How IT Team Leads and Tech Leads Can Master the Art of Delegation And Optimise Their Working Hours

ITExpert team12.12.2023

According to The Alternative Board (TAB), entrepreneurs spend 68.1% of their time on routine tasks, so they often don’t have enough time to set long-term goals, do strategic planning, etc.

At the same time, according to a study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity, executives from 46% of companies have problems with delegation. This hinders business development and leads to overtime. Most business owners spend more than 50 hours a week at work, which can lead to burnout.

A good leader doesn’t put everything on his shoulders, but one who can assemble a strong team, improve delegation skills, and correctly distribute responsibilities. Delegation helps increase team engagement, and leaders who excel at it usually bring their companies 33% more revenue than others.

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Expert business coach Eva Vysotska has helped us understand what delegation is, what the goals of delegation are, how to develop delegation skills, and how to delegate a task effectively to improve performance. She’s built two businesses with over 7,000 clients and graduated from the Institute of Coaching Studies (Ireland). Delegation is one of the most common requests addressed to Eva.

Our plan:

What is delegation and why is it important to master the art of delegation

It often happens that managers work non-stop and are in the office almost around the clock: they control everything and help everyone, doing things that they could easily entrust to others.

At the same time, if they suddenly take sick leave, a day off, or goes on vacation, everything in the company falls into disarray — employees do not know how to make decisions on their own, take responsibility, and solve problems. After returning, they again have to work in emergency mode. Or the manager chronically lacks time for strategic tasks and therefore the business does not scale.

Such situations can be avoided if you know how to delegate effectively — this means transferring part of the work to another person.

Here is a simple example of task delegation in IT. If you want to organize an IT infrastructure for a business, you can rent a server yourself, configure it, install the necessary software, and administer it.

This is cost-effective if you have a small budget or have experience and enough time. When you need to do everything quickly and professionally, it is effective to delegate this area to outsourcing, to a freelancer, or to hire an appropriate full-time specialist. This frees up time that can be spent on other, more important things.

The main motive for delegating tasks is to maximize personal productivity. Effective delegation helps prevent overwork and burnout. Plus, you show your team that you trust them with important work.

How to decide which tasks to delegate

The leader should deal with strategy, planning, analytics, hiring, and employee motivation. Other tasks should be delegated. Divide your tasks into four groups:

tasks that only you can complete by yourself;
tasks that employees can also handle if you teach them;
tasks that most employees can handle, or those that require special expertise;
tasks that others have to do, but you enjoy devoting time to.

The last two groups of tasks can be easily delegated. Among them are the following ones:

😴 Daily routine tasks

These include: sending letters and documents, adding information to a simple report, maintaining technical documentation, registering for an IT conference, purchasing tickets, booking hotels (if the conference is held abroad), communicating with clients (some of the work can be delegated to account managers and a support team), and so on.

📑 Preparation and preliminary work

These include: collecting information, drawing up guidelines and instructions, preparing a presentation, etc. Even if the task is important, do not be afraid to delegate it. You can always check the work and, if necessary, correct the result.

🤯 Highly specialized tasks that are not your strength

These include: accounting, filling the site with content, developing the design of a PDF presentation, or case study, etc. Qualified specialists will cope with such work faster and cheaper (if you take into account the cost of the manager’s time).

🧑🏻‍💻 Other tasks

These include: separate matters less related to core responsibilities. For instance, mentoring, buying new furniture/equipment for the office, or organizing a corporate event. It may be pleasant to puzzle over them, but it’s worth it to delegate such tasks without compromise.

The situation is more complicated with the second group of tasks — those that you perform better than others (however, some employees can also cope with them after the proper onboarding).

You need to create guides, and checklists, as well as collect other useful materials. In that case, employees will be able to communicate without problems with conflicting clients, create orders for suppliers, and solve other important tasks.

We’ve figured out what tasks can be delegated. What should you keep for yourself? Your to-do list should contain those tasks that only you can complete, namely:

Tasks with a high degree of financial risk.

Urgent matters for which there is no time to train and check the results of other specialists.

Strategic planning. It is the manager who should understand what result the team must show after a certain period, and make sure that they reach it.

Conflict resolution. If disagreements arise, the manager should sort them out and ensure that personal relationships do not interfere with effective work.

Working with confidential information. If you are using sensitive information (such as a client’s financial statements) to work on a project, the less people have access to it, the better.

Choosing the key indicators (KPIs). A manager or lead knows best which metrics are more important for the success of the project. Therefore, they should set them and monitor the performance of their colleagues themselves.

Two strategies to help determine tasks to delegate

To avoid delegating important work that requires your direct participation, you can make a list of the tasks you complete during the week and distribute them using one of these methods.

The Eisenhower Matrix

This is a table with four categories where you should enter your affairs:

urgent;
not urgent;
important;
not important.

The manager should complete all important tasks (both urgent and not-so-urgent) independently. Unimportant and urgent tasks are better to delegate. As for non-urgent and unimportant ones, they can either be completely crossed out or used to test the employee’s skills.

The 80-20 Rule (aka Pareto Principle)

According to the Pareto principle, 80% of outcomes (or outputs) result from 20% of all causes (or inputs) for any given event. Your task is to identify them and keep them for yourself. How to do it? Calculate what brings more profit to the company. This could be meetings with important clients or developing a strategy.

Who can you delegate tasks to and grow your business

There may be such options:

PMs (Project Managers) or Assistants: If you have a large project or several projects, sometimes it becomes necessary to hire an assistant.

Team members with relevant skills: For example, if someone on the team is good at technical documentation, you can delegate this task to them.

Agencies and outsourcing companies: You can hire an agency (for example, marketing or IT recruiting) for some tasks, especially those that do not require deep immersion in the project, are temporary, or require external reinforcement.

Why are we afraid of delegating and what can we do about it

Before you figure out how to delegate correctly, it’s important to understand why people often avoid it:

The “it’s easier to do it yourself” principle

It may seem to you that it is easier to complete the task yourself than to assign roles, draw up instructions, and maintain control. This principle often stops progress.

Fear of new approaches and solutions

Are you used to doing everything the old-fashioned way and are you afraid of changes in completing tasks? Doing something differently ≠ wrong.

Fear of losing power and authority

Managers are often afraid of losing power and influence within the team due to delegation. However, the ability to trust your employees, on the contrary, will increase your authority in the team.

Negative previous experience

You may have tried to delegate before, but your experience was unsuccessful. Now, you are in every possible way avoiding the problem of delegation again. However, to develop, you need to work on mistakes, not close yourself off to opportunities, continue to interact with colleagues, and trust them.

Fear of sabotage

Resistance in the delegation process is possible if the leader does not have sufficient authority in the team. If you see that the completion of tasks is under threat of sabotage, you must first work with specialists and try to find an effective approach.

“One of the most common reasons why people are afraid to delegate tasks is a constant fear that someone will screw it up, and that it is you who will be responsible for the failure. You just need to realize that other people may not do something as well as you, and lower your expectations a little bit. In addition, with detailed feedback, people will learn and do better the next time.

The “No one knows better than me” principle is another reason. But there is an antidote to it called the correct technical specification. No one will read your thoughts or feel your vision. Write down all the details thinking about how you would explain the task to a child.

There is a very cool practice before delegation — to write “how I do what I do.” For instance, you need to transfer management to the project manager. Write down how you manage this, what logic you used to build databases in Notion, etc. With this approach, the technical specification will be just cool.” Eva Vysotska

9 Steps and Rules to Successful Delegation

What are the key delegation steps? The delegation process can be divided into four large stages: formulating the task, selecting a performer, drawing up technical specifications, and checking the results. A more detailed algorithm after defining the task looks like this:

Select the individual or team

According to American entrepreneur and multimillionaire Andrew Carnegie, “The secret to success lies not in doing your own work, but in recognizing the right person to do it.” Before assigning a task to someone, it is worth asking yourself:

Will a person cope with it? Does he/she have enough time, will this interfere with his/her other responsibilities?

For instance, you need to organize team building for the entire team, but there is no employee for this. However, there is a specialist strong in communications who has previously shown an interest in event organization and HR management. You can offer this task to him/her. Of course, there are boring tasks that no one likes. However, it wouldn’t hurt to evaluate the team and think about who might be interested in and benefit from your assignment.

Do the employees have enough knowledge and skills? Perhaps you will have to bring them up to date for so long that it is easier to do it yourself or find another specialist.

Will the task help the employee improve some skills and gain experience?

Tip: responsibilities should only be delegated to direct subordinates. Maintaining a hierarchy will help maintain a healthy work environment in the company.

Avoid delegating tasks that violate the specialists’ job description or that do not correspond to their competence.

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Explain the task and make sure the employee can handle it

Find out whether the specialist understands the essence of the task, when he/she is ready to take it on, and how much time he/she will need to complete it.

Describe the result you expect and set a deadline

It is optimal to express the result in as much detail as possible, in numbers, using a set of characteristics. For example, you can use the SMART method: goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant (correspond to your goal), and Time-bound (limited in time). Specialists will be more motivated if they understand what needs to be done and why.

When setting a deadline, leave a margin of several days or hours (depending on the size of the task) so that if necessary, you have time to eliminate shortcomings.

Agree on how the task will be completed and check the resource availability

If the method of execution is important, tell the person exactly how to act. If not, leave the opportunity to choose their unique strategy. Provide the employee with all the resources (information, financial, equipment, software, etc.) necessary for work.

Set dates for interim reports

Agree on dates for checks and feedback. This way you can keep your finger on the pulse and identify the need for help if something goes wrong.

Ensure timely communication and a comfortable ambiance

Let the specialist know that you are always there to help, advise, or answer any questions. Explain that if for some reason the employee fails to complete the task or misses the deadline, you will come up with the solution together.

Check the result

After execution, check the result. If employees completes the task, pass it on to them on an ongoing basis.

Provide feedback and listen to the employee’s opinion

Share with employees how you evaluate their work: what you liked, what can be improved, and what to pay attention to in the future. Do not devalue or criticize a specialist without reason. Be sure to start with praise and gently share what they still need to work on then.

If the task was new and complex, ask the employees how they worked on it, what was easy and what wasn’t, what was interesting, and what they didn’t like at all. Find out how they evaluate the results that they would like to improve, and how they plan to do this.

Thank the employee for completing the task

You can do this not only face to face but also publicly, especially if the task is complex. For instance, praise the person in front of the whole team.

“What is also important:

#1 Recognize that the other person can also do well or even better than you. Sometimes you need to “take off the crown”, to get rid of the idea that you’re the most important and irreplaceable employee.

#2 Understand that people have the right to make mistakes — you can make mistakes, too.

#3 Delegate tasks, but do not take unnecessary responsibility for the work of others. The responsibility lies with the one who fulfills it.

This often happens in companies when instead of letting go and starting to delegate effectively, the managers go from department to department, give countless tips to colleagues, engage in micromanagement, and drive themselves into an even greater overload than before delegation.

This is normal at the initial stage, but globally, being a kind of ‘mother hen’ who runs around everywhere and tries to control every step of a delegation isn’t normal.” Eva Vysotska

❗️Don’t redo tasks after others. If a colleague doesn’t cope with it the first time, explain the mistakes and give time to correct them. Do not do instead of them — this way, the specialist won’t learn anything and may lose his motivation.

Also, do not take credit for the achievements of other specialists. Instead of saying “I organized a team building activity” or “I prepared a report,” it is better to emphasize that you prepared everything together and your colleague was very helpful. People appreciate it when their achievements are recognized. It makes them more involved in their work and loyal to the company.

⚽️ Trust your team, share responsibilities, and relax (well, at least sometimes do). The coach doesn’t play with the players on the field, but observes from the sidelines and teaches. Be a successful coach, not a tired goalkeeper, defender, and striker rolled into one.