 Learning how to delegate tasks as a manager is vital for any management position. You can't and shouldn't do everything yourself. If you don't learn how to delegate effectively at each management level, your management career will stall. Actually learning how to delegate work as a manager is not as easy as it first seems. In my first management role, I quickly learned that just telling a team member to do x, y or z rarely got the results we needed. As you can imagine, constantly improving how to delegate tasks as a leader or a manager remains very important throughout your career. So we're going to go through nine key stages of delegating tasks and work effectively. Nine stages may seem like a lot, but if you want great results, a happy team member and have a lot less stress yourself, then using each stage is important. And according to a Gallup study, CEOs who excel at delegating generated 33% higher revenues. We're not all CEOs, yet similar benefits will apply to you. Your team will deliver more, be happier and get more recognition within the business. If you as a manager deliver better team performance, then you're likely to get more people to manage and get promoted quicker. My name is Jess Coles and I've had a 25-year management career in innocent drinks, fosters, EY, peer consulting and many others. Learning how to delegate tasks as a manager and as a leader was a key reason for my progression through the management ranks. And if you're new to this channel, Enhance.Training provides online business courses to help you improve performance and that of your team and business. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. So let's start with the first stage in how to delegate tasks as a manager and that is to know what to delegate. There are loads of tasks and projects you could delegate. The challenge is working out what you should delegate to others and what you should keep for yourself. Certain tasks you cannot delegate, such as appraisals and dealing with the other personnel issues of running teams. There are also many tasks that will be core to your job as a manager and these should also not be delegated. Such as setting direction objectives for the team or following up with the direct reports to ensure all the projects and activities that they're being worked on are progressing as planned. Work out what you must do yourself. You will have a list of tasks that could and probably should be delegated. As every job is different, there are no hard and fast rules. To give you a steer, think about tasks that might fall into the following five categories. Firstly, your time consuming tasks. These are tasks that take up a lot of your time and are not core to your role. Second, teachable tasks. The tasks that you could teach to others fairly easily. Third, time sensitive tasks. Any tasks that need to be done by a certain deadline and you just don't have time to do it for that deadline. Fourth, tasks that you're actually poor at. Tasks that one of your team member or others can do quicker and or better than you. And fifth, development opportunity tasks. These are tasks that will develop the skills, knowledge and experience of members of your team. Many tasks might cover more than one of any of these points. Once you've decided what tasks you should delegate and what tasks you need to keep, the second stage in how to delegate tasks as a leader is to play to team members' strengths. Each team member will have different strengths, ambitions and interests. It makes sense to match up the team member best suited and most interested in to do a particular task or project. This should result in the tasks being done in the least amount of time and being done well. And this helps the team, the individual and you as a manager. Another key reason to delegate tasks to a specific team member is to create learning and development opportunities for that person. Keep the goals and ambitions of your team members in mind and try to keep each person moving towards them. Taking the time to think about team members' strengths and ambitions will give you a happier, more motivated team that delivers more. This will help you in lots of ways. The third stage in how to delegate tasks as a manager is to define the desired outcome or objective. There is little worse than being given a task without being told the outcome to be achieved. A simple example would be told to make sales calls without being told how many to do a day and to what type of prospect. Before delegating a task, define the outcome that you are seeking and how you are going to measure progress against that outcome. Another step you could take would be to get input, discuss and agree the outcomes how they are defined and measured with the person you are delegating to. This step gives them a say, the opportunities to input and as a consequence they are much more likely to own the outcome agreed, thus increasing their motivation. An example of a simple task might be to complete or update a report by a specific date without making mistakes. Or a more complex project such as a system implementation might include the following five metrics. Firstly, to get to a go live position within a pre-agreed budget, second it could be that the go live happens by a specific date, third all users receive a certain amount of training and participate in user acceptance testing, fourth there is a minimum level of disruptions and problems post go live i.e. the quality of the implementation is good and fifth you could have a good user feedback via a scored survey two months after go live. Write down the outcomes of the task or project and how you are going to measure progress and share them with the person doing the work. This ensures a clear reference point to refer to during the task or project for both parties. Be clear on what good looks like. The fourth stage in how to delegate effectively is to explain why the task needs doing. Explaining why you are asking a team member to do a task or manage a project helps provide context. Explain how the task or project helps the team and business achieve its goals. Explaining the why and the context will help the team member plan how they are going to deliver and it also enables them to manage any unforeseen problems or challenges much better. Also explain how doing the task will help the team members improve their skills, take on more responsibility or gain specific experience needed for them to reach their goals. Answer the what's in it for me question. This helps increase their motivation to do the task and do it well. The fifth stage in how to delegate tasks as a manager is to provide the right resources, training and authority level. You want the person you are delegating to to be successful. This helps you personally, the team and the business, not to mention the individual concerned. So take the time to plan out the resources that they might need to succeed. I would suggest getting the team member involved in this process so they can input, learn and eventually do all this themselves. Provide any training necessary so they can do the task and do it well. I would suggest that you be careful not to micromanage or dictate or suggest that they must do the task in a way that you would approach it. Depending on the team member give them space to solve the problem and the better they get at solving these types of problems the more space they should get. And finally when delegating effectively provide the right authority level. An example of how to do this would be communicating to the rest of the team that Jane is responsible for delivering X and that they are to help as needed when asked by Jane. The sixth stage in how to delegate tasks as a leader is to provide support. When you are delegating tasks or projects that a team member has not done before they may well need a lot of support as they learn how to deliver for the first time. When they gain more experience the support you need to give them will change and probably lessen quite a lot. Make the time to check in with the individual. Find out about progress and train, mentor and coach as needed so the team member avoids the common pitfalls and makes good progress in the right direction. Again, be careful not to micromanage the individual. This will give them a better learning experience, provide them with more satisfaction and develop their skills. And a more skilled and experienced individual will be able to deliver for the team and the business which helps everyone. The seventh stage in how to delegate tasks as a manager is to allow for learning time. You know it's really easy to forget how long it took us to do the task or project the first time. It might be tempting to get impatient or to think about taking back the task and just doing it ourselves. Resist the temptation. Doing so will not help you or the team in the long run. Give the person a reasonable amount of time to learn. Help them to get quicker and better at doing the task or project each time they do it. And by delegating the task to the team member, you give yourself the opportunity to take on work from your manager and develop your skills. Everyone can win, so give them the space and time to learn. The eighth stage in how to delegate tasks as a leader is to give feedback. A key part of learning is getting and using feedback to improve what you do. If I was doing something wrong I would want to know as soon as possible and equally I'd want to know what I was doing well so I could do more of it and I'm pretty sure this is most people. So give open and honest feedback to the person that you have delegated the task to. Make sure they know what is going well and help them understand how to fix what is not going well. You have taken through your experience of doing these tasks and projects, what you have found works best and why or coach them to help them arrive at a solution that you are happy with that should work. Give feedback so they are able to learn as quickly as possible. The ninth stage in how to delegate tasks as a manager is to give praise where due. Nearly everyone enjoys getting praise and recognition when they feel they've earned it. Take the time to thank the person for their efforts and the outcome that they have created. There are so many ways to praise, both privately and publicly, a couple of examples would be just saying well done or sending an email saying the same or praising an individual in front of colleagues or in front of the whole team or giving prizes etc. Don't praise in general terms, be really specific and use examples. This is a lot more valuable and a lot more motivating. And who doesn't like to work for a manager or a leader who praises when appropriate? Praise is a great motivator. So in summary we've gone through the nine stages of how to delegate work as a manager or leader. Each stage is important to ensure the tasks you delegate are done well and can be used as learning and development opportunities for your team members and create great results for the overall team and the business. Learning how to delegate effectively is a skill which needs practice if you want to get better at it. And with practice these steps will become second nature and delegating effectively will keep getting easier and easier. So enjoy the results of better delegation. And do visit us at enhance.training and take a look at the business courses and resources available to help you improve performance. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.