Briefing is the second step of our delegation process. And it sets up your delegation for success. But briefing well, is not a quick task. So think of it as an investment. The more time you spend briefing well, then the less time you'll spend following up during the task. The better your briefing is, the fewer questions you'll need to answer once they get started.

Briefing well means meeting an appropriate time and place, often in private and taking them through exactly what you expected them. In the next video, I'll talk you through what that kind of briefing will contain. It's also essential I think, to explain to the person why you've chosen them for the task and why you believe the task is right for that. Next, explain clearly, the results you expect to see. And the timescales you need them to work to. a valuable concept here is the idea of an evidence procedure.

The idea of evidence procedures comes actually from the sales process. If I understand how you're going to evaluate the item, you're going to buy the evidence, you're going to look forward to decide whether it's right for you. And I present that evidence to you, you can then make your decision more easily. In this case, if I want to do a good piece of work for you that you're delegating to me, then I need to know what evidence you're going to apply to assess whether I've done a good piece of work and if I want to do an excellent piece of work. I need to know what your criteria are for excellence. So in your briefing set out clearly The evidence procedure, how you will evaluate the tiers of quality from adequate to good, to excellent to exemplary.

You also need to be clear about the level of authority you're handing over. This could be anything from a low level of authority where you expect the person to do some thinking to come up with some ideas and to check them with you before taking any actions all the way out to complete autonomy. I'll check up on you from time to time you keep me informed how things are going, but basically, do it as you choose. And finally, you need to explain the level of support you propose to give and make sure that they're comfortable with that level of support, discuss it, if they want less support, then let them argue for why they need less support. But ultimately, remember the accountability of delegated work still remains with you and therefore If it remains with you, you must therefore take control of the risk management process.

If you think they need more guidance, if you think they need more support to do it properly, then that's your call. Equally though, the more guidance and support you give, the less developmental the activity maybe we learn best when we discover things for ourselves and make our own mistakes along the way. So that's a judgment you need to make. So once you've briefed, it'll be time to move to step three, commitment. But before we do that, there's another short lecture, which summarizes the seven key elements of briefing for delegation with a simple, easy to remember acronym