You know (and may frequently have said), “If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.” Pause for a moment to reflect on how severely limiting this perspective actually is. It is one of the key reasons that company growth is limited – not just in revenue, but also in profitability, a thriving culture, and scope of impact. The leader becomes the functional lid on the company or organization he leads. In addition, the rest of the organization tends to flounder as people invest only minimally and fail to take ownership within their designated roles.

How does one break with this habit of having to do or manage everything himself? While it’s not easy for most people, delegation—effective delegation!—can be learned. Taking the time to become skilled in delegation is an investment well worth your time and energy. Although the details of effective delegation vary greatly by personality types and nature of the tasks, there are a few core practices that are helpful in becoming a master of delegation.

Typically, the first step is to achieve clarity about which tasks you should delegate.

Begin by listing all the tasks that you do on a regular basis, whether that is daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. While it doesn’t need to be comprehensive, this list should include the majority of your activities. Then take each of these activities and place them in one of the four quadrants of the chart pictured below. 

Here is a brief description of each quadrant.

• Love/Skilled – these are the tasks that you love doing. They are clearly in your top tier of competence.
• Love / Unskilled – these tasks also are enjoyable for you, but your skills in these fields are not as well developed.
• Dislike / Skilled – these are tasks that you do not enjoy doing, but you are competent at them.
• Dislike / Unskilled = these are tasks on your regular to-do list that you both dislike doing and the results leave a lot to be desired.

Carefully evaluating your list of tasks in this way can move you toward significant clarity as to which tasks you should delegate first. A few helpful points to consider in this decision:

First, the position you hold in the business has certain responsibilities attached to it. If those responsibilities and the primary tasks associated with them are not in the Love/Skilled category, you may actually be in the wrong position and should consider a different role. An optimal career will have you spending at least 60% of your time and energy in the Love/Skilled category and another 30% in the Love/Unskilled and Dislike/Skilled categories. No job lets us do only those things we love. However, tasks that we love but don’t have skills for are areas in which we can get training and coaching to improve our skills. That moves those tasks into the Love/Skilled quadrant. Sometimes we can also grow to enjoy tasks that we’ve previously disliked by developing skills for them or by simply adjusting our attitudes about them.

Second, whether or not you are the owner/CEO of the company, you will also need to take into consideration the health and needs of the organization or company you serve. This often means doing some things that you intensely dislike just because “someone needs to do it,” and you can’t afford to hire additional staff. These should be considered transitional roles. As the company grows or you gain promotions inside the company, fewer of these will be on your task list. Rest assured, it is unlikely any job exists with no possibility of a few “live frogs” to be eaten every day!

Once you have clarity on the tasks that are essentially yours, begin preparing to delegate some tasks in the Dislike/Unskilled quadrant. For every task that you dislike and lack the skills for success, there is someone around who loves doing those things and is competent to boot! Find them! And then begin the process of delegating the task to them.

Here are six steps you can take to delegate effectively, adapted from the book If You Want It Done Right, You Don’t Have to Do It Yourself! by Donna M. Genett, Ph.D.:

Step one is to prepare ahead for effective delegation. Slow down to do this thoughtfully. It is easy to merely start slinging out tasks to others around you with the fervor of a new convert to delegation.  This will leave your team frustrated and reaffirm what you have previously believed: “If it’s going to be done right, I need to do it myself!” Slow down to think through the task carefully and prepare a plan, with the additional steps (below) well defined. Obviously, the more critical the task, the more preparation it will require. Your plan will guide you in passing off the task successfully according to the following steps.

Step two is to define the task to be completed. Be as specific as possible. When you delegate the task, ask the person to whom you are delegating to repeat back the information in order to assure that they understand the task.

Step three is to outline the timeframe for completion of the task. Be as clear as possible on this so that you have shared expectations. If you aren’t clear on the timeline, you are setting the situation up for disappointment and frustration: either yours, theirs, or both. Is this a one-time task? A daily task? A weekly task? Should it be done by Friday noon, or is sometime next week adequate?

Step four is to clearly define the level of authority held by the person to whom you are delegating the task. These three options should get you started:

• Level One – authority to Recommend
• Level Two – authority to Inform and Initiate.
• Level Three – authority to Act.

A lot of confusion occurs in this arena. Critical tasks should often start with assigning only the authority to bring back a recommendation or two for your consideration before they design and act on a plan. Provide great clarity up front, and both of you can be successful in your roles.

Step five is to identify any checkpoints that will be needed to review progress and provide feedback and guidance. If the task is mission critical or extremely time sensitive, be sure these checkpoints are scheduled with great frequency at first.  They can be tapered off as the person demonstrates mastery of the tasks.

Step six is the “after-action review.” I like to use the KISS principle to guide this process. Each party responds to these four key points:

              K – What will we KEEP DOING?

              I – What needs to be IMPROVED?

              S – What should we STOP DOING?

              S – What should we START DOING?

The habit of honestly reviewing how things went will build a dynamic culture of high trust and ultimately high performance. And with that KISS, you’ve completed a successful delegation. Now go after the next one! And keep KISSing those loathsome tasks Goodbye!

While getting rid of the tasks is not the primary purpose of delegation, becoming skilled at doing so effectively allows you to optimize your contribution to the team in those areas where you contribute best. It opens the door for others to have an increased level of responsibility and ownership of company performance and contributes to building a healthy culture where everyone is predominantly working in their sweet spot. Such companies will outperform their peers every day.

This article originally appeared in The Shed Magazine and is online here.