Effective delegation is one of the most valuable skills you can master. It reduces your workload and develops employee skills. Delegating prepares employees who work for you to be able to handle your responsibilities and simultaneously allows you to advance to other career opportunities within your organization.

Delegation is also often one of the hardest skills for a manager to master. However, the skill can be learned. This workshop will explore many of the facets of delegation, including when to delegate and who to delegate to. We will also go through the delegation process step by step to see where the pitfalls lie and what we can do about getting around them.

At the end of this workshop, participants should be able to:

• Clearly identify how delegation fits into their job and how it can make them more successful.
• Identify different ways of delegating tasks.
• Use an eight-step process for effective delegation.
• Give better instructions for better delegation results.
• Ask better questions and listen more effectively.
• Recognize common delegation pitfalls and how to avoid them.
• Test their delegation skills.

Introduction and Course Overview

You will spend the first part of the day getting to know participants and discussing what will take place during the workshop. Students will also have an opportunity to identify their personal learning objectives.

Why Delegate?

To begin, participants will explore the advantages and disadvantages of delegation in small groups.

What is Delegation?

Next, participants will learn about the four basic steps to delegation and the different degrees of delegation.

Pre-Assignment Review

As a pre-assignment, participants were asked to complete a case study. During this session, you will discuss the answers.

Picking the Right Person

This session will give participants four tools to help them determine who to choose for what task.

The Delegation Meeting

Next, we will explore an eight-step process that participants can follow to ensure they cover all the bases when delegating.

Levels of Authority

This session will look at the four levels of authority you can give when delegating.

Giving Instructions

Participants will learn how to give better instructions, and then they will practice giving and receiving instructions through a group activity.

Communication Skills

One way to help employees accept your delegation is through effective communications. This session will look at three components of communication skills: listening, asking questions, and probing.

Monitoring Delegation

Next, participants will explore five ways of monitoring delegation.

Practicing Delegation

During this session, participants will work in small groups to complete a five part case study to give them hands-on practice with the skills learned so far today.

Giving Feedback

This session will give participants some tips on giving feedback. Then, participants will work on several different case studies to apply these tips.

Becoming a Good Delegator

To wrap up the day, we will look at the characteristics of a good delegator and some ways to evaluate your skills.

Workshop Wrap-Up

At the end of the day, participants will have an opportunity to ask questions and fill out an action plan.