First Time Manager — How to Delegate
Have you ever wondered how to manage your team? As a first time manager, do you know how to delegate?
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done, because they want to do it.
In the previous part of this blog series, I talked about the mind set changes required for a first time manager. In this part, I want to talk about one of the leadership style, named, Delegation. In case you haven’ t read the Part 1 of the blog series, here is the link First Time Manager — Part 1.
What is Delegation?
Delegation simply means, transferring a responsibility to another person. As a manager, you will assign a responsibility of completing a given task or an activity to a team member.
The key thing to note is, as a manager you are transferring the responsibility of a given task. That means, the team member to whom you are transferring the responsibility, should be allowed to bring his/her thoughts, ideas, concerns and so on. You as a manager should not tell how. You as a manager should set the definition of done and why it should be done; let the team member figure out how it should done. You as a manager should facilitate the outcome and guide to solve the hurdles that comes in the way.
Mistakes while delegating
When I started off as a manager for the first time, I thought delegation is nothing but assigning task to team member and tell them how do it and then review it and close the task. This created one major issue with the team — Since, I was telling what to do, how the code should be written, whether to create a separate file or merge or organise the code in certain manner, identifying boundary conditions and so on, they never felt the work is done by them.
I have observed few other first time managers, they delegate but they never check what is going on and they never put any process in place to track. On the last day, they do all the checks; majority of the time the result will not match the manager’s desired outcome. This results in rework, frustration and many things. In this case the team member will feel that as Manager you are not available to guide and facilitate; it will look like you are dumping everything on team member and don’t care.
Another mistake, first time managers do when they delegate, is that they don’t talk about why that particular task should be done and the desired outcome from that task. Many assume that the team member knows why the task should be done, as they are hired to do so. This creates confusion and lack of clarity in the team members as they don’t understand why they are doing it.
Delegation Done Right
If you want to do delegation in the right way and get your team members perform the activity and produce the desired result you want, then follow the three simple steps mentioned below.
- Document the discussion— as a first time manager you are not sure whether the team member is understanding, what you said. So instead of assuming that they have understood, document whatever you explained about the task, in the form of a requirement document or as a definition of done and share it with them. So that, when the team member reads it, after the discussion, questions might raise. This will help you to validate whether the team member has doubts on the desired result or not. If there are questions, then clarify and make sure you document those as well.
- Tracking — there must be a process to track the progress. As a first time manager, define a simple process for tracking. This can be done using a project management tool. Now-a-days, many organisation uses JIRA and implement Agile processes like Kanban, to plan and track the progress. You could follow the same. If there is no tool in the organisation, create a simple process using excel sheet or use online tools like Trello.
- Review — set up a cadence to meet and review the progress in the form of design review or code review and provide feedback. The feedback should be documented and shared with the team member, so that the next time you meet for review, the previous feedback should be checked and then review the further progress. This is another important step to be performed to make sure your team members is going in the right direction and you get an opportunity to influence the outcome or correct the direction.
As a first time manager, if you follow the above three steps, you can do the delegation in the right way. When you are just starting off, don’t make delegation a complex activity and aim for perfection. It is okay to start off with a simple version of delegation and over a time as you gain confidence, you can advance it to higher levels and start using it to achieve bigger goals.
Conclusion
Once you delegate, it is important to follow it up and follow it through.
Delegation leadership style is a very powerful tool for anybody in the management to get things done from your team. As a first time manager start simple version of delegation and over a time use it to build a strong team, keep the team motivated, to make a low performer to become a better performer and so on.
The next blog part of the blog series talk about another style — Situational Leadership. Here is the link First Time Manager — Part 3.
If you have liked this blog, please like and share and in the comment section, let me know if you faced any other challenges while delegating work to your team members as a manager.
