Delegation Made Easy: Unlock the Full Potential of PEAS

Envision this: It’s 2 a.m., days before a conference, and fictional CHRO Jane is flooding the inboxes of team members with emails about errors in a presentation. It’s up to her, she believes, to make sure the slide decks are perfect. Therefore, she must review them herself. 

But reviewing a slide deck isn’t the role of a CHRO. It’s essential for Jane to “reclaim her life,” said Terri Stivarius, owner of consulting firm PointerWise LLC, at SHRM25 in San Diego. This means learning how to identify critical priorities and delegate with confidence.  

However, any leader with a modicum of control issues or perfectionist tendencies knows letting go and delegating work is easier said than done. That’s where Stivarius’ “Power of PEAS” framework — prioritizing, engagement, accountability, and systems — comes in. 

Prioritize: Focus on What Matters

Properly prioritizing projects or tasks boils down to alignment, Stivarius said — aligning with yourself and your own goals, aligning with your team about what you’re going to accomplish together, and aligning with your organization about what they’re expecting from you and your team. 

Go back to Jane’s story. Because she didn’t prioritize and delegate properly, she’s “fighting fires” every day — which means her team is too, Stivarius said. However, it’s not the CHRO’s job to fight fires — it’s to make a strategic impact on the company. 

“When most people don’t delegate, it’s out of fear,” she said. When doing the work yourself, “you feel accomplished; you feel there’s something measurable — and you’re addicted to approval.” 

To combat this, she explained, Jane must identify the top 20% of her impact-producing activities to focus on and let go of the bottom 80%. To do this, Stivarius recommends her prioritization matrix that compares someone’s “hourly energy value,” or HEV — the value of your time to the organization — to the urgency of the project. 

To determine your HEV, calculate how much annual revenue your work generates. For senior leadership, this could be the entire company’s revenue; for others, it might be the functional revenue that they directly influence. Next, divide the revenue impact by 2,080, the traditional number of full-time work hours in a year — the result is your HEV.

“This exercise changes your focus on your time and energy,” Stivarius said. “Your focus is an asset to the company … so why on earth would you be correcting typos on PowerPoints?” 

To apply the matrix, a leader must identify the top 20% of their revenue-producing activities and figure out how to focus on that — but it requires delegating that bottom 80%.

Engagement: Collaborate Openly, Lead Effectively

Delegation requires trust. The leader must trust their team’s ability to get the work done to the organization’s standards, but their team must also trust that the leader won’t go through and nitpick their work — or worse, redo it themselves. 

 “[Jane’s] ‘A players’ are sick of being told how to do their job,” Stivarius said, circling back to her fictional CHRO. “They’re tired of being called out on every mistake. They’re tired of being afraid to make a mistake.”

Stivarius recommends building trust by being open with the team about your vulnerabilities. Admit it out loud: “I am a perfectionist. Own it. Everybody already knows it,” she said. “It builds trust that you’re willing to admit it.”

It’s crucial to understand the traits of your team members so you can delegate and engage with them properly, she added. However, don't necessarily delegate the tasks that they’re the greatest at, but rather what they take joy in doing, whether it’s questioning the status quo, sketching out ideas on whiteboards, or creating checklists and focusing on the details. 

Accountability: Trust Through Ownership

Although the idea of being accountable can carry a negative connotation, it’s really about taking ownership of both actions and their outcomes. Not holding someone accountable can result in:

• Decreased performance.
• Loss of trust and respect. 
• Increased resentment.
• Escalation of problems.
• Negative impact on team morale. 
• Missed opportunities for growth. 

Once you delegate to a team member, however, they still need support and resources to truly own the task or project. 

“Every when you’re delegating, you’re not giving [the task] away and forgetting about it,” Stivarius said. “This is a team effort.”

Hold these people accountable by: 

• Establishing clear expectations. 
• Scheduling regular check-ins and reviews.
• Promptly and directly addressing problems.
• Providing productive feedback. 
• Celebrating successes publicly and discussing mistakes privately. 
• Encouraging self-reflection.

Remember, accountability isn’t about blame — it’s about fostering ownership, trust, and growth for everyone involved. 

Systems: Reveal Process Gaps

Delegating isn’t always about taking the workload off the manager’s plate and putting it onto someone else’s; it also creates the foundation for systemizing processes. Without delegation, Stivarius said, it’s impossible to see the gaps in current systems. By entrusting tasks to others, delegation reveals inefficiencies and areas for improvement that might otherwise go unnoticed. 

Systemization also means changing habits — not an easy process for many people. 

“As human beings, we don’t just decide to change a habit, and — boom — it changes,” she said.  

Start small by picking just one habit to change, such as letting someone else create an agenda or select the lunch menu for a team meeting. Slowly but surely, someone with a habit of hoarding time-consuming tasks will start to let go. 

“Jane will tell you there’s not enough time,” Stivarius said, referring to her fictional CHRO once more. “There’s no getting more time. We need more focus.”