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Effective Delegation -- It's an Art
Almost every business owner has
too much to do and not enough time to do it in.
But there is a solution - let your team members take some of the weight
off your back by learning how to delegate effectively.
Are you taking work home every night? Do jobs pile up when you're not at
work to do them? Do you feel that if you want a job done, you have to do
it yourself?
Are you a manager who constantly complains of having too much to do and
not enough time to do it in?
Then you either need to start
delegating, or if you’re already doing it, delegate effectively.
Delegation is one of the hardest things to learn because it involves
relinquishing control over certain parts of the business to others.
But as a business grows, delegation becomes essential - it frees you to
concentrate on doing what you do best.
The manager who tries to do everything alone is a candidate for high
blood pressure, frazzled nerves, and possibly an early grave.
Their energy and concentration are likely to be so dissipated - they
also run the risk of producing inferior work and losing customers.
If you're run off your feet trying to do everything yourself because you
have no one to share the workload, it's time to start hiring team
members.
If you already have team members and you're still run off your feet,
you're obviously not using them effectively.
Some managers pay lip service to delegation but continue to act as if
they were the only ones who could do anything important. They tend to
delegate trivial jobs which involve little or no responsibility or
decision-making.
According to Gerard Blair, University of Edinburgh lecturer and author
of Starting to Manage: the essential skills (IEEE, 1996), delegation is
“primarily about entrusting your authority to others.”
“When you delegate, you give someone authority to act and react to
situations without [constantly] referring back to you,” he wrote.
To illustrate his point he sketched the example of a cleaner being asked
to empty bins every Tuesday and Friday.
If the bins overflowed on Wednesday, too bad - you would have to wait
until Friday for them to be emptied again since that was the
instruction.
If, however, the cleaner had been told to empty the bins as often as
necessary, you would have delegated authority to the cleaner to decide
when the bins needed emptying.
Since overflowing bins obviously need emptying, the cleaner would have
used his or her discretionary power to empty them.
Delegation involves not just asking someone to do a job, but empowering
them to use their intelligence and make decisions about how and when the
job should be done.
Some managers feel they will lose control of their business if they
allow anyone else to make decisions.
But, as Blair notes, this need not be the case.
“If you train your employees to apply the same criteria you would
yourself (by example and full explanation) they will be exercising your
control on your behalf.”
"And since they will witness many more situations over which control may
be exercised (you can't be in several places at once}, that control is
exercised more diversely and rapidly than you could exercise it
yourself."
The sort of jobs you might delegate include those which you can teach or
explain to others, and any job for which team members have more
experience or knowledge than you.
Don't make the mistake of delegating only the boring or routine jobs. If
they must be done, distribute them as evenly as possible while spreading
the more interesting jobs generously. This way, your team members will
be keen and motivated.
According to temporary staffing service, Office Team, you can match
projects to team members.
“Determine which assignments would best suit which employees [and] match
responsibilities to each person's strengths. Offer projects you know
they will enjoy. [Team members are] more enthusiastic if it's something
they love to do or want to learn more about.”
And once you have decided to delegate, leave it to the team member you
have chosen to do the job.
If you peer over their shoulder and make constant suggestions or
criticisms, they will feel intimidated and unable to exercise their
discretionary powers.
But that doesn’t mean you should relinquish all responsibility and
control.
As a manager, you are responsible for your team members and for the
outcome of any project. You need to keep an eye on things without riding
on people’s backs.
Establish when team members will report to you and what they will
report, and let them know they can approach you or another person with
appropriate experience and knowledge any time they have problems.
You should delegate the objectives and results, not the procedure. By
forcing your own ideas on your team members, you are repressing their
creativity. Realize you may have to trade in short-term errors for
long-term results.
The upside is more time and less pressure on you while still getting
everything done. |
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