Managers rely on others to get work done, making delegation an essential skill. When they delegate poorly, it can lead to accusations of micromanagement. For people and in some organizations, the threat of being thought of as a micromanager is terrifying. At the same time, managers who don’t delegate or fail at setting clear expectations are unlikely to achieve what their organization needs. Good delegation requires careful navigation through treacherous waters, and a few principles can help managers do it well.
It’s easier to delegate well when you remember what delegation is and isn’t. Work allocation and task assignment are tools managers can use to coordinate work done by others, but they aren’t delegation. Delegation involves handling off work that you would typically do in a way that engages the other person’s thinking, not just their labor.
Delegating has two critical components, both of which can feel like micromanagement if not done well. The first piece is starting the process by scoping the work and setting clear expectations about the results. The second is monitoring progress and steering while the work is in flight. This article provides guidelines for doing the first element well, while Part Two covers the second.
Describe What You Want, Not the Steps to Do It
Delegating requires clear expectations, which means painting a picture of what good looks like. Managers are often told to specify the “what” and not the “how,” but this advice ignores that sometimes it’s essential to tell someone how you don’t want something done. So, how can managers do that without overspecifying what a solution needs to look like?
I’ve seen managers plan an entire project for their direct reports – including deliverables and dates – without their input and hand it over for them to execute. This isn’t delegation; it’s task assignment. Not only is this likely to cause people to feel micromanaged, but it is also not likely to work for anything but the most straightforward projects. Giving someone a list of tasks to perform without a clear picture of what success looks like means they are likely to miss the mark.
If you don’t give someone a project plan to follow, you need to provide them with clear and flexible guidance about what you need. You must describe what you want the outcome of their work to look like without being too specific about how they should do it. Giving them the criteria you will use to evaluate the project’s success helps to set clear expectations. You probably know these criteria unconsciously; communicating them explicitly is worth your time. There should be as few of these as possible so it’s clear what they need to focus on. Describing success could sound like this:
- “Increase adoption of this feature from 23% to 60%.”
- “Deliver a two-day leadership offsite that receives an 80% satisfaction score from the participants.”
- “Address as many of these issues as possible before the trade show on September 13.”
It’s tempting to pile on multiple criteria. Doing this makes it harder for the other person to make decisions, particularly if you haven’t been explicit about how to trade off between criteria. A single goal to optimize for within boundaries (see below) is more likely to get you what you want.
Delegating well means giving the other person a compass, not an itinerary. When describing what you want, ask yourself, “Are there multiple possible ways to accomplish the goal I’ve described?” If not, the other person may feel like you are micromanaging them.
Explain Why You Want It
Delegation means that the person you’re delegating to will be making decisions. In many ways, decision-making authority is the only thing you can delegate. You’re empowering the other person to make decisions that ordinarily you would make. They’re probably not going to make the same ones you would – and you shouldn’t expect or require them to. You’re not trying to clone yourself; you’re trying to accomplish a goal by engaging another person’s energy thinking. That means you must equip them with enough relevant information to make good enough decisions.
One thing you certainly know more about than they do is why you – and the larger organization – want what you’re asking for. Very few things that you might delegate stand on their own. If you want the other person to make good decisions, you need to connect the outcome you’re asking for to the larger whole it is part of. It can be helpful to ask yourself, “Why does this matter to me? To my boss? To my boss’ boss?” When you describe what larger mission this work supports and what success looks like – a technique often called “Commander’s Intent” – you do two critical things. First, you enable adaptation and better decision-making. Second, you make it less likely that you’ll come off as a micromanager.
Tell Them What Not To Do – and What They Might Consider
When you’re delegating, you engage the other person’s problem-solving skills. You tell them what you want and why you (and your boss) want the problem solved. However, you also need to set clear expectations about the kinds of solutions that aren’t acceptable. You might call these guardrails or boundaries or constraints. No matter what name you give them, these are what you don’t want people to do. They might be things like:
- “You need to work within our existing tech stack.”
- “You can’t use more than 20 hours of the Legal team’s time in the next two months.”
- “The entire event needs to fit into the $25k budget.”
- “We need to launch before the trade show on September 13.”
In effect, you’re describing the edges of a box. As long as the solution they come back with fits entirely inside the box, it’s okay – even if that’s not how you would do it. You want to give them enough freedom to be creative without allowing them to take an unacceptable path. The tighter you draw the box, the more likely they will describe you as a micromanager.
You can also spur their thinking by pointing out that solutions they might unconsciously rule out are on the table. They might not realize that they have access to specific resources they don’t typically use or that certain restrictions don’t apply. These might be things like:
- “You don’t have to use the normal compliance process for this prototype. If it validates the customer need exists, we’ll deal with the compliance issues in the next pass.”
- “While we’ve normally run events like this in-house, we have the budget to bring in an outside facilitator, if that makes sense.”
- “You can tap into Avery’s experience with the pilot we tried last quarter, even though Avery won’t be on this team.”
Planting the seeds of an idea but letting the other person explore the implications is a way to engage their thinking.
Explaining the reasons behind the request, the guardrails, and additional resources are ways of adding relevant context. If your success criterion is a compass, this context is a map of the landscape.
Ask Them What You Want, Why, and What They Plan to Do
After you’ve explained what you want, why you want it, and what you don’t want them to do, there are two essential questions to ask:
- “What is your understanding of what I’m asking you to do?”
- “Given that, what do you plan to do?”
These two questions comprise a technique called “back-briefing” that Stephen Bungay describes in The Art of Action (and on this podcast with Melissa Perri). The first question helps you ensure that they understand what you want. You’re asking them to tell you the success criteria, how this work fits into the larger picture, and what the “box” they need to work inside looks like. If anything is missing or incorrect in their description, you can correct that. You’re helping them to avoid playing “Bring Me a Rock.”
The key to the second question is how you respond to their answer. When they tell you what they plan to do, compare it to the success criteria, the reasons it matters, and the constraints you’ve given them. (You may ask them to walk through that evaluation with you.) Does it look like it will meet the need? Does it fit into the box? If so, they should be ready to move into action. If not, point out where it doesn’t match what you asked for and have them rework the plan.
This step also lets you notice when you failed to describe what you wanted correctly. If the plan addresses all of the criteria and boundaries you gave them, but you still don’t think it will work, then you’ve left something out. In that case, fill in the missing details. That could sound like, “I realize now that I didn’t mention that the team isn’t available before June 1,” or “I didn’t tell you that we can’t increase the per-unit cost by more than $2; that’s my bad.” Once you have explained what you originally left out, ask them for a new plan.
The critical part here is that you don’t correct their plan directly. You clarify the constraints and ask them to replan accordingly. This keeps ownership of the plan firmly on them, which goes a long way toward avoiding a sense of micromanagement.
Setting Clear Expectations is the Start
At this point, you and the person you are delegating to should be highly aligned on the scope of the work and your expectations about both the process and the results. You have a sense of what they plan to do, and their plan seems to satisfy all of the relevant criteria and constraints. Does that mean you’re done delegating?
No. Some managers want to treat delegation as a “fire and forget” activity. They say things like, “I trust my people,” “I don’t have time to supervise their work,” or “What makes them so good is that I don’t have to think about what I’ve delegated to them.” This might work for simple tasks. Most work, however, is more complex than that. You may have delegated decision-making authority to them, but you’re still ultimately accountable for the endeavor.
“The beginning is half of every work,” wrote Plato in his Laws, and as Mary Poppins paraphrased it, “Well begun is half done.” Effective delegation starts with setting clear expectations – but doesn’t end there. You need to monitor the progress of the work and help steer it as it unfolds. That can be even more difficult to accomplish without seeming like a micromanager. Doing that well is the focus of Part Two.
