How to Delegate the Right Tasks to the Right People: Effective Management Skills for Leadership Success

Written By Brian Tracy | Leadership Success | August 6th, 2012 

Learning how to delegate effectively is the key to leveraging yourself and multiplying your value to your company. 

Assigning duties permits you to change from what you can do individually to what you can accomplish with teamwork.

Delegation is one of the utmost vital and effective supervision skills. Lacking the ability to delegate effectively, makes it difficult for one to progress into higher positions of accountability.

Knowledge of delegating makes the most of our own efficiency and worth; it is also about take full advantage of the output of our workers. Our job as leaders is to acquire the utmost profit on the business’s investment in individuals. The typical person today is functioning at 50 percent of capability. With effective management and delegation skills, we can tap into that unexploited 50-percent potential to raise our workforce’s production.

Our job as a leader is to cultivate folks. Delegation is the means that we use to bring out the finest in the individuals that we employ.

• The first step is to think through the job. Decide exactly what is a must to be done. What result do you want?
• The second step is to set performance criteria. What yard stick do we use to determine whether the job has been done properly or not?
• Third step is to determine an agenda and a goal for attainment the work to be done.

The task-relevant maturity of your staff—how long they have been on the job and how competent they are—determines your method of delegation.

Low task-relevant maturity means they are new and inexperienced in the job. In this case, use a directive delegation style. Tell people exactly what you want them to do.

Medium task-relevant maturity means staff has experience in the job; they know what they are doing. In this case, use the effective, management by objectives delegation method. Tell people the end result that you want and then get out of their way and let them do it.

High task-relevant maturity is when the staff person is completely experienced and competent. Your method of delegation in this case is simply, easy interaction.

To delegate the right tasks to the right people there are seven essentials for effective management and delegation:

1. Pick the right person. Picking the wrong person for a key task is a major reason for failure.

2. Match the requirements of the job to the abilities of the person. Be sure that the person you delegate the task to is capable of doing the job.

3. Delegate effectively to the right person. This frees you to do more things of higher value. The more of your essential tasks that you can teach and delegate to others, the greater the time you will have to do the things that only you can do.

4. Delegate smaller tasks to newer staff to build their confidence and competence.

5. Delegate the entire job. One hundred percent responsibility for a task is a major performance motivator. The more often you assign responsibilities to the right people, the more competent they become.

6. Delegate clear outcomes. Make them measurable. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Explain what is to be done, how you think it should be done, and the reasons for doing this job in the first place.

7. Delegate with participation and discussion. Invite questions and be open to suggestions. There is a direct relationship between how much people are invited to talk about the job and how much they understand it, accept it, and become committed to it. You need to delegate in such a way that people walk away feeling, ‘‘This is my job; I own it.’’

Delegate authority over the resources staff will need to fulfill the responsibility. Be clear about the time they have, the money they can spend, and the people they can call on to help them to do the job.

Practice management by exception when you delegate. Set clear goals, standards, and deadlines for the duty. A job lacking a time limit is simply a conversation. We only have employees report back to us only if they have a problem. If employees are on timetable and on budget, there is no need to report. You can assume that they have the job under control.

The fundamental skill needed to develop your people is knowledge of delegation and developing our own effective management talents. When we acquire how to delegate successfully to small number of staff affiliates, we will rapidly be given additional persons to manage, and more accountabilities, because our allocation and organization skills.

All managers with exceptional management talents are brilliant delegators. In the past, managers used to approximate that, ‘‘If you want the job done right, you have to do it yourself.’’

Modern thinking, on the other hand, corrects this mindset by exclaiming, ‘‘If we want the job done right, we have to study how to delegate it appropriately to others so that they can prepare it to the accurate standard.’’

About Brian Tracy – Brian Tracy is recognized as the top sales training and personal success authority in the world today. He has authored more than 60 books and has produced more than 500 audio and video learning programs on sales, management, business success and personal development, including worldwide bestseller The Psychology of Achievement. Brian’s goal is to help you achieve your personal and business goals faster and easier than you ever imagined. You can follow him on google+, facebook, and twitter.