Delegation is an important skill that every manager should learn. Effective delegation is more than just assigning tasks to your staff. You must first evaluate and prioritize the work yourself. Once you have established the priorities, then you must determine which tasks can be properly assigned to someone else. You will need to ask yourself questions like: Do they have the training to handle the task? Are they able to work semi-independently? What resources will they need? What level of authority are you willing to give them? Once you have thought about the answers, then and only then can you delegate work to your people. Good delegation will begin with a meeting to assign the task and define the outcomes. The people who work for you will want to know what is expected of them, and what a successful outcome will look like. Once you have assigned the task, then you will want to schedule a follow-up meeting to either check on progress, or close out the task as a completed action. If you can master the art of effective delegation, then you will be a more effective manager. Here are a few ways that you can use delegation to your advantage:

Expand the amount of work that can be done & build capacity: Everyone has a limit to the amount of work that they can accomplish. After all, there are only so many working hours in a day; however, using effective delegation, managers can expand the total amount of work that can be done by assigning tasks to others on their team. Struggling managers often feel compelled to do much of the work themselves by invoking the old adage, “if you want the job done right, then do it yourself.” Effective managers know that others are also capable of doing good work too, and they build capacity to get more work done by effectively delegating some of their work to others. » Read more: Management Skills – How to Use Delegation to Your Advantage