Nearly 59% of the project managers in the United States run between two to five different projects at a time. If you have a lot on your plate as a project manager, relying more on your team to get tasks completed is crucial. The last thing you want is to get overworked due to the problems this can cause. An effective project manager realizes how important delegation is when trying to accomplish the objectives in their project outline.
If you have a team of capable and hard-working employees, then you have no reason not to delegate certain tasks to them. Read below for some great tips on how to make delegating tasks to team members easy and effective.
Start With Realistic Expectations
Some project managers let the excitement of taking on a new endeavor get in the way of practicality. As you start to lay out the goals of a particular project and break down the tasks that need to be completed to meet these goals, you need to be realistic. Setting unrealistic deadlines or asking too much of one particular team member can lead to lots of important tasks falling through the cracks.
You need to make sure that the scope of your project is aligned with your timeline and your team’s bandwidth. If you want to manage expectations properly, then you need to do things like:
- Provide team members with a discovery period before work begins
- Set flexible milestones
- Anticipate conflicts and resolutions to address them
- Make checklists for team members
By doing these things, you can keep a realistic view of the workload your team can handle. Incorporating these elements into the project planning process is also a great way to make completing tasks you assign to team members easier.
Be Specific About What Needs to Be Done
Being too vague when delegating tasks to your team members is a mistake that can come back to haunt you. If your team doesn’t ask clarifying questions after receiving a new assignment, they will be unsure about what is expected of them. Rather than allowing uncertainty to creep into the workplace, you need to work on being specific about what a team member needs to do to complete a particular task.
Effective delegation begins during the project planning phase. As you start to develop a project outline, you need to document what certain tasks will accomplish. You also need to establish a start date for these tasks and institute a due date. By providing team members with an in-depth project plan, you can hold them accountable when the tasks assigned to them aren’t completed on time.
Put Trust In Your Team
Good communication is a key component of completing a project on time. Some project managers make the mistake of micromanaging team members after delegating certain tasks to them. Not only is this annoying for your team members, it also gives them the impression you don’t trust them. This is why you need to take a step back and trust your team to rise to the occasion.
By using the tips in this article, you can successfully delegate tasks to your team members.