effective delegation

Esther Derby's when to stand back, when to step in touches upon delegation. I'd like to comment on that, by merging some of what www.mindtools.com had to say about it. When we delegate, it's necessary to:

• describe the need/ultimate goal
• encourage sign-up for responsibility
• define authority depending on skills, how critical success is, and whether there's room to clean up any mistakes--should this person act independently, review plans with you, or review intermediate outputs before proceeding?
• once you've given out authority, you must hold back, even if mistakes are about to be made... being given the room to make mistakes is how we learn