Delegating effectively

• The first step is self-examination to ensure that your personal style and anxieties are not getting in the way of delegating effectively.
• Then it is a matter of deciding what to delegate and to whom. This should be part of your regular strategic review of how you are investing all the resources at your disposal. Who has the right skills for this job? Who do I need to develop? How can I leverage X's relationship with Y? If I delegate this to X, what support do I need to offer him/her to make it a success?
• Keep in mind that delegation really refers to things that you might normally do yourself. Asking someone to take care of menial tasks that you shouldn't be doing yourself is not really delegation.
• What is the urgency, importance, risk of failure and cost of failure of this job? If all are high, how much monitoring do I need to put in place and what form should it take?
• What internal/external stakeholders should I involve to spread ownership?
• How much coaching does this person need to build his/her confidence to see this task through successfully?
• How much do I need to stretch/challenge this person in order to ensure that he/she develops into a credible successor for my job?
• These are questions you should ask yourself. Delegation calls for strategic decision making because you are striving to maximize the efficiency or return you obtain from the investment of all your resources. Your success depends on your ability to maximize this return. It is hard to succeed by attending to the detail yourself.