The 10 Best Tools and Tips for Delegating Tasks Efficiently

Delegating tasks effectively means sharing workloads and maximizing resources. Here are some tips and tools for effective task delegation.

Task delegation is an essential process in the modern workflow that ensures the investment of efforts from all the team members. As a team leader or manager, it’s impossible to take all the responsibilities on your shoulders.

By delegating the tasks to the team members, you can reduce your workload besides empowering your team for professional development. Try the following task delegation tips to maintain a healthy relationship among your teammates.

1. Find an Appropriate Resource

When you decide to delegate a task, the first thing is to choose the most suitable person for the job. Don’t just presume that someone can complete a task. Instead, use empirical evidence to select the right one. Find out those who possess the required knowledge and skill to complete the work you are about to delegate.

Before delegation, you can use the task managing app Teamwork to check out the bandwidth of the intended resource. Thus, you won’t end up assigning the task to the teammate who already has too much on their plate.

2. Discuss Delegating Needs With the Team

Before task delegation, you need to discuss the reasons behind it with the selected person. Also, clearly narrate what you expect from them. Sometimes, the assignee may not be aware of their responsibilities.

If they're unaware of how to contribute to the project positively, they might become disinterested and disengaged. If you are handing over the task to a remote worker, you can use Google Jamboard for a live meeting. It'll help make them understand things visually.

3. Mitigate the Chance of Reverse Delegation

Some team members may try to give a delegated task back to you. Make an effort to find out why. As long as they have the required skillset and sufficient time, learn to say no in such cases. Also, encourage them to become confident about their capabilities.

However, you can minimize the chance of reverse delegation by performing a SWOT analysis of the intended persons. You can use the Creately app for this purpose and find out who has the least chance of assigning the task back to you.

4. Share a Comprehensive Outline

The assignee should not feel overwhelmed when you delegate a project or task to them. Create an outline of the task so that they know how to work it out without much stress. While outlining, add what you want them to accomplish and by what time. Remember to set a realistic headline to avoid any unnecessary pressure.

You might use any task management app like Asana to make an outline of the project and include them with task dependencies and due dates.

5. Give Access to Necessary Training & Resources

As the team leader or manager, it is your responsibility to ensure the person you’re delegating tasks to has all the necessary training and resources. For example, if the delegated task needs using a specific tool, but the assignee never used it before, you need to arrange for a hands-on training session for them.

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Make all the required resources available to them by providing access to a knowledge base. If you don't have a knowledge base, you can put all the resources in a Google Drive folder and share it with the assignee.

6. Offer Authority Over the Delegated Task

If you assign someone with a task without authority, that's not going to be an ideal situation for the assignee. Empower them with authority to make decisions and ask questions. Only then can you expect the task to be finished within the deadline and without any flaws.

If they're working on a Word document or spreadsheet, you can make them the owner of those files. In the case of projects, you can make them assignees to that task in a project management tool like Wrike. Thus, they have a sense of authority, and other team members will know that as well.

7. Use a Dedicated Communication Channel

Delegating a task does not mean fire and forget. You should be available to the person you delegated the task to for any questions and queries. They may also need your advice if this is the first time they are administering any major or complex project.

You can use Slack to establish a dedicated real-time channel for communication. Create a separate channel in that app so that the assignee can seamlessly get in touch with you and share files if necessary for instant feedback.

8. Be Prepared to Handle Unforeseen Issues

You need to be ready to handle any unexpected problem during a project, even if you have delegated the task to someone else. When the assignees don't have sufficient expertise and experience level, you need to intervene for successful task completion.

You can ask them to record the issue using any screen recording app like Ezvid and send it to you. Thus, you can understand the problem better and offer a suitable solution. Else, they can write down the issues in detail using any note-taking app.

9. Review Progress and Exchange Feedback

Post delegation, don’t forget to check the task progress to know if it's going at the optimum pace. But avoid micromanaging, as it’ll demotivate the assignee. Create a culture of follow-up and mutual feedback for effective delegation.

Any task management tool like nTask will allow you to track the progress of each task and sub-task you have delegated to someone else. You can also provide prompt feedback using the comment feature. Thus, the assignee will get all the feedback in one place.

10. Reward and Recognize Success

When you delegate a task to a coworker, be ready to reward them and appreciate their efforts. Don’t take jobs well done for granted. Praise and acknowledge them openly in team meetings.

Recognition of hard work through compliments and perks boosts employee morale. Besides, it has a positive impact on their productivity.

After completion of the delegated tasks and projects, you can arrange for a celebratory session on Zoom. There, you can mention the teammates who successfully executed the assigned works and helped your organization reach milestones.

Delegate Tasks for Better Task Management

A successful project includes the contribution of all the members. Now that you know the best methods to delegate tasks, you can help your team members gain new knowledge and skill.

It will also prevent one person from feeling overwhelmed and complete the project within the deadline. The above-mentioned task delegation strategies, along with productivity tools, can help your team achieve their productivity goals.

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