Leadership is not a skill that comes naturally to everyone – it is an art which aspirational business leaders must work on continuously.

Several leadership skills are crucial to the success of your organisation – delegation skills being one of them.

Some people are born with a natural aptitude for delegation. But of course, this does not mean that this skill doesn’t need to be honed.

Working on developing all of your leadership skills will only serve to strengthen yourself professionally, will enhance your team and will create success in your business.

Delegation – An Essential Skill

To help your organisation be more cohesive, streamlined and successful, you must possess the necessary delegation skills to get the best out of your employees. Let’s look at how you can do this.

How to Be a Better Delegator

There are four key steps to effective delegation, which I will go through now.

Step 1: Assess the Workload

It is common in businesses for leaders to be unaware of the precise size and scale of workloads. In dynamic organisations where employees are given a lot of autonomy, teams often organically develop their ways of working. This has many benefits, of course, as teams can make progressive advancements when they are given a great deal of freedom.

However, this can be a challenge when it comes to delegating.

You must work closely with all employees to find out the minutia of detail in their work, find out which tasks routinely get completed on time, and which tend to run over. Document everything that needs to happen on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Step 2: Set Your Expectations

Once you know the size of the workload you’re dealing with, you can start to match employees with tasks, suited to their skills and abilities.

Each of your employees will excel in different ways; great leadership is all about matching people to appropriate tasks.

With each employee, create a plan of their tasks, a time-frame and performance objectives. This should be a working document which can be changed and amended – and crucially, you should work with your employees to get their input.

Newer employees might have ideas they wish to put forward, more established employees might have ways to modify existing procedures to make them more effective.

Step 3: Provide Support

Once you have set your expectations for your team, it’s not a case of sitting back and waiting for the results to roll in. Leaders who are experts in delegation will continually check that their team are not struggling and offer help and collaboration wherever they can.

It can also be useful at this stage to encourage collaboration between team members which you know will be able to help each other out, pairing individuals together based on skill, ability and personality type.

Will your team need any extra support such as help from other departments, or external resources? How much authority and autonomy will you give employees? Are there any problems or obstacles within the tasks that you have assigned which you can predict?

Step 4: Follow-Up

Ensure you have a comprehensive follow-up procedure for tracking your assigned tasks. Do you use digital project management software to alert you when tasks are completed or moving to the next stage? What is your process for following up employees who miss deadlines on tasks?

A critical part of follow up in delegation is showing appreciation to employees on finishing tasks, and a de-brief to go through any further actions or points to cover for the future.

Some additional tips for improving your delegation skills include –

• Don’t assume employees understand their delegated duty – clear communication is critical; always confirm that they know what you are asking of them.
• Never take tasks back – it can be tempting to take on a duty yourself when an employee is struggling, but this will take away the opportunity for them to learn something new.
• View communication as a two-way street – too many leaders don’t listen appropriately during delegation; they speak but do not listen. Always actively listen to your employee’s input; they are working more closely on tasks than you, and will have invaluable insights.

Excellent managers use delegation not just as a way of managing tasks, but also as a way of developing employees. If you need talented leaders for your organisation, see below for how we can help.

How Kinetic Can Help

Kinetic specialise in sourcing professionals for leading organisations. If you need advice on how you can best implement these strategies and hire people who will help drive your business forward, contact us today.