Delegation
By the end of this hour you will have a way of deciding what to delegate, a four-part test that tells you whether a handoff is actually complete, and a repeatable process for moving a person from waiting to be told to acting independently — without either hovering over them or disappearing on them.
Most managers have had a handoff go badly and concluded one of two things: I picked the wrong person, or I should have just done it myself.
In our experience it is usually neither. The handoff was incomplete in a way that is genuinely hard to see from the outside — and each kind of gap produces its own recognisable mess. Micromanagement, burnout and drift all start as ordinary, well-intentioned delegation that nobody finished.
Who this course is for
The newly promoted manager. You were good at the work, so they gave you people. Now the work you’re best at is the work you’re supposed to stop doing, and handing it over feels slower than doing it yourself. It is, for a while. This course is about the for a while.
The owner who is still the bottleneck. Things queue at your desk. You’ve told people to take more initiative and they haven’t, and you’re not sure whether that’s them or you.
The hat-wearer. A senior LS, senior draftsperson, or project lead carrying the management role alongside client work — maybe as little as 20% of the week. Delegation is how you defend that 20%.
The person on the receiving end. Managers aren’t the only audience. Anyone who has ever been handed a responsibility without the authority, the resources, or the review schedule to carry it will find the language for that here — and a way to ask for what’s missing that isn’t a complaint.
What you will learn
- Why delegation is a process rather than a task
- How to decide what to delegate
- How to choose the right person, and how to read where they sit on the five levels of delegation readiness
- The handoff conversation itself
- The four-step release process
- The barriers that keep good managers doing work that isn’t theirs
What you will have at the end
- A completed Delegation Audit — your own week inventoried, sorted, and three specific pieces of work named with a person beside each
- A completed RARA Delegation Brief for the first handoff you’re going to make, with the follow-up dates already in your calendar
- A readiness level named for each person you manage, on the specific responsibility you’re giving them
- A written answer to the one question that closes Lesson 5: what am I holding onto that isn’t mine, and what is it costing the person who should have it?
Runtime and effort
- Video runtime: ~60 minutes, five lessons
- Total time including pre-course reflection, worksheets, IPS application and quiz: ~2 hours
- Recommended cadence: watch the video in one sitting; do Worksheet 1 with your actual calendar open; do Worksheet 2 within a week, on a real handoff, not a hypothetical one
Prerequisites
None. This is a complete standalone course.