Mastering the Art of Delegation

Delegation is a tool that can transform your workflow, free up your schedule, & empower those around you. But, knowing when & how to use it effectively is a bit of an art. Founder, Sara Sweat shares her perspective on how to know when it’s time to keep a firm grip on tasks or learn to let them go. 

Sara Sweat, MA – Founder & CEO, A Life Curated

Regardless of the goal, we can always accomplish more when we leverage the strengths & talents of those around us. It’s why cultivating the culture of your organization or team is so important. If we’re all working collaboratively together, there’s little that can limit our success. 

So, mastering the art of delegation is vital to accomplishing our goals. In my decades as a leader, there are three things I’ve found make delegation possible. Let’s break them down. 

People 

Jack Welch, the famous former CEO of General Electric said “Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy”. As a leader, he spent at least half of his time focused on helping his people thrive. And, it’s no wonder why. 

Delegation doesn’t work if you can’t trust the output of the people on your team. Fortunately, much of this is within your control. A few things that help: 

• Create clear job descriptions that include roles & responsibilities, data driven measurements of success, & defined expectations for autonomy, collaboration, and performance. 
• Structure your interview process to include exercises that require candidates to demonstrate the abilities they claim to possess. Not only will you see their outcomes in action, but you’ll get a window into how they think, as well. 
• Hire only those people who have demonstrated the ability to take ownership over investigating and solving problems autonomously. 
• Make Authentic Feedback a systemic part of your culture – not just a performance management tool. 
• Invest in relationships with your team. Human beings change & grow over time. Our preferences and goals shift as we do. Don’t assume that just because someone is good at something today, it’s what they are best suited for tomorrow. 

Timing

If you have the right people in the right roles, you’re already halfway there to making the most of delegation. Knowing when and what to delegate is the next step. 

If you’ve developed clear and measurable job descriptions for each role, you’ll always know where duties belong. In roles that overlap or require collaboration to complete tasks, leveraging a simple RACI – a document that defines who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, or Informed – can create clarity. 

But, my favorite tool is a simple question. When trying to determine if you should delegate a task, ask yourself “Am I able to do this meaningfully better or importantly different than someone else?” 

The ability to do something better is relatively easy to spot. For example, I cannot bake. For years, I tried to learn this skill. I enjoy cooking & hosting friends & family for meals, but every time I try to follow the strict instructions required to exact the science of baking, it ends in disaster. 

So much so that I nearly ruined the “smash cake” at my child’s first birthday party. The baked treat whose sole purpose was to be destroyed by an infant – was overcooked & almost impossible to remove from the pan. Needless to say, almost anyone is meaningfully better at baking than I am. So, rather than invest any more time into solving this deficiency, I elected to delegate baking to those more qualified & have thereby improved every birthday celebration since. 

The same goes for that which we do differently. If the unique way I accomplish a task creates an important difference in the measurable outcome of it – it might be worth doing myself; at least once. 

I enjoy all methods of storytelling. As someone who spent most of my career in client facing roles in Sales & Client Management – I’ve had lots of opportunities to learn how to do this well. So, one of my first tasks when working with a sales or product team, is to look at the slides they use to tell their stories. 

There are almost always simple changes I can make to slide order or structure that strengthen their impact. These differences create important opportunities for dialogue & make key differentiators more evident – increasing the likelihood of a sale or other positive outcome. While I can teach someone a few key tips for how to elevate their slides, to get to the optimal results, I really need to get my hands dirty and work with the content myself. 

Even though I’m preserving this task, I don’t need to create every presentation the team does. I focus my work on creating usable and flexible templates of their content that each sales or product leader can customize to tell their story. This investment of my importantly different ability empowers others to fulfill their responsibilities with the quality and consistency needed for success. 

Authority

Once you’ve decided what to delegate – all that’s left is execution. It’s helpful to think of this step as an exercise in managing outcomes. Whenever possible replace delegation of a specific task with endowment of ownership and authority. 

If ask one of my leaders to facilitate our broader team meeting, I can write a detailed agenda, create sample topics to cover, & document all the processes and procedures I would use to do it well. Or, I can clearly define my success criteria & get out of their way. 

For most tasks, the mechanics of how it is accomplished are far less important than the outcomes it drives. So, rather than spending hours in documentation & micromanaging how the delegated task should be done, I invest 30 minutes of time with my leader. 

The goals of our call are simple: 

• Clearly define the purpose of the team meeting 
• Lay out the success criteria, how they will be measured, & on what frequency 
• Transfer full authority for those outcomes to my leader
• Establish a system for questions & feedback as they go

If we’re consistently hitting our success criteria for the event, I’ve successfully delegated the task. And, probably provided a development opportunity for my leader in the process. 

And, perhaps that’s one of the greatest benefits of mastering this art form. Great leaders create more great leaders. Your delegation allows your team to learn and practice; honing their skills and navigating their own path to achievement. You might even find yourself learning from them.