Effective delegation is one of the critical components of effective leadership - so if you can get your delegation skills right, you will probably also be performing well in a major part of your managerial role.
At this point it is worth being clear on the first rule of delegating: “You can delegate the entire job but you cannot delegate all the responsibility.” This worries some people just in case things go wrong, but if you delegate effectively, the job should go according to plan - and the consequences of not delegating are even worse.
The benefits of effective delegation are:
Maximizing your time resources to leave you time for the tasks you should be doing.
Maximizing team performance.
Giving each task to the person or team best suited to it.
Effectively using the experts who have knowledge that you do not have.
Helping the individual or team develop new skills and enhance knowledge.
Motivating the team more - because they are being given responsibility and are trusted to get on with jobs.
Enhancing your role as team leader - by the improvement in team performance and demonstrated by the extra responsibility you have given to people.
Improving your leadership skills.
The dangers of not delegating effectively are:
Spending too much time supervising others and not having time for your own work.
Not allocating jobs to the person or team best suited to them - so they either do not get done or take longer than they should.
Ineffective use of team skills or expertise - not using specialized knowledge of experts.
The team, and individuals, not developing new skills or extending their knowledge.
The team, and individuals within it, becoming demotivated because they are not being given the responsibility they both want and can accept.
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Have you ever thought about why you delegate some jobs and not others? Is there some formula that you can use to aid your decision? One way to help you start is for you to write down three of the jobs you delegate to others and three you do yourself. Next to each one, write why you delegate or do that job yourself. Look over the answers and see if there is a pattern of factors that determine why you hand over some jobs and keep others. If there is, what mix of factors makes you delegate and what combination makes you do the job yourself?
You can analyze why you allocate different jobs to different people in the same way. Write down six jobs you delegate and beside each enter the reason why you delegate this job to this person. Is there a pattern of common factors that you consider when delegating?
Having decided that you want to delegate a job and to whom you want to allocate it, how do you tell them what you want them to do? Does it vary for jobs involving one person or more than one person? Do you brief them in a formal or informal way? What information do you need to give someone you are delegating to? This is important - just briefly jot down the type of information you normally give to people when you delegate to them.
Having delegated the job to someone, how much freedom do you give them to get on with it? Do you explain in specific detail or just tell them what you want achieved at the end? Would you give different people differing levels of freedom for the same job? Write down two jobs your team does where the amount of freedom you give to the person doing the job varies according to who is doing it. Why does your degree of freedom vary - what is the critical factor in this decision?
Learn more about which jobs to be delegated only at the University Canada West, one of the best universities in Canada, offering various business and management related programs.