Do not drown in pressure at work, yet you have a team you can utilise. Learn how to delegate to your team effectively using these tips.
Many leaders can’t tell the difference between work allocation and delegation. Work allocation involves assigning your teamwork to do, whereas delegation involves assigning some of your work to your team.
Leadership is effective when delegation is taken to the max. When you hold a supervisory or managerial position, it's essential that you learn to delegate to your team to reduce the pressure on your side. However, some managers will choose not to delegate because they believe they can do it all by themselves, do a better job, or lack trust in their team, and worse still, think their jobs might be taken away.
When you have such a perspective on delegation as a manager or team leader, you might fail to develop your team’s skills. This can make work succession in your department difficult in case of a promotion on your end, and you’ll have limited ideas about the different tasks you can handle.
Delegating to your team effectively carries a lot of benefits, among which is improving your team’s skills. It is also easy to identify their individual strengths and weaknesses through the work assigned, which builds team spirit and provides the right platform for the team to manage up.
Now that we know how beneficial delegation is, here are tips on how you can delegate to your team effectively;
1. Understand your role
New managers often find it hard to delegate. This is because they are still accustomed to their previous roles as team members, not leaders. It is important that you get to know what your role is in the first place before you take it on. Taking on extra work might create a gap in your team; you will be overworked, yet your team is underworked. Keep within the lines of your role as a team leader. Any extra work should raise a flag to you that it is time for you to delegate.
2. Define what needs to be delegated
This comes right after understanding your role as a team leader. You cannot delegate what you do not know. Also, you might need to ask yourself if the work at hand can be delegated or not. This might not be about trusting your team; some assignments you handle as a manager might be too confidential. It is also important that you do not delegate tasks that your team is not yet trained to handle.
As you prepare your team, you might choose to upskill them so that they can take on more tasks in the future.
Also read: How to Raise the performance of your team
3. Understand your team’s strengths and weaknesses
It is important to know each individual’s strengths and weaknesses in your team. This becomes a direct line of reference before you assign them tasks to handle. Understand their passion, drive to work, and willingness to take on assignments. What is their expertise? Have they handled this work previously? As a team leader or manager, this information is vital before you assign any task to your team.
It is important to remember that when you delegate work to the wrong person, it bounces back to you as a team leader.
4. Communicate desirable outcomes upfront
Delegation without a goal can be disastrous. In order to delegate to your team effectively, let them know your expectations before they handle the assignment at hand. When is the deadline? What format of work do you need? Should it be a PowerPoint presentation or a report? Do you prefer a Zoom meeting or an in-person meeting? These are key areas of emphasis for team leaders. When you delegate while communicating your expectations, the work output from your team will have little or no errors to worry about.
5. Revisit, support, and evaluate
Delegating to your team does not mean that work will get done automatically. It is important to follow up on assignments and tasks given out to your team. Let us not confuse this with micro-management.
Revisiting these assigned tasks will help you give more support to the different team members that might be partially experienced in handling a given task. With such an approach, on-job training becomes easier. However, you do not need to abandon those colleagues that can do the job well with little assistance. Try to engage them by asking for their input on the different approaches to handling the assignment.
Note that even though delegation involves assigning your work to someone else, this does not mean you should put limits on one’s creativity. Let your team be able to think beyond the traditional way of getting work done. Encourage smarter options as long as the output is not altered but only bettered.
Have you seen any changes in your team since you started delegating? Let us know in the comments.
