How many of the five points below apply to you? They are all positive; the more apply to you, the better. Below, you will find an explanation of each.
The five signs of clear delegation
When delegating, you explain what’s enough, what’s too little, and what’s too much.
After delegating a non-trivial task, you ask your delegee to rephrase their understanding of the task.
After delegating a task that requires multiple days of work, you set up an early check-in to correct eventual misunderstandings before it’s too late.
It seldom happens that a delegee completes the task as per your specifications, and yet you’re not satisfied.
When delegating a task whose outcome doesn’t entirely depend on your delegee, you make explicit which tasks they have full control over.
The five signs, explained
1. When delegating, you explain what’s enough, what’s too little, and what’s too much.
Unless you make explicit what’s too little, you risk that your delegee underperforms. For example, if you just say, “invite our top ten customers to the December event,” but you don’t add, “just inviting them isn’t enough, you must follow up and ensure they participate,” you risk that your subordinate sends ten emails and considers the task done.
And unless you make explicit what’s too much, you risk that your delegee spends too much time and effort on the task, which is bad because of opportunity costs.
2. After delegating a non-trivial task, you ask your delegee to rephrase their understanding of the task.
I know, asking delegees to rephrase might sound condescending. Yet, great managers do it, and for good reason. It’s an exceptional tool to surface misunderstandings and omissions.
Just try it once. You will likely discover that either your delegee has a different understanding of the work to be done than you do, or that you forgot to mention a critical piece of information. Either way, you will have prevented failure.
3. After delegating a task that requires multiple days of work, you set up an early check-in to correct eventual misunderstandings before it’s too late.
Poor managers delegate a task and then don’t talk about it with the delegee until enough time has passed that, if there had been a misunderstanding, correcting it will be frustrating for everyone involved (“you could have told me before I spent so much effort in the wrong direction”).
Instead, great managers set an early check-in somewhere around 10%-20% of the task being delegated – late enough so that some work has been done and early enough so that eventual misunderstandings are caught before people spend too much effort in the wrong direction.
Here are a few examples of what an early check-in looks like:
“I need this presentation by Friday next week, but please show me the outline as soon as it’s ready, latest by this Thursday.”
“Please write some documentation for this. I need it by the end of the month, but please show me the first couple of pages as soon as you wrote them, latest by the end of the week.”
“Please call these ten leads. Please come to my office after the first couple of calls to discuss how they’re going and if there’s any adjustment to make.”
Emphasize that the early check-in isn’t because of distrust but because you value their work and you would hate that they spend too much effort in the wrong direction in case of a misunderstanding.
4. It seldom happens that a delegee completes the task as per your specifications, and yet you’re not satisfied.
Poor managers aren’t specific enough or withhold requirements during delegation. As a result, it might happen that the delegee completes the task as per its specifications and yet the manager isn’t satisfied. This is an extremely frustrating situation for everyone involved, and your delegee will lose trust in their manager.
Conversely, good managers think about everything that must happen to call the task successfully completed, and mention such requirements during delegation.
Adding necessary details isn’t micromanagement. Failing to do so would be a lack of management.
5. When delegating a task whose outcome doesn’t entirely depend on your delegee, you make explicit which tasks they have full control over.
Imagine you ask your delegee to reply to a client’s proposal within two days, and suppose that doing so requires the collaboration of some other internal departments. It’s possible that your delegee fails to reply to the proposal by the deadline and says, “it’s not my fault, the other department didn’t collaborate fast enough.”
Of course, your reaction should be to investigate whether the delegee did everything he could to get the other department to reply fast, and then make explicit the extent to which they should pressure the other department in the future and/or escalate.
That said, you will still have the problem that this client didn’t get a reply in time.
You could have prevented that by being clear upfront about which subtasks the delegee has full control over. He might not have full control over whether the other department replies fast, but he does have full control upon:
Clearly communicating the time requirements
Adding important details to the client proposal so that the other department can reply straight away without having to look for information
Following up with the other department, calling them, showing up in person, etc.
Building relationships with the other department to facilitate future requests
And so on.
The more you are clear and specific about which subtasks your people have full control over, the more they will feel accountable and the better they will perform.
That’s it; these were the five signs of clear delegation. How many do you practice?
This article is part of a six-part series of self-assessments on people-management habits. Subscribe to this newsletter to receive the rest over the following days.
Excellent list.
I was confused reading #4: 4. It seldom happens that a delegee completes the task as per your specifications, and yet you’re not satisfied.
After reading the explanation rephrasing #4 as follows made more sense to me: It seldom happens that you are unsatisfied when a delegee completes the task as per your specifications.