Training For Delegation

Problem

It took me five to six years to get to the point where I was comfortable delegating and where I could delegate correctly. At first, I would only delegate if there was an emergency. However, I've now learned it's important to delegate to train staff up, and it's especially important to do so when you're not fighting fires and the workflow is calm.

Actions taken

When there's no huge urgency, I can delegate to Product and Development to train them up and have them start thinking about how to approach issues. This is because I'm then able to help them along the way and I can give them enough time to go think through an issue and come back with some ideas. After this, I can also review their work once or twice to see how they are getting along and to do another round of revision. When you have done this enough times, you can start to trust the people you have trained up to respond quickly when there is an emergency. If you delegate every day of the week, then when you're away and the CEO asks for something urgently, such as a Pitch Deck, there's already a succession plan in place for the CEO to get the Pitch Deck from the Product group.

Lessons learned

It's important to realize you can't just hand people tasks and expect them to take them on with no training. It can take two to three times longer to train someone else up than what it would take you to do the task, so it's important to start training them up to take on tasks before it becomes urgent. Earlier in my career as a manager, I took too long to delegate and I ended up working long hours.