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Successful Project Delegation in Five Steps

How to Delegate

I was working at my desk not long ago when I had the realization that it was so late that I had actually just started the regular work day for my team in Asia. I had been working these US/Asia double shifts for so long that my frustration, with the project and with my team, was rising. However, the team was bewildered by my reaction. They were doing everything I assigned to them. How could I be upset?

I had fallen into a common trap. I thought I was delegating, but really I was just assigning tasks and not relinquishing ownership. It was during one of these marathon work sessions that I realized I needed to make big changes to how I was working. I looked at when projects worked, seemingly without my intervention, and when they didn't. Once I broke it down, the solution jumped out clearly. There are five steps to successful delegation.

1. First, you must clearly define the task. What is it that needs to happen? What is your desired result?

2. Select the team or individual that you want to accomplish this result.

3. Inform the individual of what's being delegated. Also let other people in the organization know who is now responsible for this task. This way they don't keep coming to you!

4. Keep in place a monitoring system, so you can ensure that progress is being made.

5. And finally, after the task is complete, complete the final review. Look at lessons learned and look at ways to improve moving forward.

The key is putting these five steps into practice. I began with the project that was causing me to work so many hours then I examined the members of my Asia team to determine who had the ability to best drive the deliverables per the plan. Before assigning the team member the task I set clear objectives and goals so everybody understood what results were expected.

I selected Helen for the role. She had strong skills and a willingness (and band-width) to take on additional responsibilities. After I determined the right person, I knew I had to provide the authority to the individual, so that she could actually achieve it. This is an important point. Don't retain the authority and then expect her to deliver. If necessary, you need to teach her how to do it. This might be a training method. You can't just delegate it and walk away. You also need to ensure the rest of the team understands this shift in ownership.

After you've truly delegated, you need to monitor the progress. Look at the plan. Make sure that there's some scheduled goals and meetings to ensure that the tasks are being met. I usually do this with in 1:1 meeting. This is a schedule time for us to talk about anything that may be of concern as well as upcoming due dates and milestones. These informal discussions can provide an excellent framework for feedback. If necessary, provide some direction. Give your team the objectives and the clear goals to keep them on track. Provide encouragement. You want to boost morale and make sure that people are making progress going forward. A good way to do this is by monitoring with milestones. A subtle but effective form of monitoring is using these 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 you do have problems? You need to learn to manage by exception. When it comes to delegating, you need to keep it organized. Make sure you know where they are and that they know and can track their milestones. In my case, when Helen started slipping on a key deliverable, we worked closely 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 to simply fix it and hand it back. However, I wanted Helen to retain authority over the Asia team - this required her to find the solution and implement it. 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 in your control. Are you ready to make it happen? Go to http://www.delegatesuccess.com and take the readiness quiz.

Article Source: http://www.uberarticles.com/articles

While 90% of managers delegate, only 5% of delegated tasks are completed without steady support from management. Take this quick quiz at delegatesuccess.com to determine what type of delegation style you have. Stop working long hours and get your projects done! Lisa Symons has more than 12 years experience with global IT management.

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