Time management skills can always be enhanced. Does our quiz reveal that you are working from outdated strategies? If so, revise your approach with these 5 Delegating Power Principles. Using them, you can enhance cooperation and effectiveness.

Revolutionize your team-building skills:

• Discover your delegating style with this quiz.

• Explore how your methods match up with traditional and new delegating practices.

• Learn how the 5 Delegating Power Principles optimize the use of your time and others' time as well.

Quiz: What's Your Delegating Style?

When I delegate, I (plan to):

1. (T F) Assign the tasks to the people who are the least busy.

2. (T F) Give them more power to accomplish the goals only as they can document solid results.

3. (T F) Provide them with my detailed blueprint of how to go about the tasks.

4. (T F) Check in with them frequently to make sure they are going about things the right way.

5. (T F) Tell them that future assignments depend upon their not making mistakes.

If you have answered "True" to the preceding questions, you have learned well from prior generations of taskmasters. However, you may not be happy with your results. All too often, this traditional approach generates frustration and gobbles up time, because it fails to take into consideration 5 important principles:

5 Delegating Power Principles

1. Recognize the enormous variety in people's aptitudes. The more fully you acknowledge this, the more likely you are to handpick the person whose strengths match your job at hand.

2. Give the responsibility to meet a goal and the full authority needed to bring about the desired result simultaneously, at the beginning. Encourage the person to let you know if they need more authority or support of any kind to get the task completed.

3. What works well for others may not be what work well for you. Give your delegates the freedom to find their own way. Assign tasks in terms of goals, not methods, and encourage your assistants to call upon their own strengths and creativity to meet your objective.

4. Respect that people thrive under varying levels of supervision unique to them. You can cooperatively work out a system of checking in with one another. Time you invest in constructive, consensual review will yield rich dividends. You and your colleagues will find this much more enjoyable and productive than old-style hovering!

5. By allowing room for mistakes, you allow room for new discoveries. You encourage your support system to do its best when you support some experimenting. When you extend latitude and good will, your assistants will respond with increased confidence, cooperation and loyalty.

What is your next step to find more time?