RightToLead.com

Experience shows that most of the time people refuse to delegate work because they wonder how they will fill the spare time they might end up with. To build your motivation about delegating is to be recognize the value of the time you will gain.

It’s important to spend some time before you embark on a ‘delegating-spree’, by understanding how you will utilize the time gained in delivering the needs of your role; the challenges you will be able to spend time overcoming and the value you can give back to your people, not only in being able to spend more time with them and also in the learning they will gain as they develop new skills.

Why Delegate?

There are two primary reasons for delegating.

Firstly, delegating suitable tasks allows you to save your expensive time and utilize it for tasks that can prove to be more economically productive. By working on more relevant tasks rather than being tied down by lower level activities, you will earn your keep better.

Secondly (and at least as importantly), dynamic delegation allows you to develop your people by increasing their skills, their individuality and their areas of responsibility. The key for all this lies in good delegation. Wrong delegation can lead to a number of problems that include it being done badly, done erroneously, or worse, not being done at all.

Causes Of Poor Delegation

“I can do it better”

Everyone is familiar with this kind of thinking. Most people presume that if they ask someone else to do something, they would have to redo the work because it wouldn’t be done ‘properly’. This is usually the result of either poor communication on your part or because you recruited people who were not suited for the job you assigned them to.

“Too Hard to Teach”

This is very familiar as well. People presume that it would more time consuming and strenuous to train other people. Hence they do the work themselves. This might be true but once the delegate is trained, the amount of work that gets done will prove how worthwhile the process actually is.

“Insufficient Time”

Often we may perceive that our present employees are all occupied with assignments of some nature and it is impossible to give them more work to do. This is where we need to reduce work pressure where possible by streamlining. We could then assign individuals to work based on their skills and credentials.

“Wrong People”

Sometimes we realize that the people who are working for us are not suited for their job titles. This too can be a major cause for failure of delegation.

“Poor communication”

We often find our employees doing something that turns out to be almost the opposite of what we had assigned them in the first place. We should ensure that we make ourselves clear on our instructions. After going over the details we should make the delegates summarize, so that we can be sure they have understood correctly. It’s worth ‘keeping an eye’ on progress, especially at the start of a project.

“Insufficient Time”

We should never wait until the last moment to delegate tasks. We should work to create a habit of taking steps sooner than later. It’ fairer to them, means we have less ongoing problems and encourages successful outcomes. Delegation must be introduced when there is enough time, not when time is short - especially to start with.

Effective delegation will assist the even distribution of both your time and your efforts. It will develop your team and make it stronger, more valuable, more efficient and trustworthy. If you want your production to succeed, you should put in more time on efforts that produce and less on those that are mainly administrative.