When I was first learning to delegate, my biggest challenge was letting go of control. After months of struggling, I created a model that helped me to ease my fear of losing control.

The model is based on three key ideas. First, all tasks have common parts. The most obvious part is doing the work to create the intended results. Other parts may be less obvious to new managers, but are inherent in any task. Here are the parts that I see in every task:

• Define the desired result.
• Define how we will know we’re done.
• Define how we will achieve the result.
• Define how we will assess progress.
• Do the work.
• Assess progress.
• Determine whether we’re done.

The second key idea is that I don’t have to delegate a whole task. If tasks have parts I can delegate some parts and retain other parts for myself. I can delegate the parts that I feel safe delegating, and retain the parts that trigger my fear of losing control.

And this leads to the third idea. I can improve my delegating bit-by-bit by letting go of just one more part of each task, then one more part, then one more. If I can choose wisely which parts to let go of next, I can steadily, safely, and effectively improve my delegating.

So which parts should I let go of next? To answer that question, I created a model that I call The Ladder of Delegation. I draw a ladder, and on the rungs I list the parts of a task, arranged according to my willingness to delegate them—the parts that I’m most willing to delegate at the bottom, and the parts that I’m most reluctant to delegate at the top. My Ladder of Delegation looks like this:

Here’s how I use The Ladder. When I’m preparing to delegate a task to someone, I notice how far up The Ladder I’m willing to climb. Which rungs am I willing to delegate? At which rung do I hesitate? Then I ask myself, “What would have to change in order for me to be willing to take one more step up The Ladder?” Usually my hesitation is a matter of trust. In order to take another step, in order to delegate the next part of the task, I would need to trust the person to do that part well. There are various ways to build that trust. Once I’ve clarified my hesitation by noticing which step I’m reluctant to take, I can usually see a path toward building trust.

I may be at different rungs of The Ladder with different people. With Dana, I may feel confident delegating up through the fifth rung, determining whether we’ve achieved the result. With Pat, I may be willing to delegate only doing the work itself. And even with a single person, I may be at different rungs for different kinds of tasks.

Build your own Ladder of Delegation and try it. Your ladder may not look like mine. Maybe you would slice tasks into parts differently than I have. Or maybe you would order them differently than I have. Adjust as you see fit. Then use your Ladder to improve your delegating. The key is to notice where on your Ladder you hesitate, to identify what would have to change so that you can take that next step, and to work toward that change.

Virginia Satir once said, “People prefer familiarity to comfort.”

In a recent conversation on the Extreme Programming mailing list, that phrase came up. Alistair Cockburn, an influential change agent in the software development industry, said, “I don’t know about you, but that phrase, besides ringing true, frightens the bejeebers out of me.”

My initial reaction was that it doesn’t frighten me at all. But given how frequently I advocate one change or another, I wasn’t sure why it didn’t frighten me. So I pondered.

I think it doesn’t frighten me because my persuasion style includes ways to make change familiar to people. I never thought about the things I do in those terms until I read Alistair’s message, but as I look at how I encourage change, much of it is about making the unfamiliar familiar.

For example, an HR executive named Susan once sought my help with some resistance she was encountering. I asked her a few simple questions, and that was all she needed from me. Though I wasn’t advocating any particular change in that situation, my questions had the effect of framing Susan’s problem so that it was suddenly very familiar to her. And once the problem became familiar, she knew exactly how to solve it.

Another example: Paul, an executive at a company that builds people’s dream houses, wanted my help with a customer relations problem. As I talked with Paul about the situation, he suddenly realized how he could solve the problem. As I look at that story now, I see that Paul’s epiphany was largely a result of casting his customer relations issue in a familiar light. Once the problem was familiar, he knew what to do.

In those examples, though I wasn’t advocating any particular change, familiarity played a key role in the changes my clients made.

When I’m promoting change, I do a number of things that have the effect of making change familiar. For example, I often work hard to find safe ways for people to try whatever I’m advocating. A small demonstration, maybe, or a “toy” situation to practice on, where failure doesn’t matter. Making it safe for people to try the new idea in a small way invites them to get a teeny tiny bit of experience, from which the new idea becomes a teeny tiny bit more familiar.

Also, I often tell stories, like the ones I linked to above, which can help to make new ideas more familiar.

I suspect that much of my persuasion style is about familiarity, though I never thought about it that way until recently. This gives me an idea for becoming a more effective change artist: What if I attend purposefully to familiarity, and the ways in which familiarity influences the way people respond to change? What new ideas does that give me for how to encourage change, and how to respond to resistance?