What are the benefits of learning how to delegate tasks effectively? What are the different types of delegation?
Getting rid of unproductive tasks can free up your time and energy for meaningful work. However, it’s most likely impossible to eliminate every activity outside of your Productivity Zone, which is why Michael Hyatt recommends another strategy in Free to Focus: letting other people handle tasks for you.
Keep reading if you want to start delegating tasks to other people so you can take the pressure off yourself.
Give Your Tasks to Other People
By delegating tasks effectively to others, you can dramatically improve your productivity and your satisfaction. While this approach is more difficult at first than handling tasks yourself—you need to find the right people, negotiate their compensation, and train them—the long-term benefits will far outweigh that initial investment of time and effort.
(Shortform note: Hyatt writes as though delegation is a simple matter, but for those who don’t have a lot of money, compensating others for such work isn’t feasible. One possible solution is skill bartering: Instead of paying people with money, arrange a fair trade where they help you with a task they’re good at, and in return, you help them with a task that you’re good at. For example, perhaps someone you know would be willing to help you make a financial plan in exchange for your help with a marketing campaign.)
Let’s review various types of delegation, then share Hyatt’s advice on choosing which tasks to delegate.
Choosing the Right Kind of Delegation
Hyatt notes that there are various types of delegation, each of which provide different levels of autonomy and responsibility. It’s thus important to clarify exactly what you expect the other person to do and how much freedom they have in choosing how to do it. This will help prevent confusion and frustration for both parties.
The most basic type of delegation is for when you simply want a specific task done. The person you assign the task to will have minimal autonomy, but also minimal responsibility—all they have to do is follow your instructions.
(Shortform note: Free to Focus was published in 2019—since then, many AI tools have emerged as efficient ways to handle simple but time-consuming tasks that you might have previously used this type of delegation for. For example, ChatGPT and Claude are useful for writing first drafts of emails or other documents, Otter has a variety of tools for transcription and note-taking during meetings, and Jasper can create marketing materials like blog posts or social media content.)
Hyatt’s next type of delegation is for when you want someone to look into a particular subject or problem. For instance, you might need information about what movies are currently popular with a certain demographic or what software could help with a particularly tedious part of your workflow.
This kind of delegation requires you to provide a bit more autonomy. Step-by-step instructions won’t always work for conducting research, so your worker needs to have enough freedom to explore the issue as they see fit.
After completing their research, they should report their findings, and offer recommendations if asked. However, at this level of delegation, all final decisions are up to you.
(Shortform note: Another benefit of delegation, particularly when you allow your workers a degree of autonomy, is that it encourages them to actively seek feedback. This is because, by giving them autonomy, you’re showing trust and confidence in their abilities, and they’ll naturally want to live up to your expectations. Furthermore, employees who ask for feedback of their own volition—and use that feedback to improve their job performance—will make you even more productive in the long run, because you won’t need to spend as much time checking and correcting their work.)
The final kind of delegation Hyatt discusses is empowering the person to make decisions and implement them without your approval. Even at this level of autonomy, it’s common to require regular reports and updates: what decisions the person made, how they executed those decisions, and their results. With that said, if you trust the person enough, you can give them complete autonomy by waiving that requirement.
(Shortform note: While allowing someone else to make and implement decisions without your oversight can be risky, it may also lead to better outcomes for both of you. The authors of Humanocracy say that empowering your workers to make decisions—and holding them accountable for the results of those decisions— boosts their engagement and job performance. This is because autonomy and accountability give people a sense of ownership; the work feels like it’s truly theirs, so they’ll try to do work they can be proud of. Conversely, companies that push bureaucratic ideals like efficiency and compliance don’t foster that sense of ownership, so their employees tend to be apathetic toward their work.)
