Intro

It was the start of 2021. I had burnt out for the second time in 3 months. I was spent and found the end of my resilience. It was then I resolved to never get to that point again and looked for how I could do that. Among other techniques (e.g. calendar audit, energy tracking) I started taking delegation as a skill more seriously. That journey has taught me a ton, and so in this article I’ll pass on three key things that I’ve learned:

1. Why Delegation is a Superpower for (Technical) Leaders (getting sh*t done, growing your team *and* managing your energy)
2. Learning the three types of delegation
3. Get started on developing this superpower now!

Delegation is a Superpower for ALL leaders

For too long I put Delegation in the bucket of “fancy names for stuff that other people do”. Having burnt out as a leader in a fast-growing, fast-paced FinTech for the second time I change my mind. I learned that effective delegation changed my approach to these three concepts:

1. How I could achieve more myself
2. How I could develop those around me better
3. How I could stop burning out and sustain a really good pace

Achieving more myself

Delegation can drastically improve what you’re able to achieve in a day/week/month. That’s because before you delegate anything, you really consider the importance and urgency of tasks.

When I started to do it properly it forced me to consider whether things seem important just because they’re on my ToDo list or if they are really important. Delegation also allowed me to learn about the skills of my team and optimise for what’s important (speed, skills development, quality, etc) and learn more about what I was good at too in comparison. Over time that lead to more and more efficiency for me and my team.

The overall efficiency of me and my team definitely started to climb as prioritisation became clearer, work was better defined and skills were combined together.

Developing The Team

Did you already know that development opportunities are the single largest reason people leave their roles?

While delegation helps to achieve the most important tasks efficiently, it also helps with the development of your people.

When I started considering what’s needed for particular tasks, I also started to consider who could do them. This added another layer to development conversations – in respect of both strengths and weaknesses. I started to have discussions like “I think you’d be great to take this on, you’re really strong with X and Y and I know you’ll be able to hand Z” and “I think this is a great opportunity for you to work on Z, can pair with you on it to help, but it would be great if you take accountability for it”.

It simply allowed for better quality discussions on strengths and skills development.

Halting Burnout

Building a map of what I should focus on, what to delegate and what to pair on – I was forced to change my approach to managing my own energy levels.

Delegation isn’t about pinging someone on Slack. It’s about setting clear expectations and aligning them to the outcome. It takes care and patience. But once done, I was free to delve into tasks that were right for my development and I found that energising and engaging.

It stopped feeling so overwhelming and started to feel like a recipe to avoid draining energy reserves dry again.

There are Three Main Types of Delegation

As I worked with my team on delegation we began to explore how to better set expectations and aligning on goals together. That lead to my realisation that there were three types of delegation that you can use also to start your journey on effecting delegation:

1. Straight Up Delegation: Working Within Someone’s Abilities
2. Pairing Delegation: Work That Required Pairing Between You and Them
3. Development Delegation: On The Edge Of Their Ability

In each, the role of Alignment and Expectation play important but differing roles.

Straight Up Delegation: Working Within Someone’s Abilities

I started my journey into delegation here. Delegating work to people that was within their competency.

We discussed what I was responsible for and identified projects/assignments/tasks that they had the skills for. When we started doing this, the role of Alignment became more important than Expectation.

The first conversation about this work is crucial, it’s all about setting up the right alignment to the parameters of the work. Here are some useful points I would use to talk people through the assignments:

• Why is this work important?
  • What’s the wider context?
  • How does it fit into the larger goals?
  • What and who relies on this?
• What are the constraints?
  • When does it need to be done by?
  • Why then?

Once we’d aligned on the goals, context and constraints we moved on to the Support discussion. I would ask “how best can I support you doing this?” and we’d talk about:

• How to share progress
• The format and schedule of informal and formal check-ins
• What role was best for me to play?

Pairing Delegation: Work That Required Pairing Between You and Them

BEWARE! This is a tricky one, and one that I got stuck on quite a few times. In this type of work is where the dreaded Micro-Management crops up.

I started to find that some work needed something from me but I didn’t need to actually do it. It could be context, knowledge and (less often that I want to admit) skill. In these situations, Alignment to the overall goal was important but equally important was Expectation Setting. When discussing these delegation opportunities, here are the topics we typically covered:

• Clarifying why pairing on this will work (who brings what skills, why work together and not delegate)
• How should we collaborate? (async updates, sync meetings/session, miro, slides, docs?)
• Who owns what part? (structure vs detail, narrative vs depth, tech vs organisational? …)
• What happens next? (If there’s an event/presentation/session that follows who goes, who presents what? Who takes what forward?)

Development Delegation: On The Edge Of Their Ability

This is by far my favourite type of delegation! When done right, it creates an excellent culture of learning and constant development.

In these situations I found the Expectation Setting part of conversation more important than the Alignment one.

The first discussion again is a crucial one – clearly identifying it as a chance to take on something different (remember, development opportunities are the single biggest reason people decide to leave organisations!). You could focus on the specific skill being developed, how this task will help and why it’s important to their ongoing development.

In my experience, you’ll need to set up a more robust and regular check-in schedule with them where the emphasis will be on learning. The type of management I would normally do in these circumstances is much more like coaching. With questions like:

• What have you learned so far?
• What does that tell you about what to do next?
• What do you think is the next challenge?
• Who do you think can help with that?
• How can I help support you?

How to Get Started on Delegation as a Skill

From my experience, here’s some super quick ways to apply the knowledge you’ve learned here …

1. Create a shared context with your team about how you’d like to develop delegation as a skill and why it’s a critical skill for you all (you can share this article if you’d like!)
2. Create a list of your Focus Areas (if you’re not sure, look at your To-Do Lists, Calendar or Ask your Stakeholders and/or Managers)
3. Share the list with your team – re-emphasising the goal to achieve more together.
4. Look at which activities fit into the three types of delegation (as above!)
5. Start Delegation Discussions
6. Iterate!

Conclusion

In 2021, I couldn’t imagine any more cycles of burnout. In my journey to learn Delegation I’ve drastically reduced that risk. I’d love you to avoid those cycles too and hopefully you’ve got a leg up from reading this. Good look and see you out there.