Delegation - Getting the help you need, when you need it

This is an article on DELEGATION which I have downloaded from Internet. I am sorry, I do recollect the source. Vivek Hattangadi


Introduction:

There is a limit to the amount of work that you can do on your own. There is only so much value that you can deliver to your organization without the help of other people.

If you are successful in your career, at some stage the demands on you will become greater than you are able to cope with on your own. As they do, you must learn to delegate parts of your work to be able to manage your increased workload, and further expand the value you can deliver.
Delegation is the skill that you must acquire to manage this work, and to ensure that it is successfully delivered. It is also a skill you can use to bring other people's expertise to bear in your your work, particularly in areas where you do not have the skills or the temperament to do the best possible job. Furthermore, the transfer of responsibility involved with delegation develops your staff, and can increase their enjoyment of their roles

How to ‘delegating work’ to other people

Delegation involves passing responsibility for completion of work to other people. This section examines the reasons you should delegate, how to delegate, failure to delegate and what should not be delegated.

Delegation is useful for the following reasons:
1.Once people have learned how to work with you, they can take responsibility for jobs you do not have time to do.
2.You can develop people to look after routine tasks that are not cost-effective for you to carry out
3.It transfers work to people whose skills in a particular area are better than yours, saving time.
4.Transfer of responsibility develops your staff, and can increase their enjoyment of their jobs

The ideal position to reach as a manager is one where your staff carries out all the routine activities of your team. This leaves you time to plan, think, and improve the efficiency of what you are doing.

How to delegate

The following points may help you in delegating jobs:
Deciding what to delegate: One way of deciding what to delegate is simply to list the things that you do which could be more effectively done by someone either more skilled in a particular area, or less expensive. Alternatively you may decide to use your activity log as the basis of your decision to delegate: this will show you where you are spending large amounts of time on low yield jobs.

Select capable, willing people to carry out jobs: How far you can delegate jobs will depend on the ability, experience and reliability of your assistants. Good people will be able to carry out large jobs with no intervention from you. Inexperienced or unreliable people will need close supervision to get a job done to the correct standard. However if you coach, encourage and give practice to them you may improve their ability to carry out larger and larger tasks unsupervised.


Delegate complete jobs: It is much more satisfying to work on a single task than on many fragments of the task. If you delegate a complete task to a capable assistant, you are also more likely to receive a more elegant, tightly integrated solution.

Explain why the job is done, and what results are expected: When you delegate a job, explain how it fits into the overall picture of what you are trying to achieve. Ensure that you communicate effectively:
the results that are needed
the importance of the job
the constraints within which it should be carried out
the deadlines for completion
internal reporting dates when you want information on the progress of the project

Then let go! Once you have decided to delegate a task, let your assistant get on with it. Review the project on the agreed reporting dates, but do not constantly look over their shoulders. Recognize that your assistants may know a better way of doing something than you do. Accept that there may be different ways of achieving a particular task, and also that one of the best ways of really learning something is through making mistakes. Always accept mistakes that are not caused by idleness, and that are learned from.

Give help and coach when requested: It is important to support your subordinates when they are having difficulties, but do not do the job for them. If you do, then they will not develop the confidence to do the job themselves.

Accept only finished work: You have delegated a task to take a workload off you. If you accept only partially completed jobs back, then you will have to invest time in completing them, and your assistant will not get the experience he or she needs in completing projects.


Give credit when a job has been successfully completed: Public recognition both reinforces the enjoyment of success with the assistant who carried out the task and sets a standard for other employees.

Why do people fail to delegate?

Despite the many advantages of delegation, some managers do not delegate.
This can be for the following reasons:
Lack of time: Delegating jobs does take time. In the early stages of taking over a job you may need to invest time in training people to take over tasks. Jobs may take longer to achieve with delegation than they do for you to do by yourself, when coaching and checking are taken into account. In time, with the right people, you will find that the time taken up reduces significantly as your coaching investment pays back.

Perfectionism - fear of mistakes: Just as you have to develop staff to do jobs quickly without your involvement, you will have to let people make mistakes, and help them to correct them. Most people will, with time, learn to do jobs properly.

Enjoying 'getting my hands dirty': By doing jobs yourself you will probably get them done effectively. If, however, your assistants are standing idle while you do this, then your department will be seriously inefficient. Bear in mind the cost of your time and the cost of your department's time when you are tempted to do a job yourself.

Fear of surrendering authority: Whenever you delegate, you surrender some element of authority (but not of responsibility!) This is inevitable. By effective delegation, however, you get the benefits of adequate time to do YOUR job really well.


Fear of becoming invisible: Where your department is running smoothly with all routine work effectively delegated, it may appear that you have nothing to do. Now you have the time to think and plan and improve operations (and plan your next career step!)

Belief that staff ‘are not up to the job': Good people will often under-perform if they are bored. Delegation will often bring the best out of them. People who are not so good will not be effective unless you invest time in them. Even incompetent people can be effective, providing they find their level. The only people who cannot be reliably delegated to are those whose opinions of their own abilities are so inflated that they will not co-operate.

It is common for people who are newly promoted to managerial positions to have difficulty delegating. Often they will have been promoted because they were good at what they were doing. This brings the temptation to continue trying to do their previous job, rather than developing their new subordinates to do the job well.
What should not be delegated?

While you should delegate as many tasks as possible that are not cost effective for you to carry out, ensure that you do not delegate the control of your team. Remember that you bear ultimate responsibility for the success or failure of what you are trying to achieve.
Effective delegation involves achieving the correct balance between effective control of work and letting people get on with jobs in their own way.

You can send your comments at:
vivekhattangadi@yahoo.co.in