Delegation - art or science?

Last week I had the opportunity to sit in on a colleague's pilot for a delegation skills course he designed. The course was interesting to me in that I am often not in the position to delegate, in the traditional sense, as my role is more of an individual contributor rather than a formal leader. Due to my lack of experience in this subject I was excited to be a part of the half-day event where I hoped to learn about a new topic but also to learn more about how the other half lives. I've felt, in my last three positions in fact, that I've operated in somewhat of a vacuum, without a team to work with or others to support me. I have worked under some people who have, at times, tasked me with work but I've been in the unique situation of creating my own work from my own developed understanding of the needs of my environment. I haven't been in that formal leadership role where I would assume the need for delegating would be automatic.

Without any background, in either delegating or having been delegated to, I was at a disadvantage when right out of the box I was put on a team tasked with creating a list of the positive outcomes that might arise should a leader delegate. My partner and I came up with a fairly comprehensive list:

• Increased productivity of the delegator by freeing up their time to accomplish other tasks
• Putting more or different minds/eyes on the problem in order to tap into their experience or expertise
• To grow staff members by giving them new or more challenging work assignments
• Reduce stress of the delegator
• To increase the trust of the team - a positive outcome would increase the ability to delegate to that person again in the future

I was feeling good about our work until I realized that the other three teams were basically creating lists detailing why someone shouldn't delegate. And their lists were far more extensive. I felt woefully inadequate, especially considering my lack of experience with this topic. What we eventually came to realize, through thoughtful instruction by my colleague, was that we should and could take advantage of delegating responsibilities if we were careful to mitigate the possible disadvantages and negative consequences of a poorly done delegation.

Through a four-step process of planning, delegating, monitoring, and reviewing we learned that planning was, as with most other aspects of life, the critical piece to any successful delegation. This was interesting to me especially as the planning piece is not one that comes as naturally to me as it might to others. I've learned quite a bit about myself in my time in my current organization (through tools such as DISC, the Listening Profile, and others) and what I've found is that my primary instinct is to drive forward through a situation, listening and react to solve a problem, rather than slowly investigating, planning and monitoring the situation to ensure a successful outcome.

While it's easy to imagine opportunities that would allow me to take advantage of these action and collaboration-oriented traits, planning for delegating and following through on the monitoring part of the process are not natural fits for me. If for nothing else, I learned that should I find myself in a situation where I could delegate a task I should first literally take a moment to thoughtfully plan the steps we would take and also to be specific in creating expectations around potential deliverable and deadlines. In the few instances where I have delegated a task, mostly with vendors or others outside of the organization, I realize I've mentally put the ball in their court and moved on, expecting they would meet my sometimes silent expectations and return the ball to me for my next step. When that expectation wasn't met it often went unnoticed for weeks or months. With this (not so new) realization I've come to see that I need to be far more blatant about my expectations, even when I'm delegating upwards - which is very uncomfortable for me. But it is only by being so concrete and forthright in the planning stage will I be "guaranteed" of success.

So, I've learned that the science of delegation can be learned, even by people like me who often move at a blistering pace, so that each opportunity will result in a successful conclusion. And with practice that science can soon turn into an art that doesn't requite forethought as it flows naturally through the tasks I delegate.