Delegation isn’t a “fire and forget” activity. As a manager, you can delegate decision-making to your direct reports, but you can’t delegate away your accountability for the outcome. The key is delegating without micromanaging. Effective managers monitor and guide the progress of delegated work – and they do it in a way that doesn’t feel like micromanagement.
A helpful way to avoid those feelings of micromanagement is to think of delegation as a partnership with the other person. Barry Oshry describes partnership as “a relationship in which we are jointly committed to the success of whatever endeavor, process, or project we are engaged in.” As you monitor the progress of the delegated work, focus on how you can support each other to make it successful.
Once you have clarified your expectations and agreed on an initial plan for the work, you also need to set expectations about how you monitor and steer. Getting on the same page about this from the start avoids unpleasant surprises that contribute to the feeling of micromanagement. There are three essential things to discuss at the outset: what support they need, what support you need, and the form and frequency of your communication.
What support do they need?
As a manager, balancing your involvement in delegated work is critical. If you are over-involved, you lose many of the benefits of delegation, and you can create feelings of micromanagement. If you are under-involved, you can put the work at risk and foster feelings of disinterest and abandonment. A helpful guide for how much to be involved is the degree of support the other person wants and needs.
Support can come in several forms. One helpful question is, “What assistance can I provide?” As a manager, you may have access to critical information that the person you’ve delegated to doesn’t. You may be able to connect them with material support (budget, equipment, facilities, etc.) or other expertise because of the role you occupy. You likely have greater visibility into the organization and the effects of the delegate work than the other person. You’ve already clarified why this work matters to you, your boss, and your boss’ boss. As the work progresses, you can provide updates on how that context changes. It’s important to talk about the assistance you can provide at the beginning of work – and to revisit this question regularly. The two of you can’t anticipate all the needs at the beginning, so check in about them regularly.
Another type of support you can provide is advice. You have information and experience that the other person doesn’t, and letting them tap into that as the work moves along can be helpful. Of course, it’s easy to “inflict help” by giving unwanted advice. A second helpful question is, “Where will you want my advice?” Establishing where they would welcome your perspective and respecting those boundaries helps avoid the sense of micromanagement.
A third way to support the other person is to be clear about what you are empowering – and expecting – them to do. What decisions are theirs alone to make? Where might they think they need to wait for your approval? Where do you want to maintain veto rights, and where do you want them to simply take action? Talking about “What are you empowered to do?” has two beneficial effects. First, it creates more explicit boundaries and decision rights, which supports the other person to own more of the process. Second, as long you respect these boundaries, explicitly granting them decision authority reduces the chances they’ll feel micromanaged.
What support do you need?
When you delegate work to someone else, they aren’t the only one who needs support. You need them to execute their plan – and you likely need more than that. If you aren’t clear about what you need, you can end up making demands that feel controlling. To avoid this, be clear with yourself and the other person what you need.
What support you need will vary from person to person and project to project. Useful questions to consider include:
- What will your boss want to know about?
- What will help you to coordinate this work with other work happening elsewhere?
- What risks are you concerned about?
When considering risks, you need to account for task-relevant maturity. Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, coined this term in his book High Output Management. It means that your assessment of the risks needs to consider not only the work itself but also the person’s demonstrated experience and skill with this type of work.
How you ask for this support influences how likely they are to feel you are micromanaging them. The more they understand why you’re asking, the less likely they are to think of you as overcontrolling. You don’t want them to tell themselves the story that you just don’t trust them. Frame what you’re asking for in ways that make it hard for them to do that. The more you can connect the support you’re asking for to your goals and the larger context, the easier you make it for the other person to manage up.
How and how often will you communicate?
The key to monitoring and steering work is communicating. Working out how you plan to support each other tells you what you need to communicate. All that’s left to do is figure out how and how often.
A common mistake managers make when delegating is to treat all communication about the work as the same. In my experience, there are at least three different types with different needs.
- Asynchronous information passing (e.g., status reports and regular updates)
- Synchronous collaboration (e.g., feedback and problem-solving)
- Time-critical decision-making (e.g., emergencies)
For each of these, agree on what falls into that category and channel you want to use. For example, on one project, you might decide that most of the information you need can fit into a weekly email. You also reserve an hour each week to collaborate face-to-face on emerging issues. In addition, you agree on what things shouldn’t wait for your weekly meeting, how you’ll contact each other when those arise, and what to do if the other person is unavailable.
The frequency of communication can change as the work progresses. In the beginning, more frequent touchpoints are a good idea because shorter feedback loops help to correct misunderstandings. As things develop, you may not need to connect as often, though it depends on the nature of the work.
These feedback loops are for both of you. You should give the other person feedback on their work and how they’re supporting you. Grounding your feedback in mutual purpose helps it feel less like micromanaging. You should also ask for feedback on how you’re supporting them and how your partnership is working. These feedback cycles let you make adjustments to improve your outcomes, which is what monitoring and steering are all about.
Isn’t there an easier way?
Taken all together – thinking through what you expect, being clear about outcomes and guardrails, checking for understanding, and agreeing on how you will support each other and communicate as the work unfolds – delegation can seem like a lot of work. In many ways, it is. Creating partnership requires conscious effort, particularly when we’re not used to doing so deliberately. The time and energy invested to create alignment up front often pays itself back. In my experience, the only alternative to doing this work is to hope the other person can read your mind – a gamble I have rarely seen pay off.
