Effective Delegation Strategies for Engineering Managers | 5 Step Framework

If you know you need to get better at delegating more tasks and responsibilities to your team, but you're struggling to figure out how…

or maybe you're struggling to just get comfortable with relinquishing that control…

Then stay tuned because in this video, I'm gonna teach you a simple five step framework that you can use and put into action right away.

Hey everyone, and welcome back to my YouTube channel, for those of you who are new, and if you don't know me, I'm Doug Howard. I'm a licensed engineer, but I use this YouTube channel to help engineering managers and tech leaders increase your impact by teaching you the soft skill side of management.

These are skills that don't come natural to us, and it holds us back from being more effective in our roles. It also holds us back from advancing to the next level in our careers. If this sounds valuable to you, make sure you hit that subscribe button. 

For Engineering Managers, the Struggle to Delegate is Real

Today we're gonna be focusing on an area that a lot of technical leaders struggle with, which is delegation. We struggle in this area for many different reasons. Usually we were a high performing engineer before we became a leader. We struggle with relinquishing control. We struggle with letting other people do things a way that's different than us. 

I'm not gonna really focus on the why's that we struggle. If you're interested in that, I did a video on that last week, so you'll wanna check that out. I'll put a link in the description, but today I'm gonna be focusing on how do you get better at it. Like I already said at the beginning, I'm gonna give you a five step process that you can put into action.

Why Does Mindset Matter 

Before I go through that, I wanna talk about mindset shifts that you need to make because that really is the main challenge that h olds people back from getting better at delegation. It's more about just the mindset and getting comfortable with delegating and getting comfortable with seeing things done in a different way by someone other than you. As engineers we can be perfectionists. It's hard for us to relinquish that control.

We're gonna start focusing on mindset first, and there's four specific mindset shifts that you need to make.

Mindset Shift #1 - Embrace an Investment Mentality

The first mindset shift you wanna make is shifting from initial cost mentality to investment mentality. What I mean by this is, you need to understand that when you delegate, you're investing time now to train other people.

It might feel like a heavy cost upfront because you're busy, you have a lot of responsibilities, you have deadlines, commitments, stress. All these things are real. I'm not ignoring them. It's easy to just look at it like I don't have the time for this now. I can't afford the time right now. I can't merit the time right now. But you need to give equal weight to that consideration.

What I mean by that is you need to balance that out with a future person perspective. You need to think about it with tomorrow's perspective in mind. What would the me, two years from now think about this decision? Would me two years from now be regretting not investing a few hours right now to delegate this task off my plate.

I wanna just shift how you think about time because I get it. I was an engineering manager for years and I was an engineering director for years. We're always busy. There's really never any time. It's like working at the post office. The mail just keeps coming. The same is true when you work in engineering. The moment you increase your capacity, it immediately gets filled up by more sales or more work, or more problems. There's really no such thing as caught up in engineering. You never really get ahead. Where I'm going with this is you need to carve out that investment time now because it's never gonna just fall in your lap where you just have the time to magically have a free space to delegate tasks out.

You wanna start looking at time the same way you look at money, because time is your most valuable resource. It's the only thing you can't replace. So look at delegation as an investment in your future time. It's an investment that's gonna create more time. It's an investment that's gonna basically build up your team too. By delegating responsibilities out to your team you're building up the skills on your team too. You're delegating out responsibility, you're diversifying the skills on your team. 

The main point I'm making here is that I want you to recognize that by delegating tasks, you are freeing up your time to focus on higher value activities. These are things that you can contribute more to your business growth and your career advancement. Make sure you're giving yourself that future person perspective when you're weighing the decision of whether or not it's worth the time to delegate.

You wanna break that mentality of, it's faster for me to do it my way. And you want to get into the mentality of thinking, what will this free me up to do? Is this investment worth it? That should help you balance that decision making, 'cause there's gonna be times where it doesn't make sense to delegate. If you have something that's urgent and needs to be done now, don't delegate it. But if it's something that isn't urgent, that's a perfect thing to delegate.

Mindset Shift #2 - Doer vs. Leader

The second mindset shift you wanna make is from being a doer to being a leader or from doing to leading. What I mean by this is, your role when you were an individual contributor, you were a doer. Now you're a leader. What that means is your value lies in leading and guiding and supporting your team, and your value is no longer related to executing tasks yourself.

This is a tough mindset shift to make because as an engineer, you're used to tangible deliverables. You're used to having a tangible involvement on projects. Now as a leader, it's a little bit more abstract and complex. You can't really measure your results like that on the impact you're having.

Sometimes we tend to cling to our comfort zone, which is, rolling up our sleeves and doing hands-on engineering work to feel like we're being productive. But as a leader, that's counterproductive. There's times where it makes sense to roll up your sleeves and pitch in, don't get me wrong, but, the more you're doing that, the less impact you're actually having on growing your team. When you do yourself, your impact is limited by your time and your hours.

Meanwhile, the most effective leaders use delegation to leverage your team's collective skills and increase your team's overall impact, versus you just looking at the impact you can have through the tasks you're working on.

Along those same lines, delegation is not about task execution, it's about skill development. This is important for you to realize as a leader. Don't look at it like I'm offloading a task, look at it like I'm helping them develop a skill. That means you should be shifting your focus from getting tasks done, and you should be focusing more on how am I using delegation to develop my team?

It's not just about offloading work. It's an opportunity for your team members to learn and grow through new challenges. It's also about, getting comfortable with empowering your team by giving away more control. This is all related to that leadership mentality. Instead of being a doer, doers need to feel like they're in control. Leaders are all about empowering, so you wanna shift from, wanting to control every aspect of a task, to empowering those aspects to your team members. Trusting their skills and their judgment, and allowing them to take ownership of their tasks. 

You need to recognize that empowerment leads to increased motivation and growth in your team as well. So you're gonna get more engagement, you're gonna get more buy-in, you're gonna get more ideas, you're gonna get better ideas. Instead of exerting control over tasks, you wanna think more about fostering collaboration. You want to involve more team members in decision making instead of just feeling like you have to make all the decisions.

Again, it's just this idea of doing versus leading. Leading is facilitating, leading is guiding, leading is pulling people in and gaining buy-in. Creating that collective wisdom of the crowd and getting everyone to contribute, where doing is just all about you being productive. You are allowing and encouraging your team to contribute their ideas and their expertise instead of telling them that you want something to be done a specific way. 

An example of that would be if you're delegating a task to someone, don't tell them how to do it. Focus on telling them the outcome that needs to be accomplished. You could tell them, here's how I do it. This is the way I prefer doing it. This is the way I like to see it done. But at the end of the day, this is the thing that needs to be done. So I'll leave it to you as I'm delegating to someone, I'll leave it to you to figure out the best way to do it, and you can pull me in for help if you'd like. That's what delegating is. Instead of just offloading a task, it's making sure they're clear on the outcome versus you just telling them what to do.

Going a little bit deeper about this mindset shift from doer to leader. Another part of this is, scrapping the ego and leading with empathy. When I say ego-driven leadership, that's again this doing mentality. I need to do this. I am the only one capable of this. It needs to be done my way. You want to get away from that and start leading with an empathic leadership style. That means really understanding the needs and the strengths and the aspirations of your team members, and tailoring your delegation approach to support their growth.

Leading with that mindset, again, how can I empower my team? How can I grow my team? This is important because when you care about those things, it'll motivate you to go outside of your comfort zone a little bit. 

The last part of this doing versus leading mindset shift is that, this might sound cheesy, but you want to shift from an I, me, an I mindset to a we mindset as part of this, in this leadership mindset shift. So instead of saying the word I, you should be saying the word we as much as possible.

The reason I'm pointing this out is because again, we have this tendency to think like an individual contributor when we were an engineer and that's our background and individual contributors think in terms of I and me, and here's what I did, here's what I think we need to do. Here's what I think. Here's how I think this needs to be done. 

Instead of doing this, you should be using the word we more often. What can we do here? How can we solve this problem? How can we work on this together? Or you can use the word you, what do you think? How do you think this should be done? What ideas do you have? You want to use the word I and me as little as possible is my point here, when you're delegating. You want to think in that mindset of we or you know you want their ideas, you want their expertise, you want their wisdom, and you want them to feel empowered.

At the end of the day just to kinda tie a ribbon on this whole point of doing versus leading, you need to realize that your success is tied to the success of your team. So it's no longer your success is because of your involvement or contribution on a project. Your success is directly a product of the success of your team and everyone on your team, and just keeping that front of mind when you're making this mindset shift.

Mindset Shift #3 - Stop Being “busy”, Start Being Strategic

The third main mindset shift you wanna make is going from a busy mentality to a strategic mentality. What I mean by this is, if you wanna contribute at a higher level, you need to stop thinking in terms of, I'm busy, I'm too busy, I'm too busy. You need to intentionally think more strategically about how you're spending your time and your what tasks you're working on, and what activities you're doing. 

This starts by adapting a macro view instead of a micro view. A micro view is basically a micromanaging perspective. A micro view is focusing on the minutia, the details, and the day-to-day where the macro is concentrating more on the bigger picture, the strategy and the vision. The more you are in the day-to-day, the harder it is for you to think about the vision. Think about it like a spectrum. That old expression, you can't see the forest thru the trees. You can't see the bigger picture when you're at the ground level.

When you start looking at it this way, I need to get out of the details if I'm going to be a visionary leader, if I'm going to produce at a higher level, if I'm going to be more strategic and being pulled into strategic initiatives by my boss and the higher ups and the executive team, then that means I can't be stuck in the details. I need to delegate those things off of me if I'm actually gonna contribute at that level because delegating frees up your time to focus on strategic thinking and innovation and long-term planning. When you're doing this, you know you want to delegate tasks that don't require your specialized skills, that you can focus on higher impact activities, getting more impact from your time.

The next aspect of this is thinking with a long term vision in mind instead of a short term vision. This is related to that investment mindset shift that we talked about. You don't wanna just be thinking in terms of today, you wanna be thinking in terms of the longer term beyond tomorrow. Be thinking six months out, 12 months out, you want to factor that into your decision making. You wanna move more away from short-term goals and start considering more longer term benefits of delegation. 

That initial delegation time investment pays off in the form of increased capability and future savings. This kind of ties to prioritizing long-term impact over instant gratification. As engineers, we feel productive when we're busy. We feel productive when we checked a bunch of things off our list. That's how we are. But you need to kinda look out for that trap because that's a dopamine hit. That's an instant gratification thing. And you tell yourself that you're busy and you tell yourself that means you're productive but you want to put yourself in check and make sure you're working on things that actually have an impact.

That's why the last part of this mindset shift from busy to strategic requires you to change from seeking instant gratification on checking off to-do lists and tech task completion to understanding the long-term impact of your delegation and your efforts to improve team performance and team morale and organizational growth.

Mindset Shift #4 - Focus On the Outcome

The fourth mindset shift is going from perfectionism to becoming outcome driven, outcome based thinking. You hear me talk about this all the time if you follow me on YouTube or on LinkedIn. It's all about being intentional and it's all about having that outcome driven way of thinking.

Instead of focusing on the problem, thinking about what is the outcome I want, Instead of seeking perfection in every detail, think about, what is the outcome I want? By doing this, this frees you up to understand that tasks can be done differently as long as the results align with the expectations and the goals. The process can be flexible when you're focused on the outcome. That should be, freeing you up to realize it's okay if someone does this a different way. It's okay if someone has a new idea to bring to the table. Go more with that experimental mentality too. The best ideas come through trial and error, versus having a rigid way of thinking

Now the thing that will get in your way here is having that fear of failure, and that's tied to this, that fear of failure, again, like we are, we're creatures of comfort. We don't like going outside of our comfort zone. We don't like risks. We don't like unknowns. So we have this fear of failure and we cling to things and we don't let go of them. We don't let other people take a chance on these things, 'cause we're worried it's gonna go wrong, it's gonna break, it's gonna be irreversible, unfixable. Part of this mindset shift is just thinking about, instead of fear of failure, look at it as an opportunity to learn. That's an opportunity for you to learn as well as the person you're delegating to. You're learning how to get more comfortable with delegating. You're learning how to be more effective at delegating. You're learning how to do it better the next time, and you're learning how to basically become more efficient at delegating. 

Meanwhile, obviously, the person you're delegating to, they're taking on more responsibilities. They're learning, they're getting more comfortable with you. They're trusting you more. They're giving you feedback. So instead of looking at it as a fear of failure, remind yourself that everything is fixable. Everything is figureoutable. We are engineers. We are the world's best problem solvers. So you shouldn't be stressing about fear of failure. 

Don't get me wrong, I am not telling you to ignore quality control. I'm not telling you to ignore safety concerns. I'm not telling you to walk into problems irresponsibly where you're creating a problem that's irreversible. I'm not proposing that. I'm just saying there's a difference between something that's a safety concern and an unfixable problem versus something that you're just uncomfortable with taking the risk, but it is something that you can always fix. So challenge yourself to just realize, is this something that's a critical issue? If someone fails what's the worst case, scenario if this person fails when I delegate it to 'em? If it's something that's reversible and fixable, then challenge yourself to get comfortable with it because as engineers, we're lifelong learners. We're the world's best learners and you need to learn how to embrace failure as an opportunity to learn.

In most cases, delegating something to someone new and getting that fresh set of eyes on it, it might lead to errors, but it also might expose problems that you weren't aware of already. Problems that were staying hidden. Think of delegation, like a stress test on your system as well. By putting a different set of eyes on something so that they can see how it's done, they might expose flaws that could have created bigger issues down the road.

The last part of this mindset shift of, getting out of perfectionism mode and be being more outcome driven is, again, being results oriented versus task oriented. Instead of just thinking about solely completing tasks, you want to be thinking about what's the results that you're having. What's the results of the thing you're delegating. So don't just think about are they completing these five tasks that need to be done? Maybe they're able to do this thing in a way that doesn't require the same number of tasks or steps that you were doing it so don't get caught up in the how, focus on the what.

Why Mindset Is the Key

Now getting over those mindset shifts, that is the biggest hurdle in most cases and that's why I spent a lot of time on that. Before I go through this process, I just wanna challenge you make sure you understand those mindset shifts. If you don't let me know in the comments. Or if you're struggling with these mindset shifts and you want more perspective on this, let me know what questions you have in the comments, because that is the most important part here. 

The process is very helpful, but if you're not comfortable with letting go, if you're not looking at this as an investment versus a short term cost. If you're not looking at this like giving your team an opportunity to learn versus, living in this mode of fearing failure, you're gonna struggle with delegating. I'm just being honest with you. You're gonna continue struggling with it. Do the work on the mindset part. Really challenge yourself to shift your way of thinking in these areas. Otherwise, you're gonna stay in this trap where you're just absorbing more work and you're not really growing your team or scaling up in your role. 

5 Step Delegation Framework for Engineering Managers and Tech Leaders

Now with that being said, let's move on to the process side of this, and the delegation process is very straightforward.

1 - Invest the Time in Delegation

Step one is you have to pause and actually make time on your calendar to delegate. The reason I'm saying this is, these all tie into these mindset shifts we just covered. If you wanna start getting better at delegating, and if you're serious about it, then you need to actually put time on your calendar for it. 

I don't mean putting time on your calendar for a specific thing you wanna delegate. Building time into your weekly schedule or your monthly schedule reserved for delegating because if you are an engineering manager or a technical leader who's drowning in work and you feel like you're always busy and behind, guess what? You're never gonna dedicate that time unless you carve out a bucket of time. Fridays from 2:00 to 4:00 PM I'm gonna spend that time looking for things to delegate and actively delegating, whether it's training hands-on or creating documentation that I can give someone. But, taking an active role towards delegating. 

You need to lock that time on your calendar and guard it, don't let anything impede on it. That is a critical meeting, you wouldn't cancel that. Then you gotta guard this time the same way. You have to lock that time on your schedule. Otherwise it'll never get done. It'll never get done. 
This is way to make that mindset shift of thinking with the investment mentality and giving yourself that future person perspective. You're gonna make the decision now to lock that time into your calendar. You're doing this because you understand that investing time now and finding that time to train and equip someone to take over a task is gonna lead to compounded returns on your investment in the future.

2 - Identify the Right Person to Delegate To

Step two is once you've identified something you wanna delegate, you gotta choose the right person to delegate it to. 

Now, that might seem obvious, what you wanna do is relative to the task that you wanna delegate. You want to think, okay, who is someone that would love taking this project on? Who is someone that would naturally do well with this? Who is someone that has more time available? Who is someone that you know has a positive attitude about taking on more work? You want to make your life easier by really just spending some thought on who is the right person for this.

If you don't know, it means that you probably need to spend a little bit more time building a relationship with the people on your team. Understanding what their interests are and what their strengths are through one-on-one conversations. If no one is jumping out at you in mind right now as far as who would be a good person that's the right fit for this, then I would recommend taking some time with having some one-on-one conversations with your team and just having some short conversations with them, asking them how they're doing in their role. What areas are they struggling with? What things are they interested in? Any more areas they wanna take on new challenges in? Have an exploratory discussion with them that's free and open and candid that you can start hearing what these things are that they're interested in.

I guarantee you they're interested in something. Engineers aren't usually complacent with doing nothing. They might not have shared these things with you yet, but I guarantee you that there are things that they do want to take on more, either responsibilities or work in. I'm sure there's opportunities for you to delegate some of these things to them.

3 - Clearly Define the Goal, Expectations, and Desired Outcome of this Delegation

Now once you've picked who that person is, step three is clearly define the goals of this delegation and what success looks like. That's the most common mistake people make, is we assume that the other person is a mind reader. We assume that they know what's critical versus what's subject to change, or what's open to be interpreted or what's flexible. What's clear to us might not be clear to them. They're not mind readers. So you wanna make sure that when you delegate this, you're clearly defining the goal of the assignment and you want to explain the why behind it. 

As engineers, we really need to understand the why behind something before we can really figure out how to put the best solution in place. Notice engineers always ask, why are we doing it that way? Why is this the way we're doing it? So don't just explain the outcome, explain the why. Then in addition to that, you wanna explain how success will be measured, and that means the outcome. What is the result you want?

The last part of setting these clear expectations is, you don't wanna make it open-ended. You wanna set a clear deadline. You want this specific deliverable by this specific date. Instead of micromanaging them, establish clear check-in points. If you have a meeting to delegate this thing to someone, tell them that we're gonna meet next week, Friday to see where your progress is on this and then we'll reevaluate from there.

Don't leave it open-ended, because if you don't set that expectation upfront, it's gonna feel to them like you're micromanaging them when you check in. But upfront, say, here's the deadline and here's what I'm gonna check in with you. If you get stuck, let's do this. You wanna make all these expectations clear upfront so that you know there's no misinterpretations later on.

4 - Equip Them for Success By Providing Adequate Support and Resources

Step four is you wanna make sure that you equip this person for success. What I mean is you know the person that you're delegating to, you wanna make sure that they have all the tools, the resources, and the support that they need to complete the task effectively and do a good job on it.

As the delegator, it's your responsibility to make sure that they have what they need because they don't know what they don't know. Instead of just asking them blankly, do you have everything you need? Are you good? Ask them some thought provoking questions before you send them on their way. Ask 'em a question like, if you get stuck, what do you plan on doing? Or have you considered this? What resources do you need from me to make sure you can, keep moving on this? Ask 'em some questions to get them thinking about it. 'Cause if you just ask them, Hey, do you have everything you need? There's a good chance they don't know what they need and they don't know what they don't know. But if you ask them some thought provoking questions that get them thinking about it and thinking about, what will I do in that scenario? That will help them realize if they're lost.

5 - Delegate, Let Go, and Trust the Other Person

Now the fifth step is gonna be the hardest one, and that's trust and let go. After you delegate that task and after you provided clear instructions for them, you need to trust the person to complete it. Now you can check in with them at the agreed upon times, and if they're struggling along the way, you can always help them and provide support and redirect and redefine the goals. But once you've made these expectations clear, you need to be comfortable with letting them work on their own and coming to you for help until that deadline is reached. Otherwise, that person is gonna work feeling like they're being watched and they're gonna not deliver. They're not gonna do a good job because they're gonna feel like you don't trust them and they can sense that. You have to really go outside of your comfort zone a little bit. 

Going back through these steps, if you're not comfortable with that right away, then start with something small the first time. Start with something that's a safe thing to delegate. Start with something that is, a thing that you can easily undo and then, start working your way up by delegating things that are slightly more risky each time. The key here is you want to avoid micromanaging them and you need to allow them to execute doing it their own approach. 

When they present it to you, and if you don't agree with their way or if you don't understand their way, don't come at it from a place of telling 'em it's wrong. Come at it from a place of asking them to help you understand. Hey, can you help me understand why you did it this way? Can you show me why you did it this way? Can you explain where you got those numbers from? Instead of saying, no, this doesn't work, you need to do it this way, have them explain it to you 'cause you might learn something in the process. You wanna create that mutual understanding instead of making it a one way conversation where you're just telling them to do it your way. To wrap up this point, you wanna maintain communication with them throughout, and you're gonna follow those established check-in points. 

Again, you're gonna give them autonomy to achieve the desired results that you guys agreed on. So it's not about how they do it, it's about the outcome. And hold yourself accountable to that.

So just to quickly recap all the steps, the first step is pause and invest time. Make sure you're putting time on your calendar to do delegation, to look for ways to delegate. Step two is make sure you're delegating to the right person. Give some real thought to this. Who is the best fit to take on this task? Step three is make sure you're clearly defining the goals and the desired outcomes. Step four is make sure you're equipping them for success. Don't put them on a fool's errand where they're walking into a hornet's nest. Give them everything they need and, provoke them to give some thought to it before you send them on their way by asking them some questions that make them think. What type of support will you need? What will you do if you get stuck with this? Last but not least, you need to trust and let go and not micromanage them. 

When you start delegating responsibilities to people, there's a good chance people are gonna make a lot of mistakes at first. Which means you need to be good at delivering clear, effective, and impactful constructive feedback. But this is something a lot of engineering managers and technical leaders struggle with, and if this is something you're not comfortable with, you should watch my episode called How to Give Constructive Feedback Without the Stress.

check out my FREE mini masterclass - “increase your impact as an engineering leader”

Learn How to Influence People to Create Efficiencies and Save Time

Stop following, waiting, and letting other people dictate your time.
Start leading, inspiring, and creating impact for your team and organization 

Join me for this FREE 60 minute on-demand MINI MASTERCLASS to learn how you can INFLUENCE decisions, INSPIRE change, and MOTIVATE behavior at every level of the organization.