1) Select the most important task on your agenda and delegate it on your subordinate. Assure him or her that you are ready to offer assistance should it be needed, but grant them enough space. If you have prepared your team well, anyone will be ready to meet such a challenge.
Similarly, you can schedule several weeks of vacation for yourself and award your place to a trusted worker. Empower the worker to act for you even at high management meetings and customers negotiations. Prove that your trust is genuine.
2) Identify a problem in your business and let your team solve it. Don’t throw in any suggestions; tell your team that as long as their proposal is realistic and not prohibitively expensive, you will support it.
3) Delegate an important task to an under-performing subordinate. Tell him or her that you trust him. Since you already know the person is performing at a low level, your perception of him or her cannot be harmed by a failure. However, it can be a real success, and maybe even a turning point for the worker.
4) At a meeting, ask everyone to enunciate their greatest strength and greatest weakness. Be the first. Afterwards, you can use this knowledge to better manage your subordinates – you can build their confidence with their strong points and set goals for improvement in the areas they defined as their weaknesses.