Manager Tool Kit: How to Improve Your Delegation Skills

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In this edition of the Manager Lab, we are reviewing the Harvard Business Review article, How to Get Better at Delegating. It's by Rebecca Knight from March 2025. Well, maybe you think it's faster just to do it yourself. I'm sure you've never thought of that, right? Or maybe you have a deadline coming up and you don't want to risk missing it. or maybe you just don't trust your team fully. If delegating feels like a struggle, well, obviously you're not alone, but you are holding yourself back.

Delegating isn't just offloading tasks. It's about keeping things moving and a lot of things moving. It's about developing your team. It's about focusing on what matters most to you because you're not focusing on everything. thing. You're focusing on the critical few. So where do you start? How do you stay involved without hovering over people? How do you stop thinking that you're the only one that can do things? Right. Well, here's what the experts say.

Delegating may seem simple, but the real challenge is overcoming the emotional hurdles that make it hard to let go. So whether it's distrust, control issues, perfectionism perhaps, or just simple fear of failure. Those types of things keep us tangled in the details and keep us stuck doing everything on our own. The stakes of delegation go beyond completing tasks or having a productive team.

They're about how you choose to spend your time, how you choose to spend your focus, and ultimately your life. Quite frankly, consider delegating as your own personal energy management system. I love that concept. Your energy, think about it, is your most important resource. And when you delegate, you can then redirect your energy towards something else where you can make a bigger impact, make a larger contribution.

So there's eight steps that this article outlines. We'll go through them really quickly. Step number one, recognize your self-sabotaging habits. So before you can delegate effectively, you need to understand what's getting in your way. Identify the patterns that turn you into a bottleneck, okay? Theory of constraints is you, all right? Are you an isolationist trying to do everything solo? Or are you a hero that kind of comes swooping in at the end to save the day?

Are you a dreamer? This is where I can get really bottled down, throwing out ideas while your team scrambles to keep up. Guilty of that. Or are you an interventionist, a nicer term perhaps for a micromanager, who insists on being looped into everything? Once you realize what tendencies you have, ask yourself this, what's the real cost? Not just to you, but to your team and to the work itself. So being really clear about what you need, what you need to focus your energy on will really help you.

And don't let past struggles here bog you down, you know, thinking that, well, I'm just not good at delegating. I've tried it before and it didn't work. Those create a self-perpetuating cycle that is very unhelpful and will eventually lead to you not even trying this. But the reality is that once you're committed to delegating, once you're committed to at least trying, the how is really not that complicated.

Number two, determine the tasks that you can delegate. And the hint here in parentheses, there's a lot of them. According to the experts that are cited in this article, there are only really three things a manager cannot delegate. Number one is strategy and vision, which the expert here calls the head work. That's why you're the leader. You're the leader for a reason. It's for your strategy and your vision. You can't delegate that.

Number two is you don't want to delegate hiring decisions. So you don't want to have other people make hires for you. You need to hire your own team. And then finally, ensuring access to resources and budget to get the job done. So that's part of your functional capacity is making sure that people have the budget and the resources that they need to do their job. Everything else, let it go.

Everything else can be delegated. So when a task lands on your plate, ask yourself, can someone else handle this? If it doesn't fall into those three categories we talked about, the answer is probably yes, it can be delegated. Now, while it's easier to delegate tasks you dislike, it's more difficult to hand off the ones you're good at and the ones you enjoy. They're the hardest things to let go of because they consume a lot of your time and they make you feel very important and needed.

We all need to feel that sense of belonging and sense of contribution. But hoarding those types of tasks really can deprive your team members of learning opportunities. So think of delegation then for this step as a way for them to grow their skill sets. Step number three, start small. So think baby steps here. Tackle low-hanging fruit tasks that are simple, they require minimal effort, and can be completed quickly. What you're looking for here is quick wins that create positive momentum.

So focus on routine tasks with clear steps that others can easily replicate. So for instance, if there's a weekly report that you write every single week, let someone else do that. Update memos, for instance, let someone else do that. Run your weekly staff meetings. You don't need to run weekly staff meetings. You can let other people do that. Allowing others to prove themselves helps address any lingering trust issues.

You know, if you're trusting them to do this important piece of the work, then that might help you solidify trust with some of your team members. And starting with small assignments fosters gradual skill development and builds, again, this mutual confidence that will emerge from these types of delegated tasks. And remember, when people mess up and they will, we're all human, it's part of the learning process. Step number four, find the right people.

So obviously you're thinking about delegation. You need to find someone to delegate to. So think expansively here. Who are your emerging leaders? Who has the interest? Who has the bandwidth? Who has the talent for this particular task? Who needs to learn something new? And of course, who do you trust? Now, you have to be careful with that one because sometimes you may need to delegate to people that you don't necessarily trust because they need to develop a capacity that you don't trust yet.

And that's part of the learning process. But if you're drawing a blank on this, it might be your control issues taking over. You know, if you don't think you have the right person to delegate it to, it's your job to find them. Now, here's where you can also think outside the box, right? It may not be that you can delegate everything to your team. You may need to go outside of your team. You may even need to go outside of your organization to find, you know, some way to offload a task.

That's, again, routine. You do it every week, every month. You don't need to do it. It doesn't help you grow. You might need to go outside your team or organization to get that done. Get creative. Don't let perceived roadblocks hold you back. Step number five, direct but allow for autonomy. me. So really critical here is to be upfront about your expectations and offer direction, but don't overdo that. Explain the assignment, set the deadline, and provide a very rough time estimate.

You know, if you think that something can be done in a few hours and it takes them a few weeks to do it, that's not setting the appropriate expectation. So share your vision for the final product and clearly communicate both verbally and, you know, sometimes maybe even in writing what success looks like. Delegate the outcomes, but not the how to get to that outcome and give your team the freedom to figure out how to get there.

It's really arrogant to think that you know the best way to get everything done. So if they are bought into the desired outcome, they'll find a way to achieve it. So provide enough direction here to stay aligned, but leave a lot of room for creativity and then surrender control. Step number six, keep tabs on people, but don't micromanage. So the cadence of check-ins really depends on the project and the complexity of the task.

Some things need daily touch points, while others may only need a weekly review or even less frequently sometimes. Focus on these two questions. How are things going? And what are your roadblocks? That approach keeps the conversation more solution focused rather than just updates for the sake of updates. For those who absolutely have to be in the know, you know, recommend that the article recommends finding ways to keep tabs without, you know, disrupting the team's flow.

So for instance, maybe you have a Microsoft team site that has a living document on there that has, you know, when people update it, it updates you. So you can go in and check as often as you like, but not disrupt the team's flow. All right. Step number seven, guide, listen, and ask for feedback. Think of yourself here as a coach, a cheerleader, if you will. A coach's job is to get the most out of their people.

You're not there to ensure that everything is done perfectly or exactly the way you want it to go. Your role is to inspire them, to guide them, offering your experience and providing context. Help your team see how their work fits into the whole, why it matters. Encourage your team to ask questions and offer feedback to you too. Without ongoing and open communication, delegating can go off the rails very quickly. And finally, step number eight, Remember progress, not perfection.

So effective delegation is all about empowering your team, coaching them to success, giving them the tools that they need to succeed while championing them along the way. The best part is that you'll have more time. You'll have more energy, more space to focus on what matters to you, both at work and in your personal life as well. That said, be very realistic. Delegation isn't a cure-all. There's still a lot of work to be done. Even if someone completes, though, a task at 80%.

Only gets part of the way through your project or task, that's still a win. After all, we're not going for perfection. We're going for progress. And delegation is a great tool to get you there. So the article then finishes on three principles to remember and three things to do, three things not to do. So here they are. Do get out of your own way. Confront your fears, trust your team, and redirect your energy towards high-impact work.

Do start with low-hanging fruit. Identify simple, repeatable tasks to build confidence and create positive momentum for both you and your team. And also, treat delegation as a two-way dialogue. Your job is to inspire, to guide, and to encourage your team to also give you feedback along the way.

Here's some things not to do. Don't limit your talent pool. Look beyond your immediate team to people that might be outside of your team or outside of your organization that can bring you fresh perspectives to the task. Don't hover. Instead, check in strategically with focused questions about progress and roadblocks. And finally, don't micromanage the outcome. Delegate with the understanding that 80% done by someone else is infinitely better than 100% done solely by you.

Hope this article has inspired you to be a better manager, a better leader. And until next time we meet in the Manager Lab, do good work.