Establish Trust Before Delegating Big Decisions

January 16, 2017

Delegating tasks to employees and then trusting them to make decisions for themselves is often far harder than it sounds. To be able to delegate decisions, you need to do two things: establish trust and accept failure as a possibility. You can build trust by interacting one-on-one with your employees, observing them doing their daily jobs, and providing feedback. That way, when it comes time to delegate a task, you’ll better understand your employees’ strengths and weaknesses and know who is ready to take on more responsibility and who needs more experience before tackling big decisions. You also have to recognize that failure is a natural part of delegation. Without it, you won’t get your team to innovate and take risks. If you accept that failure is a possibility when trying something new, you’ll have a much easier time giving up some of your decision-making responsibilities to others.

Adapted from “Superbosses Aren’t Afraid to Delegate Their Biggest Decisions,” by Sydney Finkelstein