Delegation is an essential leadership skill, and delegating to a virtual workforce is especially challenging. Because Reputation Capital is a fully decentralized business with remote workers in multiple time zones, we all do a lot of virtual delegating as we work on our projects. Interested in learning from others who do the same, I talked to other leaders at remote companies to see how they handle virtual delegation. Here are some valuable tips.

Understand Your Process

It’s hard to tell someone else how to do something if you don’t fully understand it yourself.

When other people take the reins on a project, ensure that they know enough to see the task through, says Dave Davis of Redfly Marketing. He’s been managing virtual teams for 14 years and says that understanding your process is especially important for a new project, because everyone is eager to not make waves or look stupid.

“Even with a proper structure in place, you’d be surprised how many people will wait until halfway through a project to admit that they don’t understand something,” he says. “Rigorously testing the knowledge of a particular individual or team’s task at hand in an informal way at the beginning of a project can quite literally save a project.”

Clarity is key, agrees Alfredo Atanacio of Uassistme, a firm that provides virtual assistants and other professional services to companies including Rep Cap. “Clarify your expectations of working with someone remotely, and based on that you can delegate tasks that can be done virtually, provide the necessary training and you and your assistant will be ready to have a fulfilling virtual-assistance experience.”

Match the Communication Tool to the Task

Know when to use instant messaging versus email versus a phone call or a face-to-face meeting.

At Rep Cap, we IM each other throughout the day, but there are times when a phone call or face-to-face meeting is better. A new project or something that deviates from our usual process may merit a phone call.

“Call, email and chat as much as you can early in the project to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that they all know what they’re doing,” says John Jonas, owner of Replacemyself.com and Onlinejobs.ph.

Atanacio says that lack of communication is the most common mistake when it comes to virtual delegation, because issues that arise need to be addressed correctly and quickly.

In a recent survey led by online project management technology advisory firm Software Advice, 38 percent of respondents cited communication as the key issue when working within a virtual team.. “It’s important, then, that team leaders and managers help decide which communication channel will be used for assigning and communication about tasks,” says Noel Radley, project management researcher at Software Advice. “That way virtual team members know where to go to get a shared view of the work that needs to be done.”