When leadership is weighed on a traditional scale of personal skills, qualities, and competencies, delegation takes a back seat. However, as anyone in the top leadership positions will tell you - delegation is key. Delegating effectively demands more than simply establishing a formal process for assigning tasks. It is about taking personal responsibility for your organization's success by fostering ongoing relationships with employees and encouraging them to anticipate their own needs and use the team system to improve quality of work.
In this article, I'll introduce the concept of delegation, provide an overview of the advantages of using delegation as a management strategy, and focus on ways to effectuate delegation correctly within your organization.
From Here To There: Understanding Delegation
When we think about delegating a project or responsibility within our teams and departments, we tend to think of the deliverable - the actual task at hand. However, there are many other aspects to delegating - such as motivating employees to succeed by rewarding performance and dealing with their in-person needs. To learn more about these aspects, read my previous article - "From Here To There: An Introduction To Motivating Employees Through Performance-Based Pay.
What is Delegation?
Delegation can be understood within a broader context beyond just the tasks that you're delegating. For example, as a manager, when you delegate work to a member of your team, you have the ability to *control*. By this I mean that you alone have the final say over how you want to proceed. This can be both a good and bad thing.
For example, if you need help with research in order to complete an assignment, but you are completely certain what your answer will be - then by-passing the research would be a very strategic move on your part. However, this may not always work.
If you ask a friend to do research and they come back with the wrong answer, you may feel as if you need to help them understand why the answer is wrong. Or, instead of enforcing your own perspective, maybe you should let someone else decide for themselves.
This is where your *autonomy* can come in. When you trust in your team members' skills, competencies, and general ability to perform well on their own - then this is autonomy. By-passing or challenging them can be considered a form of non-delegation. When you encourage autonomy, you delegate.
What is Delegation NOT?
Some might believe that delegation is the same thing as letting someone else do your work for you. This is not true, because in order to delegate, you need to take responsibility for both the work and the eventual outcome. If someone else comes back with a project that they did not care about and just put their name on it - then you have failed at delegating. You delegated work that was not yours to do and then handed it over without any oversight or review - this is not delegation - this is absenteeism.
Delegation is NOT about just saying, "do this" without explaining why. Delegation is NOT about just saying, "do this" and then chasing after the person to make sure that they are actually doing it. Delegation is NOT about informing someone of a process or procedure, but not having any idea how they actually accomplish the task.
When delegating, you take responsibility for the results - good or bad. This means that you are responsible for communicating to your team members *why* a project matters. It requires that your employees know *how* to do their work so that you can use your knowledge and experience to decide if an employee can handle something on their own or if you should be involved in some capacity (such as providing some form of feedback).
Post a Comment