Feed back often, good and bad: Get into the habit of providing feedback regularly, so you both get used to it. You are on the same team: Check your f… - Dave Stitt

• What difficult conversation do you need to have but have been putting off because you don’t want to upset the other person? Idea • An ambitious delegation requires you to give lots of both support and challenge to the delegatee. Idea • Too much challenge is the Zone of Stress, burn-out and uneven results. Too much support is the zone of complacency and slipping standards. Too little of each is the zone of inertia, apathy, isolation and boredom.

The first is your Zone of Mastery, or Unique Ability, the zone you inhabit when you’re doing what you love most, what only you can do, and where the results are remarkable. However, since this is your work or professional life, you need to apply a second filter, which is the field of activity most necessary to get your organisation heading in the direction it needs to go. Where those two filters overlap, that’s what you should be doing. All accountabilities falling outside those boundaries are ripe for delegation, which will win you time.

Deep and deliberate delegation moves the focus away from your personal traits as a leader and onto what is more important: the relationships between you and your team.