Delegation: deciding what to hand on and what to keep
Echipa HR 365 · reviewed 2026-09-04 · 5 min read
You do not delegate the tasks you do fastest, but the ones somebody else can do well enough and will do again next time. The difference between those two formulations is why most delegations come back to the manager within three weeks.
The matrix: what you hand on and what you do not
Two questions are enough for any task: how often does it recur, and what does a mistake cost. Their combination decides.
| A mistake costs little | A mistake costs a lot | |
|---|---|---|
| Recurs often | Delegate fully, with a written procedure — this is where the biggest gain is | Delegate in two stages: they do it, you check, until three clean runs |
| Recurs rarely | Delegate as a development exercise, with time to spare | Keep it, but with somebody alongside, so a second person knows |
The handover: five steps
Delegation rarely fails because of the choice of task. It fails at the handover, and the most frequent cause is that it took two minutes in a corridor.
What has to happen, in order
- Manager — states the result, not the method: what has to exist at the end and for whom
- Manager — states what must not happen — the limits, not the steps
- Manager — sets the decision level: what they can decide alone and what they ask about
- The person taking over — restates in their own words what they understood; this is where most misunderstandings surface
- Both — fix a check point midway, not only at the end
The third step is the one most often missing and the one producing the most frustration on both sides. Without it, the person taking over asks too often (and the manager thinks they cannot cope) or too rarely (and the manager learns of a decision they would not have taken).
The four decision levels
- Gather the information and bring it to me. I decide. (For somebody taking it on for the first time.)
- Bring me options with a recommendation. I confirm.
- Decide and tell me before you act. I step in only if needed.
- Decide and act. You tell me in the usual summary.
The level is stated explicitly at handover and rises over time, rather than restarting at zero with every task. Somebody held at level 1 after their fifth clean run learns there is no point thinking; somebody moved straight to level 4 on a risky task learns nobody is there to catch them.
Three mistakes that repeat
| The mistake | Why it happens | Instead |
|---|---|---|
| Delegating and then redoing | The result is not how the manager would have done it | Accept “good enough”; otherwise nobody learns |
| Delegating only to the best person | It is the safest, therefore the fastest | Alternate, or one gets overloaded and the rest stagnate |
| Delegating without time | The task is added on top of everything already there | Say explicitly what comes off their list in exchange |
The third is the most overlooked and the easiest to fix. A task delegated without removing anything else is not delegation, it is addition — and the result is that it gets done badly or comes back.
What you never delegate
The list is short and worth stating explicitly, because a manager who tries to delegate everything ends up, within three months, with no clear role — and the team no longer knows who decides.
- Conversations about somebody’s performance. They are not passed through a third party and not written by email.
- Communicating bad news that affects the team. Delegated, it reads as a lack of courage and is remembered for years.
- The decision about who joins and who leaves the team. You can ask for views, but the decision stays yours.
- Prioritising between contradictory requests from outside the team. That is the actual work of your job.
How you check without smothering
The most frequent complaint from people who take on a delegated task is not that they have too much to do, but that they are checked at unpredictable intervals. An unannounced check feels like distrust, even when the intention is help.
The solution is to fix the moment from the start: one midway check, with a date, plus the rule that anything else happens at their initiative. A manager who respects that can check just as often, but the effect on the person working is completely different — because they know when it is coming and can prepare.
Where to start
Take the list of things you did last week and place them on the two axes above. The quadrant of tasks that recur often and where a mistake costs little is where you delegate your first item, this week.
At the first handover, do step four explicitly: ask the person taking over to restate it in their own words. It takes a minute and catches most of the misunderstandings that would otherwise appear only at delivery.
A month later, check whether the task came back to you. If it did, the cause is almost certainly the unstated decision level — not the capacity of the person who took it on.
Tasks with an owner, a deadline and a midway check point
What you handed over stays visible to both of you, with the decision level written on the task — so who decides what stops being discussed every time.
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