Consider the possibility that, although challenging, effectively delegating across continents is essentially no different to delegating across cubicles. After all, if you have to continuously watch, monitor, and correct your staff’s work, whether they are around the room or around the world, then you haven’t really delegated.

Let’s take a quick look at the foundational steps of delegation and the impact that distance has on them. Remember, distance doesn’t interfere with delegation so much as it exacerbates any areas where we could improve our delegation skills.

First off, why delegate at all? The basic reason for delegating in any circumstance is to get work done through others. This enables you to divide up the workload, which can increase flexibility, speed, and effectiveness. It enables you to gain from the experience, knowledge, and skills of others and create even better outcomes that you might have on your own. Delegating allows you to get the everyday work done while freeing you up to focus on the big picture. It allows you to give your staff the experience they need to grow and develop and become even more skilled and adaptable. If you aren’t delegating you can only get done what you personally can get done. If you are delegating poorly, you are probably getting less done than you could do alone. But, if you are delegating effectively then the sum of the whole team is greater than its parts. With successful delegation 1 + 1 can equal a lot more than 2.

So how do we begin?

1. Identify the right person

Andrew Carnegie once advised, “The secret of success is not in doing your own work, but in recognising the right man to do it.” Just who is the right person for the situation? Does the situation call for someone with specific expertise or is this an opportunity to develop someone’s skills? Is the person who is most available the right person for the job or do workloads need to be shifted?

2. Create clearly specified outcomes

This step is arguably the most important to successful delegation, yet is probably the most overlooked. Until you are very clear in your own mind about the desired results you want, you will never be able to communicate (and delegate) them to anyone else. Sure, there’s a slim chance that the other person will guess correctly or produce your target outcome by happenstance, but if you assign vague, conflicting, or moving targets failure is far more likely. Chances are, they will flounder, lock up and not do anything, take negative action, become very stressed from uncertainty and fear of failing, or take a shotgun approach and just take a whole bunch of different actions with the hope that one of them is correct. Or they might diligently spend time and energy creating the results they thought you wanted, only to have them turn out to be completely different from what you had in mind.

How do you develop clearer outcomes? First off, make sure that they are measurable. If you can quantify the outcome, then there is a target – a finish line – and people know when they have accomplished it. For example, “Improve quality” is hard to quantify, but “Create a process to reduce mis-shipped products by 50%” is a little more measurable and understandable. Also, your desired results should be written down. Documenting the delegated tasks:

1. Ensures there is common understanding and clear expectations
2. Provides a point of reference you can both go back to and
3. Forces you to be clear on what you want.

Be very clear on what you want. When people know what is expected of them they can take confident action. If the target is vague or moving, people often feel that success is unlikely and who is going to put bold, confident effort into something that they think will fail?

Bear in mind that the other person needs to understand both what is expected and why it’s important. Understanding the “why” enables them to see the big picture and understand the impact that alternative choices will have so that they make judgment calls and decisions when things don’t go as perfectly as expected.

A simple example of this: say you ask your assistant to go purchase a hammer. In your mind this is straightforward. But when the assistant gets to the store he discovers that there are many types of hammers (e.g. ball peen, claw, framing, sledge, etc.) and each type is sold in various weights, handle styles and price ranges. Understanding the “why” for the hammer is critical: if you are going to frame your new garage you will need a very specific type and weight hammer. If you want to hang pictures you’ll need a different type and if you just want to break open walnuts then almost any one will do. These choices are just for a hammer; now imagine how much more complicated things might be for your assistant if you were delegating the task of getting new computers for the office…

3. Delegate the outcome, not the process

This step trips up a lot of managers. They know exactly how they would do the job so they assign each painfully detailed step. Although there are some situations where very specific procedures must be followed because of ethics, laws, regulations, or policies it is a rare situation where there is only one way to get the desired result. Insisting on your way is stifling, demotivating, and sends the message that you do not trust them. Plus, what works well for you may not be the best method for them. Delegating and insisting on a specific process prevents them from thinking, learning, and developing skills. However, when you focus on the results rather than the process you are:

1. Tapping into the other person’s knowledge, experience and creativity. They may know or find a better way to do things.
2. Creating motivation and buy-in. When they have to do it your way they may be discouraged and held back by every stumbling block. But, if it’s their ideas, they will be committed to making them work.
3. Improving results. People rarely do mediocre work when they have ownership of the process.
4. Increasing their skills and abilities.
5. Freeing up your time and brainpower. Focusing on the process pretty much ensures that you’ll increase your workload exponentially. It takes a lot of time and effort to micromanage and if you insist on your process you’ll end up doing all the thinking. Every time there is a hang up all progress will stop until you come up with a solution. Also, it is nearly impossible to micromanage across distance so if you can’t trust them with the process, delegation to remote locations and people will not work.

4. Delegate appropriate authority

The quickest, surest way to set someone up for failure is to assign them a job, but not provide the authority to get it done. If they need to get approval every step of the way then you haven’t truly delegated. They won’t learn, they will not have motivation or ownership, and you will spend so much time reviewing and approving that you might as well have done the job yourself.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should provide free license to do whatever they want. But, they need to have an appropriate level of authority as it applies to the task and have a clear understanding of where they do have authority and where they definitely do need your approval. If you are very clear about the target outcomes you will both likely have a good initial understanding of the authority they will need to get the job done.

5. Agree on milestones and accountability

“Hold on,” you might be saying. “Delegating doesn’t absolve me of the overall responsibility for results. So, if I am still on the line, why don’t I have any say in how things are done?”

Please don’t misunderstand; none of this is to say that there shouldn’t be accountability. In fact, accountability is particularly important as you can’t just “drop by” their desk to check up on progress when they are a hemisphere away.

By creating mutually predetermined milestones you know in advance when you will be updated so you don’t have to continually “check in” with them.  For them, agreed upon milestones means that they know what they are expected to do by when. The milestones enable you to verify that they are on track and making continual progress without making them feel as though you are always looking over their shoulder, trying to find mistakes.

6. Verify mutual understanding

The delegation process should be a discussion, not a monologue. Just because you’ve told the other person something doesn’t mean that they were listening, understood everything or even understood anything. As with any communication it’s critical to check in with the other person and make sure they are on the same page. However, asking, “Does this make sense?” or “Do you understand?” is actually of very little use. They may be confused but don’t want to admit ignorance. Or worse, they may think they understood 100% but actually misunderstood. A simple, yet more productive approach is to ask them to explain back to you what you just assigned. Verbalising their understanding will highlight where they are unclear or off base and give you the opportunity to clarify or correct before they begin.

7. Maintain ongoing feedback and support

So, you’ve set aside specific time to touch base and get updates on progress. Chances are things will come up between your scheduled meetings. Changes to the project, unexpected setbacks, outside factors, new requirements, and unforeseen conflicts can all require your involvement. But wait a minute; didn’t you delegate this job for a reason? How can you provide the feedback and support they need to do the job without you getting stuck doing the job yourself?

The number one guideline is: be accessible, but make them do the thinking. Even if the issue requires your authority or approval. This allows them to think, learn and grow and enables you to provide a safety net and quality checks. When a problem comes up, you simply require that they provide you with the specific issue(s), the pros and cons of the most viable options, and their recommendation. In fact, by thinking through the problem before approaching you, they may discover the solution on their own.

With any delegation, but especially across great distances, their success is directly related to the support they receive from you. Because you’ve delegated the “what needs to be done” but not the “how to do it” and because this is most likely going to be a learning and growth experience for them, it is vital that they feel that they have your backing and are being set up for success. Without this support, problems will be hidden, time will be spent on blame and finger pointing, people won’t give their full effort and they won’t volunteer thoughts or concerns and you will miss out on their ideas, perspectives and commitment.

Some ideas for setting them up for success:

• Focus on solutions, not blame. Delegation is a learning experience and people learn through trial and error. Mistakes will happen. Problems will come up – guaranteed! Even the best laid and most perfectly executed plans can be stymied by outside factors. Scapegoats and witch-hunts invariably create more problems than they solve, leave the initial problem unresolved and prevent anyone from learning from the mistake. If the other person feels that they will be blamed and punished every time they make a mistake, they will:

1. Stop taking action (the logic being that if they don’t do anything, it’s impossible to do it incorrectly)
2. Spend enormous time and energy covering their tails (instead of actually getting work done) and/or
3. Stop telling you when mistakes happen (would you rather deal with an error immediately or after it’s been hidden and festered until is explodes?).

Understanding the problem is only useful to the extent that you can prevent it from happening again. Instead of micro analysing what went wrong, how much more useful would it be to choose to spend your limited time helping the other person develop a solution and move forward?

• Don’t solve the problem for them. While your input and experience can be critical and useful, when you solve the problems it prevents them from learning and makes them dependent on you. Seek their ideas and help them come to a solution that works.
  
• Reward and encourage all communication, good news and bad. Do NOT shoot the messenger unless you only want to receive limited, distorted, inaccurate, and useless information.
  
• Give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they had a valid reason for doing what they did. They may not have made the decisions or taken the actions that you would have, but they probably had good reason. Hindsight is 20/20 vision, but you weren’t there. You didn’t have the knowledge and information that they had then. Take the time to understand the reasons behind what they did. You may even discover that if you’d had all the information they did, you would have made similar choices. If you would have done things differently, then this is an opportunity for coaching and mentoring, not blaming and punishing.
  
• Remember, they may not do it like you would. So what? The point of delegation is to get work done and develop self-sufficient people. There are many, many ways to do any task. Assuming they maintain ethical, moral, legal, and company standards the important thing is the results. You could insist on things being done exactly your way, but why? The only thing it accomplishes is sending the message that your staff should not think or take action (unless they want to be punished). Few things are as demoralising and demotivating as being criticised about things that do not matter to the outcome.
  
• Explain why you’ve made the decisions that you have. This enables them to learn from your experience and keeps your decisions from appearing random and arbitrary.

8. Evaluate results

Because you’ve already established the target results and have had regular contact and milestones throughout the process this should be pretty straightforward.

Debrief at each milestone and the conclusion, asking questions to boost their learning and future results. Some great questions include:

• What went well?
• What did you learn?
• Knowing what you now know, what would you do differently?
• What advice would you give to someone else who was about to take on a project like this?
• What are the next steps?
• What are your ideas to move forward?
• What support / resources will you need to reach the next milestone?
• What possible stumbling blocks do you anticipate and how will you handle them?

Conclusion

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