metaphor to help manager communicate what individual contributors can do if their manager delegates their work to them. In some cases people may feel they are just getting more work and this cast explains how to solve that perceived dead end. (41 min listen)
The Most Important Management Concept You're Missing - Task Relevant Maturity: Jason Evanish summarizes Andy Grove’s concept of Task Relevant Maturity. While this may be a general concept, it has a clear connection to Delegation. If a direct’s task relevant maturity for a delegation is low, a more structured and time-intensive style to optimize the chance of a successful outcome. (10 min read)
Management Time - Who’s Got the Monkey: William Oncken Jr. and Donald L. Wass with an odd yet insightful article on protecting yourself against “reverse delegations”. This is a scenario where a direct report becomes overly reliant on their manager and regularly puts the burden of solving issues for them that they would be perfectly capable to solve on their own. I included it here because it beautifully demonstrates how managers may disempower their teams despite intending to support them as much as possible. (10 min read)