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How to Delegate Effectively
Communication Skills
When you need to delegate a task, good communication
skills are vital—not only tact and sensitivity, but also the 75
ability to specify exactly what you’re asking the other person to do.
Here are some of the most common skills displayed by good com-
municators:
• They make eye contact.
• They treat people with respect.
• They listen as carefully as they speak.
• They organize their thoughts before they speak.
• They avoid using unnecessary jargon or technical terms.
• They don’t assume.
• They encourage questions.
• They ask for feedback.
• They avoid speaking when they’re angry.
Good communication skills are essential to effective delegation,
because miscommunication can result in poor performance or resent-
ment.

Delegating poorly leads almost invariably to disappointment,
frustration, inefficiency, and, often, failure. Then, the manager
may blame the person to whom he or she delegated the task,
causing bad feelings, and not improve the way he or she dele-
gates, so the delegation problems continue, in a downward spi-
ral. Failure may also serve to reinforce all the delegation blocks
listed earlier.
Here are 12 steps for masterful delegation:

1. Identify the task to be delegated. Once you’ve freed your
mind from thoughts that defeat delegation, this step should
become the easiest of all.

2. Trace out, on paper, the assigned project’s flow. If the task
is simple, this should be easy. If it’s complicated, you may
need to deploy a system similar to that described in Chapter
4. As an added help to you, the necessary steps of delegation
are flowcharted in Figure 6-2.
If you assign work to a number of employees (either as part
of a team project or each working on something different), be