10 Tips for Effective Delegation

By Marcia Zidle on July 19, 2011

Delegation is often very difficult for new supervisors and managers.
Many managers want to remain comfortable making the same decisions they have always
made. They believe they can do a better job themselves. They don’t want to risk
losing control of the situation or outcome. Often, they don’t want to risk giving authority to
subordinates in case of failure.

Stop Doing, Start Managing

Here are 10 tips for effective delegation and, more importantly, effective supervision:

1. Delegate early.
Make an effort to delegate the task early to avoid unnecessary pressure. This allows
the person to better plan the task.
2. Select the right person.
Ensure that the person has the time to take on the responsibility. Assess the skills and
capabilities of your staff and assign the task to the most appropriate person. Make sure the
person has the training and resources to succeed.
3. Communicate the rationale and benefit.
Identify the reason for the task and how it will contribute to the goals of the company or
department or team. Also, point out how the delegated task could benefit the person. For
example, develop a specific skill. that is needed to get promoted. Remember a routine task
to you may be a new challenging task to your subordinate.
4. Delegate the entire task to one person.
This gives the person the responsibility, increases their motivation and avoids ambiguity in
accountability. Otherwise, different people will have different ideas about who does what
when.
5. Set clear goals and expectations.
Be clear and specific on what is expected. Give information on what, why, when, who and
where. You might leave the “how” to them. Be prepared to accept input from subordinates.
Confirm and verify task goals and expectations.
6. Delegate responsibility and authority.
Ensure that the subordinate is given the relevant responsibility and authority to complete
the task. Let the subordinate complete the task in the manner they choose, as long as the
results are what you specified. Be willing to accept ideas from the subordinate on task
fulfillment.
7. Provide support, guidance and instructions.
Point subordinates to the resources they may need to complete the task or project. That
could be people they need to coordinate with, crucial information or Be willing to be a
resource yourself.
8. Take personal interest in the progress of delegated task.
Request to be updated on the progress of the task, provide assistance when necessary. Be
careful not to be intrusive; giving the perception that you do not trust the subordinate. Keep
communication lines open, regular meetings on large tasks can provide this ongoing
feedback.
9. If you’re not satisfied with the progress, don’t take the project back
immediately.
Rather, continue to work with the employee and ensure they understand the project to be
their responsibility. Give advice on ways to improve. This ensures accountability and
dependability.
10. Evaluate and recognize performance.
Evaluate results more than methods. Analyze cause of insufficient performance for
improvements and recognize successes as soon as possible.
Supervision Success Tip
Effective delegation allows subordinate to learn, grow and be more capable. It
allows supervisors to be more productive by focusing on what they are paid to do – getting
the work done through others.

How Good Are Your Management Skills? Part 1

By Marcia Zidle on February 2, 2014
Are you getting the best out of your team?
To be a great people manager, you must have an extensive set of skills – from planning
and delegation to motivation and communication. Because the skill set is so wide, it’s
tempting to continue using the skills you’re already comfortable with. But, for your long-
term success, it’s wise to analyze your skills in all areas of management – and then
challenge yourself to become better at it.
Take This Quick Quiz
It will help you identify the aspects of management you’re good at and areas you need to
improve. Decide, on a scale from 1 to 5, how well each of the 15 statements below best
describes what you as a manager. Answer questions as you actually are (rather than how
you think you should be or do).
(1) Not at All (2) Rarely (3) Sometimes (4) Often (5) Very Often
1. When I have a problem, I try to solve it myself before asking my boss what to do.
2. When I delegate work, I don’t always give it to the person who has the most time
available.
3. I follow up with team members whenever I see that their behavior has a negative impact
on customer service.
4. I make decisions following careful analysis, rather than relying on gut instinct.
5. I let my team members figure out for themselves how best to work together – teams are
a work in progress!
6. I give ongoing feedback so people have a chance to correct their performance before
taking disciplinary action.
7. I spend time talking with my team about what’s going well and what needs improving.
8. I fully understand how the processes in my department operate, and I’m working to
eliminate bottlenecks.
9. When putting together a team, I consider the skills I need – and then I seek people who
best fit my criteria. .
10. I try to motivate people individually rather than just the whole team.
11. When my team makes a significant mistake, I update my boss on what has happened
and come with a solution.
12. When conflict occurs within a new team, I accept it as an inevitable as teams and
teamwork develops.
13. I talk to team members about their individual goals, and I link these to the goals of the
entire organization.
14. If you want a job done well, do it yourself may get work done faster but it may not
always be the right thing to do.
15. I talk with team members as individuals to ensure that they’re know what they need to
do to be productive.

Scoring:
46-75: You’re doing a great job managing your team.
Concentrate on improving your skills even further. Check the next post- part 2- to see what
you can tweak to make this even better. What are some areas that you may need to
improve?
31-45: You’re on your way to becoming a good manager.
You’re doing some things really well. Now it’s time to work on the skills that aren’t up to
speed. Check the next post – part 2 – and figure out what you need to focus on to
enhance your managerial skills.
15-30: Ouch. You got work to do.
If you want to be effective in a management role, you must learn how to organize and
monitor your team’s work. It’s imperative you check the next post to develop specific skills
that will increase your success.
Smart Moves Tip:
Effective management requires a wide range of skills, and each of these skills complements
the others. Your goal should be to develop and maintain all of these skills, so that you can
help your team accomplish its objectives efficiently and effectively. The follow-up post, part
2, gives a quick summary of the eight essential skill areas where managers should focus
their efforts plus resources to help you.

How Good Are Your Management Skills? Part 2

By Marcia Zidle on February 2, 2014
To be a great people manager, you must have an extensive set of skills – from planning and
delegation to motivation and communication. for your long-term success, it’s wise to
analyze your skills in all areas of management – and then challenge yourself to become
better at managing and leading your team.

Did You Take the Management Skills Quiz in Part 1?

What was your score? What elements of management do you need to work on? Here are the
eight essential skill areas where managers should focus their efforts plus resources to help
you

1. Understanding Team Dynamics (Questions 5, 12)

Good management means understanding how teams operate. When forming teams, create
a balance so there’s a diverse set of skills, personalities, and perspectives. Truly effective
teams invite many viewpoints and use their differences to be creative and innovative. Read
“Building Teamwork.”
2. Selecting and Developing the Right People (Question 9)
Finding great new team members and developing the skills needed for your team’s success
is another important part of a manager’s job. You can develop your staffing skills by
checking out “What’s Your Hiring Batting Average?”
3. Delegating Effectively (Questions 2, 14)
Having the right people with the right skills isn’t sufficient for a team’s success. Effective
managers recognize that delegation – assigning work to the right people and clearly
outlining expectations – teams can accomplish much more. Just because you’re responsible
for the work, they should do it themselves to make sure it’s done right. Read “Delegate
and Do It Right”.
4. Motivating People (Questions 10, 15)
It’s one thing to motivate yourself, but it’s quite another to motivate someone else. We’re
all motivated by different things. Getting to know your team members on a personal level
allows you to motivate your people better. See “One Size Doesn’t Fit All”.
5. Managing Performance (Questions 3, 6)
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, there are problems with individual performance. As a
manager, you have to deal with these promptly. If you don’t provide feedback and
coaching, you risk negative impacts on the rest of the team as well as your customers
Read”Coaching vs. Criticism: What’s the Difference?”
6. Communicating (Question 7, 13)
Effective communication is critical to any position you hold, but as a manager, it’s especially
important. You need to let your team know what’s happening and keep them informed as
much as possible with team briefings and other ways to update. See how good
communication works in “Leadership Lessons Riding Fire Engines”.
7. Planning, Problem Solving, Decision-Making (Questions 4, 8)
Many managers are very comfortable with planning, problem solving and decision making
because they’re often skilled specialists who’ve been promoted. Now it’s important to
transfer these skills to managing a team. Read “Are You On the Road to Abilene?”
8. Avoiding Common Managerial Mistakes (Questions 1,11)
A common one is thinking that you can rely on your technical skills alone rather than
reaching out to others It’s important to communicate with your boss to keep her
informed. If not you may have boss problems. Here’s how to avoid them.
Smart Moves Tip:
Whether you manage a department or a project team, it’s important to know how to get the
work done right. When you’re asked to achieve something with the help of others, it’s
complex – and you should spend much of your time managing relationships instead of doing
the actual work. Delegating, motivating, communicating, and understanding team dynamics
are some of the key skills needed.
How to Switch From a To-Do List
to a Success List– And Why You
Should
By
Matt Valentine
-
March 26, 2018

Shorten Your Path to Success With This Free Tool. Try It For Free.

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To-do lists are a staple of modern life. How would you get everything done otherwise?

There’s just one problem: your to-do list is screwing up your goals.
Photo Credit: Cathryn Lavery on Unsplash
How so? A to-do list prioritizes basic daily tasks, as opposed to being productive
towards your long-term goals, and it does so in a very specific way. The things that
appear to be the most bothersome tend to take priority because we want them out of
the way. After all, a to-do list is a constant reminder of what we still haven’t taken care
of.

This can be a good thing, but often, it has an unwanted consequence: it turns our
priority from tasks that accomplish our goals to ones that simply allow us to survive from
one day to the next. Your focus turns to marking things off the list as opposed
to making actual progress.

So, what do you do instead? Well, that’s where a success list comes in.

Some people dream of success, while other people get up every

morning and make it happen.
 – Wayne Huizenga

A success list places your focus on completing a few primary tasks each day that allow
you make progress towards your long-term goals.

Generally, they’re taken from a much larger vision broken down into smaller pieces,
each piece eventually coming together to realize a larger and larger piece until you
eventually realize your primary goal.

At this point, you might be worried about whether or not you’ll be able to manage
without the constant reminder of a to-do list.

But here’s the thing: you’re going to manage whether you have that to-do list or not.

I can attest to both having and not having a daily to-do list to manage my everyday
tasks at several different points in my life and I can say with certainty that a to-do list is
more a form of psychological security than it actually helps us manage daily tasks.

However, don’t worry, because I’m not going to ask you to get rid of that to-do list
entirely, we’re simply going to modify it a bit so that your priorities shift to allow you to
make daily progress towards your goals. Everything else is secondary.
How to create– and get the most from– a success list

So, how do you create a success list? It’s pretty simple, but the difference it makes,
you’ll soon notice, is anything but small.

First, it’s important to know that you should look for a time in your day when you can be
optimally productive. Each day, you’ll have a few primary tasks you have to accomplish,
and if you have a special time each day where you can be fully focused on getting those
done you’ll be far more productive.

Once you have that figured out, follow these instructions for creating a simple but highly
effective success list:

1. Decide on a list system: You can keep your list on a simple piece of paper, but
I’ve found it to be far more effective if you use a written or digital system, either on
a notebook or in a program such as Evernote.
 2. Set three “micro-goals” for today: Block out a section at the top of your page
for three micro-goals. If you need to write or type this section in red to prioritize it
above the rest of the information below, do that. These are small things you can
do today that will help you make progress towards your long-term goals.
Examples include: writing X amount of words, making a phone call, working out
for X minutes, or completing some other important task. These are often the
primary, repeatable tasks that have to do with your craft.
3. Drop the rest of this week’s important tasks below that: Next, list out all the
things you plan to accomplish this week that will help you make progress towards
your goals. This is where a digital list you can easily copy and paste has a big
advantage over a written one. It will help you more easily plan out your micro-
goals for each proceeding day.
4. And your other to-dos below that: I told you we weren’t going to forget them!
But we relegate them to the bottom of the page. In fact, if you want to skip this
section altogether and just set reminders on your smartphone for important to-
dos, that’s something you can do as well. It will help you block them out from your
mind until you really need to get them done (this doesn’t work for all tasks,
though).

Structuring a success list in this way doesn’t prioritize certain tasks, it prioritizes one
idea over another: progress as opposed to balance. Often, what we’re really doing with
a to-do list is warding off a sense of chaos, our head just above water, gasping for air.

However, you’ll find that by shifting your priority to making progress each day, you’ll still
get by just fine. Except, now, you’re making progress towards reaching your dreams.

11 Tricks to Actually Get Things Done on Your

To-Do List
Step away from the boring notepad on your fridge.
YEC

September 6, 2016
To-do lists can be your best friend or your worst enemy. You know, the pure satisfaction that comes
from crossing through to-do’s, that feeling you get at the end of the day when you’ve checked
everything off the list. That, plus your productivity skyrockets when you use them effectively. But a
poorly managed and unrealistic task list, on the other hand, can leave you feeling overwhelmed and
ready to give up.

Related: 8 Ways to Effectively Prioritize the Things on Your To-Do List

We asked members of the Young Entrepreneur Council to share their best-kept secrets for managing
to-do lists. Take these, add your own best practices and develop an efficient plan that works for you.

1. Find an accountability partner.

Sometimes an item on the to-do list might get pushed back because something more important came
up. But too often we like to justify a moment of procrastination by calling it “prioritization.” There's
a big difference between those two terms. To stay on track, I suggest finding an accountability
partner (or two) who can hold you to achieving the goals you set for yourself.

—Nathalie Lussier, AmbitionAlly

2. Identify three top priorities each day.

Once you write your long to-do list, highlight the three things you must accomplish in order to be
productive and priority-focused that day. Don’t fall for the thrill of easy wins.

—Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer, AirPR

3. Estimate the time it takes to complete each

task.
If you have downtime between meetings, for example, you can easily knock off a few items on your
to-do list if you estimate they will each take a couple of minutes to complete. When you have longer
available blocks of time, you can focus on heavier tasks that might take between 30 minutes and
several hours to complete.

—Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep

4. Create a “to-don't” list.

The problem with to-do lists? Things just get in the way! Here's the fix: Alongside your to-do list,
create a “to-don’t” list. These are things you need to not do in order to accomplish your tasks for the
day, such as “Don’t open email before 10 a.m.,” “Don’t eat a heavy lunch” and “Don’t answer phone
calls while focusing.”

—Nick Akey, MakerSquare

5. Schedule each action item on your calendar.

A to-do list is only as effective as the action you put behind it, and the best way to get things done is
to schedule them on your calendar. When you know something needs to be done, set aside time to do
it. If it’s something that can be done quickly, do it then. If it takes more time than you have right
now, schedule it on your calendar when you do have time.

—Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now

6. Make it digital.
In today’s digital age, you don't have to limit your to-do list to pen and paper. Task management
systems can allow you to create virtual to-do lists with deadlines, priorities, multiple tasks and much
more. Most of these are simple, intuitive and don't require a computer expert to set up. Don't limit
yourself to the Stone Age when it comes to something as important as your productivity.

—Elle Kaplan, LexION Capital

7. Review your list at the start and end of the day.

Schedule time at the end of every day to evaluate your to-do list. What was accomplished? Cross it
off. What's still pending? What's the priority? Cull, organize and prioritize the list. At the beginning
of each day, review the task list that you left prepared and schedule out your day based on your to-do
list and priorities.

—Marcela De Vivo, Brilliance

8. Focus on one thing at a time.

Too often, we make a to-do list with every thought that comes into our minds, which leads to long
and detailed lists that can be daunting. The key to an effective to-do list is to prioritize the list and
then focus on a singular task at a time. Don't overwhelm yourself by looking at the length of the list.
Focus on the first task, then move down the list one step at a time.
 —Rahim Charania, American Fueling Systems

9. Purge your list daily.

A to-do list is for short-term tasks: single action items you intend to complete within seven days.
Items that don't fit these criteria should be removed. If anything on your to-do list requires more than
one action, it's a project. Remove it from your list and use a project management tool. Once an item
is on your list for seven days, do one of the “3 D’s”: drop it, delegate it or do it right now.

—Brian Smith, S Brian Smith Group

10. Use it for everything you do.

Use the same list for work and play. When you combine work and personal activities (and that
includes leisure time), you create a habit of using the list. Whether you jot tasks down on paper or
use any one of the online to-do-list apps, the more consistently you use a list, the more effective it
becomes. Big presentation due? Grocery lists? Doctor appointment? Everything needs to get done, so
put them all on the same list.

—Dan Golden, Be Found Online

11. Be realistic.
The best thing to do is make the tasks on your to-do list realistic. As much as you would like to finish
all of your current projects, most people overload the list and make it impossible to check each item
off by the end of the day. Adjust your expectations so you can feel good about crossing off those to-
do’s, making you feel more accomplished and refreshed.

—Leila Lewis, Be Inspired PR

Related: Organize Your To-Do List into These 4 Categories