Becoming a new manager is not always easy. You not only have to learn about the tasks and demands in that new position. But you also have to learn how to manage a team and their duties as well. Very soon, most new managers become overloaded and overwhelmed, and they face the reality of switching from doing to leading.
Most new managers, especially global managers, feel that if they give a glimpse of this overwhelm or even ask for help, it’s over for them. Showing weakness is not an option. They soon find out that delegating has become an essential aspect of their new job description. If they want to survive the overload, that is.
Many first-time managers struggle with delegating, though, for some simple reasons:
- Self-worth. They think they need to learn the tasks first in order to be a good leader and delegate appropriately.
- Guilt. They believe delegating is just passing off work to someone else.
- Trust. They want to show their teams that they are willing to “roll up their sleeves.”
- Mistrust. They assume it will be much faster if they just do it themselves.
- Confidence. They assume they will do it better.
- Patience. They don’t have the patience and time to teach it to their team members.
- Time. The timeframe is too tight to delegate and go through a learning curve.
- Leadership. They struggle to shift from doing into leading.
- Self-esteem. They want to prove themselves by doing those tasks themselves.
Many first-time global leaders that do become overwhelmed and do not want to share their overwhelm with the company, fearing that the sign of weakness will impair their image, end up seeking help through executive coaching. They not only use this to unload the heaviness of the feelings, but they also use it as a way to fast-track their learning curve into the new role.
One thing I am often asked is, “how can I decide when is a good time to delegate, without making it seem like I am just passing off work.” For this reason, I decided to put a framework here to help first-time global leaders navigate this aspect a little better.
How to decide when to delegate: 5 Principles
When you are a new manager, every time someone comes to you with a new ask, very often you’ll feel the need to attend to that task yourself. That’s what you use to do before, so it’s natural that this might be your first reaction now too. Instead, however, being a global manager (and assuming you’ll accept the task) you have to evaluate if you are the best person for the job, or if you should delegate this. Here is a 5 step methodology that you will use every time a new demand comes your way to help you decide whether you should delegate.
1) Don't delegate before assessing the task itself
When defining which tasks to delegate, you can start by assessing the task itself and doing so by using the 6-T’s methodology.
- Tiny. Small tasks that only consume your time, like scheduling, booking flights, preparing expense reports, deleting spam, etc., should be delegated, automated, or outsourced.
- Tedious. If you have some repetitive tasks that are mindless and with no value-add, you definitely must delegate, automate or outsource.
- Time-sensitive. Sometimes you’ll have tasks that you’ll simply NOT be able to complete yourself in a timely fashion. Either because you are in back to back meetings until its deadline or because the amount of work is impossible to finish alone. These tasks almost force you to delegate or renegotiate the deadline.
- Time-consuming. Time-consuming tasks are those that take a longer time to complete but are not considered a project per se. They need to be reviewed and broken into smaller chunks. Then you have to review those chunks and define which pieces could potentially be delegated.
- Teachable. How easy would it be to teach that task to someone else? If fairly easy, you should consider delegating it to someone else. Especially if aligned with topic 5.) Growth opportunities.
- Terrifying. If there are tasks that you are not good at or that you simply hate doing, then consider delegating. You might hate to do certain things, while other people might love it. For example, you might hate to design, and someone might love it. And you might not be good at budgeting, and someone in your team might be an expert.
2) Assessing task-goal alignment before you delegate
Someone once taught me the “Yes, no, maybe-if” approach.
Step 1: Align the ask with the highest-valued contributions that you’re most skilled at making.
Step 2: decide on “Yes, no, maybe-if”
- If you are the talent to contribute, say yes to that task and do it yourself.
- If you see the ask is a significant contribution, aligned with your goals, but does not require your unique talents, you will practice “maybe, if.” Maybe you’ll accept it if someone in your team can do it. And if so, assign it to someone else in your group.
- If the request is not a high-value contribution to your goals, then you will say a “no” or simply renegotiate, according to your priorities.
3) Time assessment to evaluate response time
Can the task be effectively delegated during the timeframe available? If yes, great, you will assess who’s the best person for the job and delegate it. If not, you will either renegotiate the deadline with your stakeholder, or do it yourself (if you can deliver by the deadline), or say you won’t be able to deliver it at all.
4) Growth opportunity assessment
There are 2 things to consider here. The first is your team’s growth opportunities. Does the task provide an opportunity to grow and develop another person’s skills? If the answer is yes, then you have an opportunity to delegate a task that will contribute to new skills for that person. The second thing you have to consider is your own growth opportunities. Some tasks might be a perfect match for someone in your team. But they might also be critical things for you to develop, which may be aligned with your career plans. If that is the case, consider collaboration or doing it yourself.
5) Matching expertise to delegate efficiently
If your stakeholders come to you with a new request, and that task can be performed by an expert in your team, who has not only expertise but also the information, this is a no-brainer. You can delegate the task to that person. Even if it’s not a perfect match, it’s always better to assign tasks that are closer to the general expertise of that certain employee than to delegate to someone that has not expertise or information at all. If you assign a duty to someone who never has done that task before, and that is outside their arena of expertise altogether, you are asking for a big miss.
Your goals aligned with your stakeholders
Making sure you are strictly focused on what adds value to your goals is part of your job as a new manager. And when I say “your goals,” I mean your organization’s goals. You will see that many demands will come to you and your team, and it does not have anything to do with your goals. If that is happening too often, either your goals are not well aligned with your stakeholders, or there is something off going on, which prompts further understanding or investigation. This is a topic for another post, but something vital for you to consider.
I once worked for a group whose head of department would accept every single request and would never renegotiate any deadlines. With the tremendous fear of being judged as incompetent and/or not accommodating enough, she accepted everything. Soon, the team was overloaded, overwhelmed, and very unhappy. Even after giving her this feedback, she didn’t change her ways and kept accepting more and more demands, to the point where the team was working 12 to 14 hours a day, which obviously was not sustainable in the long run.
When accepting demands and tasks from your stakeholders, it’s also a good idea to keep in mind your team’s workload and motivation levels. Also, how these delegated tasks are contributing to their growth, not in terms of learning alone, but also as experience opportunities for their careers. If your team’s workload came to a cap, it’s time to start renegotiating deadlines and tasks and prioritizing which tasks and stakeholders should be delivered first.
I would dare say that prioritization is one key skill every single manager on the planet has to master. Check our FREE time management and prioritization masterclass. It will give you solid basics on this matter.
Finally, once the decision to delegate something is made, there are ways to make this delegation more efficient as well, which we will cover in our next post.
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