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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Copyright 2003, RAN ONE Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from www.ranone.com.