Best Practices for Delegating

Delegation is a great way to free up your time while helping others expand their capabilities. But merely handing off a task to someone else often doesn’t accomplish either of those objectives. Proper delegation is an intentional transfer of ownership that requires shifting the workload, authority, and data necessary to complete the task. Here’s how to create a support structure to guide the delegate:

• Define their decision-making authority. The person you assign might be hesitant to act or lack confidence to grab their task with gusto if they don’t know how much authority and autonomy they have. Task execution can affect budgets, project timelines, risk and issue strategies, and more, so you know that decisions will need to be made. Tell your delegate exactly where their decision-making power begins and ends. That way, team members feel empowered and accomplish much more when they know they can decide without waiting for a green light.
• Help them build relationships. Success comes from teamwork, especially cross-functional collaboration. However, a newly delegated team member might not have the relationships needed to succeed on their tasks. By proactively building bridges for them, you give them credibility, increase the probability of good results, and even save time.
• Communicate the task ownership change. Inform stakeholders that a task has been delegated to make sure that it receives the proper priority — as if you, the project manager, were still spearheading it. When people know about the shift in task ownership, they won’t (or are less likely to) question the delegate’s right to drive the task forward and hold others accountable.
• Get them technical support. Make sure the delegate has access to key technical and team leaders. The most meaningful delegations stretch the delegate’s skills, so access to specialized help when needed helps the delegate learn while completing the task successfully. Make a list of specific experts and message them, asking them to prioritize inquiries from your team member.

Have you ever delegated a task to someone else or had a task delegated to you? Any stories or lessons learned from those experiences? I’ll give you an example from my younger years. I took over as project manager for one part of a huge program. Basically, the delegation was “This is Bonnie. She’s going to manage our part of the project.” No knowledge of authority, relationships, or technical support. At least the client knew I was on board. I figured out the authority, relationships, and technical support on my own, but it took several very stressful months.

For more about delegation, check out Dorie Clark’s Delegating Tasks course.

Coming Up

It’s official! I’ve started a complete rework of my popular Project Management Foundations course. It was the #4 most popular LinkedIn Learning course in 2025. And the improvements and enhancements we’ve planned might notch it higher in the rankings.

In this edition, I’m narrowing the focus to project managers’ most important responsibilities, key skills, and effective techniques. It will also emphasize the practical aspects of how everything helps you deliver successful projects in the real world. That will get you going quicker and make your efforts more effective. In addition to videos, the course will include text to provide background info, infographics for high-level perspectives, and AI role play to practice common PM situations. There will be two levels of challenges: easier ones for people newer to project management and others for project managers who want to move up. And the content will also be in line with PMBOK® 8th edition.

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