Not too long ago, as I was sitting at my desk working - it was so late that it was actually the regular work day for my team in Asia. This was common. I was working so many hours, that I was working during two shifts (US and Asia). My frustration was rising with the project and with my team. However, the team was bewildered by my reaction. They were doing everything I assigned to them - why would I be upset with that?



Why indeed. I had fallen into a common trap. I thought I was delegating, but instead, I was simply assigning tasks and retaining ownership of everything. It was during one of these marathon work sessions that I realized I needed to make big changes - and fast. I began to look at when projects worked, seemingly without my intervention and when they didn't. Breaking it down, the solution jumped out clearly. There are five steps to successful delegation.

1.Clearly define the task. What needs to happen? What's the desired result?

2.Second, select the team or the individual that you want to accomplish this result.

3.Inform the individual of what's being delegated. Also let other people in the organization know who is now responsible for this task. This way they don't keep coming to you!

4.Maintain a monitoring system, so you can ensure that they're not getting off-track.

5.And finally, after the task is complete, complete the final review. Look at lessons learned and look at ways to improve moving forward.

These five steps are logical enough - the key is putting them into practice. I started with the project that caused the most work hours for me. I looked at my Asia team to determine who had the ability to lead the team on-site, then, before assigning the team member the task, I set clear objectives and goals. Successful delegation requires a clear end result.

I found that Helen had strong skills and a willingness (as well as bandwidth) to take on additional responsibilities. Now that I had the right person, I had to provide the authority needed so she could actually achieve it. This is a vital point. Trying to retain authority while expecting her to deliver will never work. You may also need to teach her how to do what you want her to do. You can't just delegate and walk away. You must ensure that the rest of the team understands this shift in ownership.

After you've truly delegated, you need to monitor the progress. Look at the plan. Make sure that there's some scheduled goals and meetings to ensure that the tasks are being met. I usually do this with in 1:1 meeting. This is a schedule time for us to talk about anything that may be of concern as well as upcoming due dates and milestones. These informal discussions can provide an excellent framework for feedback. If necessary, provide some direction. Give your team the objectives and the clear goals to keep them on track. Provide encouragement. You want to boost morale and make sure that people are making progress going forward. A good way to do this is by monitoring with milestones. A subtle but effective form of monitoring is using these milestones.

Create small, interim deliverables to serve as checks-and-balances on the forward movement of a larger task. These milestones can provide a self-regulating form of monitoring, and a basis for progress reports (1:1 sessions).

What happens when there are problems? The key is organization and follow up. Make sure you know where they are in the process and that they know and can track their milestones. In this case, Helen got behind on a key deliverable. To head off the problem we worked together until she was back on track. It was difficult for me personally, because I just wanted to fix it. In the short term, it would have been much faster. However, I needed Helen to maintain her authority over the Asia team - this required her to find the solution and implement it. But how?

The key is developing a structure. If the people you're delegating to are having trouble, help them, train them. Make sure that they understand that if they run into a problem, they can contact you. This extra effort should be short term and the long term benefits are many. They include not only the deliverable at risk, but the entire delegated ownership and who knows - maybe bigger and better projects in the future. With Helen, that was the case. She overcame the short term concern and the project went on to deliver on time. Even better, I was back to just working the US shift!

Performance and deliverables are, ultimately, in your control. Are you ready to make it happen? Go to http://www.delegatesuccess.com and take the readiness quiz.