What are Leadership and Delegation?
Delegation is the act of assigning tasks and responsibilities, together with the necessary authority (leadership) to carry them out, to your employees. Effective delegation can save you time and motivate your team by demonstrating that you trust them and value their abilities.
Common Mistakes Managers Make When Delegating
- Don’t give enough freedom
- Don’t communicate clearly
- Aren’t open to new ideas
How to Delegate
Firstly, concentrate on the most important matters yourself. You should be doing activities that only you can do (that involve a high level of skill and, ideally, that you enjoy doing). When delegating, set broad controls and allow your team to make mistakes.
Communicate Clearly
Take the time to make your requirements known to your team member. Give a clear picture of the results you expect, the time limits involved and the authority being transferred to that team member. Also, make sure other people in the organisation know about the delegation so they can support it.
Encourage Participation
Employees are least satisfied and least motivated when they can’t inject their own ideas into the project. They need to be able to display their own talents.
Examine Results Not Methods
An effective delegator needs to accept varying approaches to achieving results. Since no two people approach a solution in exactly the same way, you need to concentrate on whether the desired results are being achieved or not or whether they are being achieved your way. A poor delegator says, ‘This is what we want to achieve, and this is how we will proceed.’ An effective delegator says, ‘Here is the result we have agreed we want to accomplish; give me your best recommendations as to how we can get that result.’
Show Trust
Allow your team members to get the job done without micromanaging. Excessive checking will convince the employees that they are not really responsible for the job.
Delegate Credit Only
You cannot delegate blame. Remember that you bear the final responsibility for the actions of your team
Know Your Team
You need to know what and how much you can delegate to a person. You should gradually increase the level of responsibility and importance of the tasks as results are successfully achieved.
Things to Avoid
Don’t let the chain of command get too long. If there are too many levels of responsibility, some information will never trickle all the way to the bottom.
Don’t ask one subordinate to report to two people. It will be impossible for the subordinate to decide whose work comes first.
Don’t make fuzzy job assignments. Grey areas between positions simply invite overlap, conflict and duplication of effort.
Don’t be too rigid. Try to maintain flexibility to provide for situations that inevitably crop up and need nonstandard solutions.
Exercise
Make a list of three things you are doing today that you should be delegating. Identify who you will delegate them to, and write down how you will go about doing so. Then, delegate.