Are you good at delegating?

I often hear managers say that they work such long hours because they don’t have anyone to delegate to. If you are in this position, do you know why? The benefits of being able to delegate are obvious. Effective delegation can save management time, motivate staff and aid personal development amongst colleagues. Weak delegation will lead to the opposite and cause conflict, de-motivate individuals, especially if they feel they are being overloaded and ultimately business goals and objectives may not be met. Delegation is a key management skill and it is important to recognise that whilst the manager or supervisor retains overall responsibility for the aims and objectives it is the individual who has the responsibility for achieving them. There are varying degrees of delegation and the manager must give some thought to the extent of autonomy an individual will be able to cope with. It is important not to give too much freedom especially if the individual you wish to delegate to has neither the skills, ability, knowledge nor the level of training required to manage the task effectively. It is also important to confirm with the individual what degree of autonomy they feel they adequately handle before delegating any tasks.

So why can’t you free up your time by delegating some tasks to others? Is it because you are worried that they can complete the task more quickly or more efficiently than you and thus put you in a bad light? Do they lack specific skills that you alone possess or that you just don’t trust them? Trusting colleagues requires a manager to become vulnerable to the actions of another colleague whilst having confidence that the colleague will undertake the task even if the manager’s ability to monitor or control the individual is at times constrained. You need to ask yourself why you don’t trust your colleague and how you can develop consistency in your working relationship. Theodore Roosevelt summed this up by saying that “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”