Effective Delegation Without Stress

Management & LeadershipWell-being & BalanceManagers≈ 20 min

Key skill: Situational management & delegation

Summary

Stop taking back your team members' work: recognize “reverse delegation” and identify, among five internal patterns, the one that's holding your delegation back, so you can hand off tasks without overloading yourself.

Target audience

Managers looking to acquire the fundamentals of management.

Learning objectives

Understand the mechanisms of “reverse delegation”
Identify and hand back the “monkeys” you've taken on by agreeing to do your team members' work for them
Identify what's holding you back from delegating through a questionnaire
Overcome your obstacles to delegation with the right strategies

Module outline

StorytellingA story illustrating how a team member can overload their manager with responsibilities
ArticlesThe 10 main obstacles to delegation · Self-assessment of drivers (transactional analysis questionnaire) · The 5 drivers and their antidotes for delegation
Expert videoHow to identify and overcome the obstacles that make delegation difficult
AnchoringQuiz and True/False questions to dig deeper into the topic and anchor what you've learned
Memo cardDownloadable coaching memo card: the key points from the expert video
CommitmentConcrete examples to help you define your own commitment

Models & methods

The monkey metaphor (reverse delegation); the five transactional analysis drivers and their antidotes; self-assessment of blockers.

Research-based

The monkey concept comes from a 1974 Harvard Business Review article by Oncken and Wass; the five drivers were formalized by Taibi Kahler (transactional analysis).