What Should You Delegate?

Domain: Managing Others - Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Deciding what to delegate is a major hurdle for many managers.

What can and should be delegated will depend a bit on your role and how high in the organization you sit. Since we can't cover the nuance of every role here, the advice below assumes that you are keeping the most critical aspects of your role that only you should be responsible for.

With that said, most operational tasks and responsibilities can and should absolutely be delegated. Many professionals often use the "only I can do this" excuse to not delegate, so make sure you are challenging yourself accordingly. Since finding the right balance is a bit of an art, we'll try to give examples along the way…

Strategy, culture & goodwill

This is a model we recommend for mid-senior level leaders. Whenever possible, focus on the tasks required to develop long-term strategy, strengthen culture and build goodwill both within and outside of the team.

You can certainly delegate tasks that help contribute to these aims; however, as a leader they are your primary responsibility.

Examples: Avoid delegating responsibilities for those reporting directly to you: one-on-ones, performance management, final hiring decisions, etc. Also, make sure you are the one driving the strategy for the parts of the organization that are under your influence.

Eisenhower method

Another useful framework for determininig what to delegate is the Eisenhower Matrix below. By simply identifying the importance and urgency of a task, you can determine who completes it.

This is best used for individual contributors and front-line managers. We don't recommend it for executives as important and urgent tasks that hit their desk might still be more appropriate for delegation.

Examples: In this matrix, the "delegate" category are things that must get done within a certain timeframe but don't require your specific skills. Attending meetings that don't require a decision from you is a great example. You might also consider items such as generating and distributing reports.

Minor tasks

Minor tasks are an obvious candidate for delegation but you want to be careful here. The downside of delegating minor tasks is that they often contribute little to employee development. This means you'll experience less benefit from delegating. If done too frequently, your team may develop the perception that you're simply offloading busy-work.

With that said, what is tedious to you may be more engaging for them. It's important to understand the strengths of each of your employees so that you can delegate the minor tasks that are still beneficial to their development.

Minor tasks should still be delegated, just make sure that's not all you're delegating.

Examples: scheduling meetings, booking travel arrangements, ordering supplies, requesting system accesses.

Time consuming tasks

This is hopefully another obvious candidate. The more time you spend on a task you could be delegating, the less time you have for leveraging your talents in new and exciting ways.

Examples: project coordination, training facilitation, work direction, procedure writing/maintenance, data entry, content creation, data and analysis work, etc.

What do you suck at?

None of us are great at everything. If you truly struggle with a task that others can do, by all means delegate it to them. The fact that you are not good at this task likely means you don't enjoy it all that much and it also means that someone else can likely do it better and more efficiently.

As an added bonus, you'll then have more time to focus on leveraging your strengths to provide value to the team.

Example: I don't know what you're not good at, so I'll give a personal example. Years ago, I was running a leadership development program. Part of that programs was planning an evening mixer for the cohort in a city I didn't live in. If I had tackled it myself, I would have gotten bogged-down in details and trying to find the perfect venue/activity. I ended-up getting input from a member of the cohort who was also a local. I also delegated the planning to someone who 1) loved to do it and 2) was much better at it. It was a win for everybody.

Thank you for reading. My hope is always that you've found something helpful and easy to implement.

This week’s action items:

1. Explore both the "strategy/culture/goodwill" and Eisenhower Matrix models to see what is best for you.

2. Identify which minor tasks you can be delegating.

3. Identify the time-consuming tasks you should be delegating.

4. Identify the challenging tasks that would be best for delegating.

5. Stay-tuned for the next installment on this topic next week.