Five Steps to Successful Project Delegation

By Lisa Symons, Symon Says Communication

How to Delegate

Not too long ago, as I was sitting at my desk working - it was so late that it was actually the regular work day for my team in Asia. This was common. I was working so many hours, that I was working during two shifts (US and Asia). My frustration was rising with the project and with my team. However, the team was bewildered by my reaction. They were doing everything I assigned to them - why would I be upset with that?

Why indeed. I had fallen into a common trap. I thought I was delegating, but instead, I was simply assigning tasks and retaining ownership of everything. It was during one of these marathon work sessions that I realized I needed to make big changes - and fast. I began to look at when projects worked, seemingly without my intervention and when they didn't. Breaking it down, the solution jumped out clearly. There are five steps to successful delegation.

1. First, clearly define the task. What is it that needs to happen? What's the desired result?

2. Second, select the team or the individual that you want to accomplish this result.

3. Third, inform the individual of what's being delegated. And also let other people in the organization know that this person is now responsible for this task, so they know this is the go-to person and they don't keep coming to you.

4. Fourth, keep in place a monitoring system, so you can ensure that progress is being made and they're not getting off-track.

5. And finally, complete a final review. Look for lessons learned and how things can be improved in the future.

The steps above are logical enough - the key is putting them into practice. I started immediately with the project that caused so many work hours for me. I looked at my Asia team to determine who had the ability to lead the team on-site and drive the deliverables per the plan. Before assigning the team member the task, I set clear objectives and goals. Successful delegation requires a clear end result. And everybody needs to understand what results are expected.

I selected Helen for the role. She had the skills necessary as well a willingness to take on more responsibilities. After I determined the right person, I knew I had to give her the authority she needed to meet her objective. This is an important point since you can't expect success without a willingness to give up some authority. You also can't just delegate it and walk away. You may need to teach new skills and also ensure that the rest of the team understands this shift in ownership.

After you've delegated, you need to monitor progress. Make sure that there are some scheduled goals and meetings to ensure that tasks are being completed. I usually do this in a 1:1 meeting. This is a time for us to talk about upcoming due dates and milestones as well as anything that may be of concern. Provide feedback and, if necessary, direction. Give your team clear objectives and goals and then provide encouragement to keep them on track. Boosting morale helps make sure that people are making progress. A good way to do this is by monitoring milestones.

Often, it helps to create a series of small, interim deliverables that will serve as checks-and-balances on the progress of a larger task. These milestones can then be used as a basis for progress reports (1:1 sessions).

What happens when there are problems? The key is organization and follow up. Make sure you know where they are in the process and that they know and can track their milestones. In this case, Helen got behind on a key deliverable. To head off the problem we worked together until she was back on track. It was difficult for me personally, because I just wanted to fix it. In the short term, it would have been much faster. However, I needed Helen to maintain her authority over the Asia team - this required her to find the solution and implement it. But how?

Develop a structure. If the people you're delegating to are having trouble help them, train them. Establish the monitoring systems we talked about. Have these milestones in place so that the task can be kept on track. Keep your virtual door open. Make sure that they know that if they run into a problem, they can contact you. This extra effort should be short term and the long term benefits are many. They include not only the deliverable at risk, but the entire delegated ownership and who knows - bigger and better projects in the future. With Helen, that was the case. She overcame the short term concern and the project went on to deliver on time. Even better, I was back to just working the USA day shift!

Performance and deliverables are, ultimately, in your control. Are you ready to make it happen? Go to http://www.delegatesuccess.com and take the readiness quiz.