Ep 1: 5 Tips for Delegation

Clara Purk (00:01.23)

Hi everyone. And welcome to the first episode of She Is Bossy, the podcast dedicated to helping you be a better boss. My name is Clara Purk and today I'm excited to give you five tips to help you with delegation. Delegating is one of the most important skills for managers and for new managers, especially it's one of the hardest skills to master. Remember the cliche phrase, what got you here won't get you there.

Well, that couldn't be more applicable for delegation. So as a high achiever, delegation goes against everything that's gotten you to this point in your career. As an individual contributor, you took on responsibilities, strive for perfection, went above and beyond everything you did, but taking on more and more responsibility in whatever role you're in now will not only limit your capacity and growth, but it will also limit the growth opportunities of your team.

So with delegation now it's time to pass the torch. You're going to have to ask people to do things that would take you way less time to do, or that you just know you could do better. That's just something you're going to have to accept. So now it's not about how good you are at something, but as a manager, it's about how good your team is. And if you have bigger fish to fry, giving your team the opportunity to tackle challenges you don't have time for.

is a great way to build capacity and give yourself leverage to handle high value activities. So that being said, here are my five tips to master the art of delegation. First, think of delegation as a long-term investment. It's gonna take a lot longer in the short run for you to delegate something that you're used to doing. You're gonna have to plan things out better, prepare materials or provide context.

spend more time explaining things to others than if you just did it yourself. You're just gonna have to accept that it's gonna take you longer. But over the long term, you are building capacity in your team. You're giving them more context, you're giving them more skills and experiences so that they can repeat those tasks, take on more responsibility over the long term and...

Clara Purk (02:21.323)

Most importantly, have the opportunity to learn and grow so they can become stronger contributing members to your team. And at the end of the day, all of that makes your life easier over the longterm. So once you accept the delegation is going to be an investment upfront, but acknowledge it'll be a worthwhile investment, that's going to remove a key blocker for you. Consider also that if you don't delegate things to your team, you're depriving them of the opportunity to take on new activities, learn new things and

turn into and become the high performer that you are. So on the flip side, not delegating can actually be detrimental to your team's growth potential and morale. So it really is part of that long-term investment, not only in your capacity, but also in your team's growth. The second tip I have is to approach delegation from the mindset of setting people up for success. Your goal when delegating should be to set your team up for success.

when you give someone a task or an activity to own, you should not be trying to test them. You shouldn't approach it from a, let's see how much they can figure out on their own mentality. There's certainly going to be some of that when they have to figure things out that will be required, but you want to provide as much helpful information as possible. Consider all of the context that you have about your company, about people you work with, resources are, et cetera, that they don't have.

The more helpful resources, background, or insight you can provide, the more likely they will be able to succeed at the task and the less review you'll have to do on the backend. So you want to approach it from the mentality of wanting to see them succeed. And with that mentality, they'll be more likely to actually succeed at what you're asking them to do. So another important aspect of setting your team up for success is setting clear expectations.

You want to go beyond just asking someone to do something. You want to tell them when you need it by what format you'd like something in and any other details that you already have figured out because people can't read your mind. So if you need something by like end of day, be clear about that. If you don't need something until the end of the week, let them know so they can prioritize other items. If you want to see a first draft of something before it's final, let them know too, because

Clara Purk (04:41.27)

people are much more likely to meet your expectations if you're clear and specific about what you're asking. And then another important aspect of setting people up for success is sharing the why. So sharing more information about why you're asking someone to do something helps them see the big picture and understand why what they're doing is important. This helps provide some more added motivation because people feel like they're part of something bigger than just a task that they're doing.

And it's especially important if what they're doing feels repetitive or sort of menial. and it also helps give more context to what they're doing, which can help inform how to do something, who to ask, what to prioritize or help them make various micro decisions along the way of getting something done. So sharing that why is really important. The third tip I have is accept that things won't be perfect the first time around and resist the urge to fix things yourself.

So remember what I said at the very beginning about delegation being a long-term investment. This is a really important part of it. When someone does something new for the first time, I can guarantee you it won't be perfect. It doesn't matter how well you set someone up for success or how detailed you are in your instructions. Anticipate that they're going to be errors or issues that you'll need to help address. And that's okay. Nobody's perfect. The best we can do is strive to improve. So.

Make sure you don't judge someone harshly for not doing as good of a job as you would have done. Remember, there's a reason you're asking them to do it in the first place. What you need to avoid when you get something from your team that isn't perfect or as perfect as you might want it to be, you need to avoid taking that deliverable and completely fixing it or redoing it yourself. You need to provide

specific and constructive feedback and give the person time to rework whatever it is you ask them to do. This is an important opportunity for your team to learn. So again, don't deprive them of it. When you give feedback, remember step two, be specific in your instruction and share the why so they know why you need them to make certain changes. Now, if you don't give this feedback and you kind of do it or fix it all by yourself,

Clara Purk (07:03.498)

You're not going to see any return on that investment we talked about up top. Your team isn't going to learn from their mistakes. You won't get any time back. And again, you're depriving your team of the opportunity to learn and grow and provide higher quality deliverables the next time around, the next time you ask them to do something. If you didn't leave enough time to review or provide feedback on something, then that's a learning opportunity for you to build that into your cycle.

next time so that you can make sure that as a team you're accomplishing things on the right timeline and with enough time for you to give feedback. And the fourth tip is sort of a follow-on to that last one. You should be open to different ways of getting things done and also acknowledge that things don't have to be done your way to be effective. The cool thing about Teams is that everyone brings a different perspective or set of experiences to the table.

When you delegate things, you give people the opportunity to tackle a problem that you're used to solving on your own and in your own way. And other people may approach or solve problems differently than you. If someone does something different before correcting them and telling them how you would do it, consider if what they've done is effective. Did it accomplish the goal you asked them to achieve? There's many ways of doing things and just because something wasn't done your way doesn't mean it's the wrong way to get things done.

So definitely be open to different ways of things being accomplished. And the fifth and final tip I have for you is to show appreciation. Thank people for the work they've done when you delegate something to them, acknowledge the contribution they've made, and be sincere about it. Acknowledgement and appreciation is underrated and it's hugely important for morale, helping people recognize their accomplishments and contributions, building your team's competence and sustaining motivation overall.

And with that, I want to thank you for listening. I hope you learned a few things that you'll take into work tomorrow to help you delegate and be a better boss. Catch you later.