From small to big projects, nobody operates individually anymore and we can accomplish a lot more when we have help. In this scenario, good delegation skills becomes crucial.

However, most people delegate very poorly. Delegation is not give people the work we don’t want to do or the work that we don’t have time to do and afterwards micro-manage it. This is just a disaster.

Delegation is grant authority with responsibility. Good delegation is based on trust, is giving the resources, the budget, the time and whatever else may be necessary to get the work done. Delegation is give them the whole package.

With delegation we can challenge people. People are usually yearning for the opportunity to do more, they want to be challenged, they want to prove to us and themselves they can be more capable, so let them.

Don’t give people how we want them do it, tell them what we want them to do. Give them objectives, not procedures. Let them surprise us with a way of solving a problem we would never have imagined. Sometimes those solutions are mind-blowing. Good or bad. But they’re really much more fun than just having them do it the way we would have done it. Our job should be to have people smarter than us, and they will come up with stuff we would never have thought of.

Summary: treat the people well. If you are fortunate enough to have people that report to you, treat them with dignity and respect. Good delegation skills is to care about the people and their professional development; Delegation is to make people grow.