How do you delegate?

By Jamie MorleyNovember 30, 2021

So you have everything organised and all your ducks are in a row. Your team are all clear on their areas of responsibility. The clearer you are on this then the more obviously individual tasks will fit within the remit of a specific person. You won’t have to spend time allocating out individual tasks all the time as the person will take individual ownership and responsibility in taking on board those tasks. Yet in order to get to this point and as ad hoc tasks arise so you will need to decide how you will delegate the task.

The first question to ask is does this task really need to be done? Does it fall within the strategies that I have laid out? What will happen it it doesn’t get done? Deciding what not to do is an important skill of leadership. Really challenge this.

Once you have decided that it needs to be done I would always give it to the person whose responsibility it fits under. Although it may be tempting to give it to somebody else who perhaps has a higher competence level, this then confuses the overall responsibilities that people have and stops them taking ownership. That said you also really need to understand what capacity the individual has to deliver on the task and also what is their desire and motivation. Perhaps they even came up with the idea so their want and desire to deliver on the task with likely be high.

Once you have decided who, then how do you go about delegating these tasks? Surely it is easy enough, you just tell the person what you want to do and they do it. Right? If only it were that easy….how many times have you told somebody to do a task and yet it doesn’t get done? Perhaps you feel like you have to ask them multiple times and yet still it doesn’t get done.

How you delegate is critical and it is not one size fits all….

I believe there are 4 determinants that should guide you in how you delegate tasks to an individual:

Importance - how important is the task either in terms of if it is done well how much of a positive impact will it have on the business, or in terms of if it is done badly how much of a negative impact will it have on the business.

Urgency - how quickly does it need to be done.

Style - the typical style of the person who you are delegating the task to.

Competence - the competence level of the individual to be able to do that task.

Once you have identified what these determinants look like in any given situation then I would consider changing your approach in the following possible ways:

Level of responsibility - this is about how much you break down the task for the person. E.g. I want you to phone this list of leads every day for the next week and send them two follow up emails.  This is very much giving them specific tasks. Giving the person greater responsibility you would say I want you to contact these leads to book in as many new patient consults as you can. You are increasing the level of responsibility and giving them the opportunity to use their own inteligence and skills to make it happen.

Coach versus tell - at one end you tell people specifically what to do whilst at the other end you only question people, never tell. It is linked to the level of responsibility. The more responsibility you give the more you can coach versus tell. So, in the above example having said I want you to book in as many new patient consults as you can from this list, you can ask ‘how will you go about doing this?’ If you don’t give people much responsibility then it is difficult to coach rather than tell. The benefit of doing this is that it hands ownership over to the individual. It gets them to come up with ideas and to think for themselves. Thus making it more likely that the task will be done.

Initial dialogue level - in the initial discussion you can have a dialogue or you can leave it with the person without any dialogue. So, having outlined the task or area of responsibility you can have a dialogue with the individual or you can simply leave it with them entirely. Leaving it with them is obviously quicker and you can let the person know that you know they are capable of doing this and that you trust them to deliver on it. They don’t need your input.

Follow up level - at one end of the spectrum you will follow up all the time whilst at the other end of the spectrum you will completely leave them alone until the agree time of when the task needs to be done. Similarly as above, this shows the individual that you trust them to deliver and you know it will be done.

Style and personality - we all operate in different ways and have different personality traits. Adapt your communication to the individual.

Your approach will depend on the 4 determinants I described earlier. It is not one size fits all.

An example could be that you want everybody to have new scrubs and you have a very capable Practice Manager who is great at getting things done. In this situation it is probably low to medium in terms of importance, low in terms of urgency, the individual is direct and your trust of this person delivering is very high as you have multiple past examples of this. As a result you can probably have a very short conversation, give them full scope to do it how they want to do it and leave it with them., following up on the date agreed to quickly check it is done.

This is one example. You can see that if it was a more important task, of medium urgency, with somebody who likes to look at all the detail and has a medium level of competence as they are relatively new to the business you would take a different approach.

In addition to this, there are some overall principles for the initial delegation conversation…

Explain why.
Be present.
Be clear.
Check for understanding.
Give clarity.
Agree on precise time frames.
Relate it back to the goals, values and vision of the practice.

The above is true for ad hoc tasks and also true as you are developing individuals in a role. What does the ultimate highly effective team look like? Everybody has an area of responsibility and they take full ownership for this. They hold each other accountable for achieving results. However, people rarely start at this point and so you can use the principles in the above to gradually take them to the point where they are taking full ownership and responsibilities for their role.

What tasks have you recently delegated? How did you decide who to delegate it to? Did you delegate it to the person who has overall responsibility for that area? What were the determinants for that situation? How did you delegate the task and was it the right approach for the situation?