In this solo talk, Cameron Herold highlights delegation as a critical yet under‑trained skill for managers. He argues that when delegated projects fall short, the blame belongs partly to the leader who failed to set clear expectations. He outlines a concise, actionable delegation framework: (1) specify the maximum time the assignee should spend, tied to a clear ROI; (2) explain why the project matters to the company; (3) set a deadline and coordinate it with the assignee’s calendar; (4) define a budget limit for the work; and (5) describe exactly what a finished deliverable looks like. Herold stresses that these steps shift responsibility back to the leader and reduce frustration. He promotes his Invest in Your Leaders delegation module (investinyourleaders.com) for deeper training and offers a free copy of his book The Second in Command to qualifying COOs and CEOs via cooalliance.com/freebook.
Chapters
I'm kind of completely dumbfounded about this one skill that most managers tend to really suck at and have had no training whatsoever. And no, it's not interviewing. No, it's not running effective meetings. The skill is delegation. And here's the core problem. You all delegate projects to your direct reports. You delegate them to your team. You delegate them to your leadership team. And then when the project comes back to you, you're often let down. You feel like they didn't understand it clearly. Maybe they spent too much. Maybe it took too long. Maybe it was in way more detail or way less detail than you needed, but that's actually your problem. Remember, when you're blaming someone, you're pointing a finger at one person, there's 3 fingers pointing back at you. So let me tell you specifically how to delegate a lot better. And I actually go into this in a lot more detail in my Invest in Your Leaders training. Go to investinyourleaders.com, check out the delegation module and have everyone in your company that manages people go through this content. It'll be huge for you. But here's a couple of quick tips. On how to get better at delegation. It's certainly not the whole model, but it's enough to get you started. Number 1, tell people how little time you want them to spend on the project. Not how little time you think it's going to take them to do it, but how little time you want them to invest because you've already got an ROI in mind as to what it's going to benefit the company. As well, tell them how it's going to benefit the company. Is it going to make your employees happier, customers happier? Is it going to drive more profit or gross margin? Is it going to drive more revenue? Explain the why behind the actual project and they'll understand that. Tell them when you need it back by, but also ask them when in their calendar they're planning to do the work. Help them break down the project into tasks and look at in their calendar when they have enough time to do those actual tasks. Then you'll know that they have the time to do the work to get it back to you in the time that you're actually hoping to have it done by. Tell them how little time or sorry, how little money you want them to spend on that project. Somebody could go out and spend $10,000 or $50,000. Maybe you only intended them to spend $50 or a couple hundred bucks. That also ties into the amount of time because you're paying their hourly rate to do that project. Tell them what finished looks like so they can see what the finished state of the project you're looking for. Maybe it doesn't need to be all glossy and title page and full-on slide decks and reports. Maybe it's a one-pager or something on a Post-it note. So tell them what you're looking for in getting it back. And you'll be a lot happier. I go into this module of delegation in a lot more detail at investinyourleaders.com. So go check out investinyourleaders.com, sign up you and everyone on your leadership team that manages people, and you'll actually get real results back from the people instead of the frustration you're getting today.
All right, if you're the COO of a company that does at least $2 million or greater in revenue, or you're the CEO of a company and you're in the United States or Canada, if you would like a copy of my book, The Second in Command, for free, go to cooalliance.com/freebook. That's cooalliance.com/freebook, and I will mail you a copy for free. I will even cover the shipping.
