“Management is the art of getting things done through people” – Mary Parker Follett.
What is Delegation?
Delegation is the act of entrusting the responsibility and authority to the subordinate to carry out specific tasks, activities and projects while dictating expected outcomes and timeframe of completion. However, the person who delegates the work remains accountable for the result of the delegated work.
Why is delegation important? What are its benefits?
- Decreases your stress
- Gives you time to focus on other tasks or projects
- Helps you build your leadership skills
- Balanced workload
- Increases the overall productivity of the organisation
- Better use of human resources
- It increases the job satisfaction of employees
- Helps in developing new leaders and building new skills.
What not to delegate?
- Tasks that contain confidential information
- Tasks that you don’t like doing
- Your specified responsibilities
What is not delegation?
- Dumping work
- To give orders
- Lack of accountability for the work to be completed successfully
Steps in delegation:
1. Identify tasks and person:
Identify the lists of tasks or projects that can be delegated. Clearly understand the skills and competence required by the job and choose the right person to delegate.
2. Demonstrate:
Communicate the requirements, specification, expected outcome and the deadlines for the assigned tasks. Give examples of similar work if any. Make sure that the subordinate has understood what needs to be done. Ask for clarification.
3. Allocate Authority, information and resources:
Grant the authority to determine the process. Provide access to all the necessary information.
4. Support and Monitor:
Schedule follow-up meetings. Review the progress. Assist when requested, appreciate the progress and give feedback. It’s okay to help and support but do not encourage “reverse delegation” as this will create a pattern in the upcoming projects.
For managers, it is necessary to delegate tasks, but a few managers do not implement this at the workplace due to a few reasons such as:
- Their ego- They want to be on the limelight, and they feel that delegation may reduce their influence in the organisation.
- They like things to be done in their way only and feel that only they can do it better than anyone else.
- They feel like their subordinate may not accept the additional work.
- Lack of trust/confidence in the subordinate: They feel that the tasks may not be completed on time or it may be incorrect and they will have to redo it.
- They feel that it’s easy and faster if they do it themselves instead of explaining how to do and then monitor it.
- Fear of competition: what if the subordinate does the task better then them? What if that leads to their replacement.
- Lack of skills: Some manager may not have the ability to lead the subordinate, communicate effectively, train/guide people and not knowing the concept of Delegation.
Similarly, there may be obstacles in successful delegation due to the subordinates as well, such as:
- Dependency: Some subordinates refuse to take responsibilities, and they depend on their managers to tackle problems or make decisions
- Fear: They fear that if they make any mistakes, they will be criticised or punished
- Lack of Information: If improper information or no information is provided, it creates a hesitation to accept the task
- Lack of self-confidence: Not confident to take new challenges
- Superior- subordinate relationship: if the manager is very critical, not giving appreciations, trying to control the subordinate, and micromanaging the person. These become a barrier in the successful delegation.
Having a clear understanding of when to delegate, what to delegate, how to delegate, how to overcome the barriers will help you in successful delegation which will in return yield benefits to the superior, subordinate and the organisation.