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As a manager, team leader, supervisor or foreman, you have to delegate work to others. Delegating is a fundamental skill of management, but it is also one that many managers do very badly. There is a skill to learn in order to delegate effectively.

The more you delegate, the more time you will have to manage people and improve processes. In order to delegate effectively, you need to ensure that the person to whom you delegate a task is provided with four things: Skill, Time, Authority and Responsibility. The first letters of these words spell the word STAR, which makes them easy to remember, as shown below.

• S = Skill. You need to ensure that the person has the skill and ability to do the task. This doesn’t mean that they have to be as good at the task as you. (You may be able to give them more time to do it than you would otherwise have available to do it yourself.)

• T = Time. You need to make sure that the person has adequate time to complete the task at the pace that’s likely for their ability. This means allowing for the actual time this task will take alongside any other tasks they need to do. If you are their manager, they may be reluctant to admit that they don’t have the time. Try to ask open questions (“When will you do this?”) rather than leading questions (“You have enough time to do this, don’t you?”) to ascertain their workload.

• A = Authority. Ensure that other people know that the person you’re delegating to has been given the authority to complete this task. You might just tell people that they will need to provide this person with information and support, or you might give them a written ‘licence’ or acting rank. Without confirmation of authority, their task may be much harder to perform.

• R = Responsibility. This is often the hardest one. You are delegating something that you have a responsibility to get done, so you must ensure that the person you delegate to understands that they are responsible to you for doing the task. One of the best ways to give the responsibility is to make it very clear that you are sharing the credit for the successful outcome.

For more about delegating to motivate people, see Secret 4.7.

The more you can delegate properly the more you can get done, so learn to love delegating.