Effective delegation: Six key steps for managers

Do you struggle to delegate? You’re not alone if you do.

Struggling to delegate is one of the top issues to come up in my conversations with managers. But when we don’t delegate not only does it impact us, it impacts our team also. None of you are developing, stretching, or growing.

Marshall Goldsmith talks about this in his book, What got you here won’t get you there. He advises two questions every leader should ask team members:

1. Let’s look at your responsibilities. Are there areas where you think I need to be more involved and less involved?
2. Now let’s look at my job. Do you ever see me doing things that a person at my level shouldn’t be doing? For example, getting involved in details that are too minor to worry about?

This gets to the heart of why delegation matters. When you don’t delegate, it can keep you in the weeds. You’re not operating at the level you should be. As the authors of a 2021 article in theMIT Sloan Management Reviewsaid,

“Delegation is a skill, like playing chess or the guitar.  Don’t expect to be instantly good at it, but if you start now, you’ll get better over time. It takes work to train yourself to delegate.”

In this article, you’ll learn:

• Why managers struggle to delegate
• The benefits of delegating
• How to delegate in six steps

Why managers struggle to delegate

Common reasons shared by managers include:

• Believing it’s quicker to do the task themselves
• Enjoying doing certain things and not wanting to give them to others to do
• Feeling guilty about giving more work to someone else
• Not trusting other people to do the tasks well enough
• Thinking they are the only ones who can do the task right
• Avoidance of more difficult tasks
• Perfectionism – it’s unlikely to be done to their standards so they might as well not delegate it
• Needing to feel indispensable
• Confusing accountability with responsibility
• Feeling the pressure from above to know the detail of everything

Quote from How to have a good day, by Caroline Webb

The benefits of delegating

• Projects are less likely to fail if a manager delegates to others on the team [1]
• The team is more resilient and competitive [2]
• Higher levels of job satisfaction among team members [3]
• Managers have time freed up to focus on more complex, strategic issues [4]
• Responsibilities are shared across the team meaning the manager can focus on resource management and setting of priorities [5]
• Team members feel empowered [6]
• Team members grow, develop and gain new expertise [7]
• Team members feel trusted, and when they feel trusted they are more likely to share knowledge and information with each other [8]

How to delegate in six steps

Step 1 – List the tasks you want to delegate

List everything you need to do. Highlight the top three tasks only you can do. Put a circle around the tasks which you can delegate to others.

You can prioritise tasks to delegate them from most complex to least complex. This is important as it will help you assign them to people with the right skill level. You should also think about the level of authority required to do the task, along with level of confidentiality required.

This isn’t about simply dumping all the things you don’t like doing. While delegating boosts job satisfaction, dumping can have the opposite effect. Delegating involves assigning tasks to others, that help them develop and grow. Dumping is where you simply dump anything you see as boring or as grunt work to others simply because you don’t want to do it. When as task is perceived as dumped, it leads to lower job satisfaction. [9]

And remember, there is a difference between responsibility and accountability when delegating. You are delegating responsibility for completing the task or doing the work, but you remain accountable as the manager. You are ultimately answerable for the task being done correctly and to completion.

Step 2 – Identify the best team member to delegate the task to

To do this, you need to understand your team’s strengths and development needs. In their book, Being the boss: The 3 imperatives for becoming a great leader, Linda Hill and Kent Lineback suggest there are three levels of delegation:

Level one	When you are delegating work to someone who has rarely or never done it before.	As the manager, you need to give much more specific instruction than you would do with someone more experienced. You will also need to check in with them more frequently.
Level two	When you are delegating to someone who has some experience and is ready to act on their own.	As the manager, you take more of a coaching approach. Ask the person what their plan is for approaching the work. Agree when to check in with each other.
Level three	When you are delegating work to someone who is highly competent and experienced.	As the manager, you give plenty of autonomy to get on do the work. You make clear it is their responsibility. You agree if the person needs to update you.

Step 3 – Clearly communicate expectations

Quote from The job is easy, the people are not, by Loredana Padurean

Even when you are delegating to someone at level three, you still need to clarify things such as scope, deadline and success criteria. This is particularly important for more complex and/or sensitive tasks. Here is a list of things to communicate when delegating:

• The purpose of the task and why it matters
• What success looks like and the results you expect
• What failure looks like and the consequences of this (for you, for them, for the team)
• The scope of the work and the level of quality you expect
• If you are delegating several tasks to one person, make clear which is the top priority task
• Specify timescales and deadlines
• If you are delegating attendance of a meeting, make clear do’s and don’ts particularly if a highly political or contentious meeting

One of the things I found helpful as a manager was to ask the person to play back what they had understood the task to be and expectations. This is a quick way to check understanding and iron out any misunderstandings or assumptions. Believe me, it can save a whole world of pain later down the line.

DOWNLOAD THIS CHECKLIST TO HELP YOU CLARIFY EXPECTATIONS

Step 4 – Provide support and resources

As the manager, you are an important resource and support for the team member. It can be helpful to discuss any potential barriers or issues the person should anticipate. Discussing this in advance is a form of support in and of itself.

Even for someone more experienced, they may still need support from you. For example, if you have delegated a complex and contentious piece of work, they may come up against a difficult stakeholder. You can act as a sounding board to support them as they manage that stakeholder.

Step 5 – Agree check-in points

This depends on the level of the person you are delegating to (see step two) and the nature of the work being delegated. For someone who has never done the thing before, it can be helpful to agree more regular check ins. You also need to make clear that people can come to you to check something if they’re unsure. Remember, this isn’t a ‘dump and run’ approach.

Step 6 Show appreciation and give feedback

In my experience of working with thousands of managers over the past 30 years, this is the most overlooked step. Forget to this and you can start to lose good will and resentment can build. Say thank you when the person has completed the task.

Ask the person for their self-assessment of how they think it went. Highlight specific things you noticed. Give feedback on what they did well and should continue doing in the future, and anything they could improve upon.

Post author: Dr Hayley Lewis. First published on the HALO Psychology website 9 February 2026.

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If you liked this post, you might also like these:

• How to ensure your staff really understand your expectations
• How to create a culture of accountability in your team

References

[1] Stickney, F. A., & Johnston, W. R. (1983). Delegation and a sharing of authority by the project manager. Project Management Quarterly, 14(1), 42–53.

[2] Gunasekaran, A., Rai, B.K. & Griffin, M. (2011). Resilience and competitiveness of small and medium size enterprises: An empirical research. International Journal of Production Research, 79, 5489 -5509.

[3] Jha, S. (2004). Determinants of delegation: A study in five star hotels’. Vision-The Journal of Business Perspective, 29(4), 44-55.

[4] Baer, J. (1999). You can’t do it all: Effective delegation for supervisors. Virginia Beach: Coastal Training Technologies Corp.

[5] Bell, R. L., & Bodie, N. D. (2012). Delegation, authority and responsibility: removing the rhetorical obstructions in the way of an old paradigm. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 9(2), 2-16.

[6] Weshah, H. A. (2012). The perception of empowerment and delegation of authority by teachers in Australian and Jordanian schools: A comparative study. European Journal of Social Sciences, 31(3), 359-375.

[7] Sev, J. T. (2017). Effective delegation of authority as a strategy for task accomplishment and performance enhancement in business organizations an empirical survey of flour mills of Nigeria plc, Lagos-Nigeria. The Business and Management Review, 8(4), 1-19.

[8] Salamon, S. D., & Robinson, S. L. (2008). Trust that binds: The impact of collective felt trust on organizational performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(3), 593–601.

[9] Schreisheim, C.A., Neider, L.L., & Scandura, T.A. (1998). Delegation and leader-member exchange: Main effects, moderators, and measurement issues. Academy of Management Journal, 41(3), 298-318.