How you delegate work can be vital to your teammate’s development
You are in a role where you primarily achieve results through your team. Your approach to delegation can significantly impact the development of your teammates. How you delegate can make them feel empowered, whereby they act responsibly, and consistently deliver results. Alternately, the way you delegate could keep them in a state of helplessness, continually seeking your hand-holding, and taking little or no initiative.
You delegate to achieve results. So, think of the entire cycle of the process that starts with the delegation, includes the interim reviews and leads up to the closure. Here are some tips for you to delegate effectively:
- Discuss and delegate. Outline the objective clearly (like, what, by when, by how much, in what measure of quality, etc.). Discuss with your teammate to ensure that the goal is clearly understood. Next, ask a simple question like, “So, how will you go about?” Through the discussion that follows, ascertain is your teammate is clear in the vital steps, the sequence, the dependencies and so on. Provide support more by asking the right questions, than by providing ready answers. This helps in building your teammates confidence.
- Review recommendations, not just the status. Make known your expectation that your teammate must come for reviews not only with mere status updates but also with their analysis on what can/should be improved and what their recommendations are.
- At various occasions, use questions that point towards lessons to be learned from the success and setbacks.
- Celebrate results big and small. And remember, sometimes it may well be needed that you appreciate the efforts.
By Sundar Parthasarathy for Zeus
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