Delegation Skills

Image sources: hrcrossing.com, en.wikipedia.org

Many people think that delegating is a sign of laziness.  This couldn't be further from the truth.  Delegating well is very hard work and it is essential for a well functioning company.  So why is it important?

1.  As a manager, or an aspiring manager, it is imperative that that the manager leverage their knowledge, not their time.  The way to do this is through delegating.  When starting out at the bottom of the company ladder, a person is hired to get a job done by using intellect and time.  They do what they are told and hopefully they do it well.  Over time, they gain the knowledge and experience that will make their superiors want others to be as good as they are.  Upper management want others to produce as well as their star employee, so they promote them to manager.

2.  Now that you are a manager and trying to get the most out of your team, you must mentor and challenge those that report to you.  You do this by delegating important tasks and assignments to them.  Most people say they want to be challenged in their job, but they also want to be successful.  It is your job as the manager to give them tasks and assignments that you know how to do, and could do yourself, but by delegating them to your subordinates you allow them to be challenged, and with your guidance, allow them to be (and feel) successful.

3.  Succession Planning.  Hopefully your boss is doing the same for you and delegating to you many important tasks.  Hopefully he/she won't get run over by a bus, or recruited away to some other company, but if either of those things happens, there will be an opening.  Because you have been essentially doing their job for a long time, it is time for you to move up.  Have you prepared someone in your area to take over your job?  You have if you have delegated effectively. 

4.  Every job has important work, routine work, and clerical work.  They all have to be done.  There will always be important work that the manager must do on their own, no matter how well they have delegated important work to their subordinates.  This is work that is really the work of the manager's boss, or something that the manager hasn't yet taught a subordinate to do.  It is imperative that a manager creates time to do this high priority and important work.  Effective delegating allows a manager to free up their time so that they can do important and high priority work that only they have the expertise to perform.

For a company to be healthy, every level of management must know why it is important to delegate and have the skills to do it effectively.  If everyone knows why it is important, and buys into the concept, then tasks and decisions will naturally be driven down to the lowest level that can reasonably handle them.

Now that you understand why delegating is important and you want to get started, what should you delegate.  I've already given several clues.  Should a manager delegate important, routine, or clerical tasks?  Many managers want to delegate the routine, and/or clerical tasks to their subordinates and keep the important ones for themselves.  This would be a mistake.  An effective manager will delegate the most business critical and important tasks that their subordinate can handle.  This seems counter intuitive to many managers, but this is how to develop a staff and get them to buy into the manager's desire to give them tasks.  If subordinates work on important things, they are more important and they will feel important to their manager and the company.

So now here's the hard part.  How much supervision should a manager provide to a person to whom they have delegated an important task.  Obviously this will vary with the individual.  But what is most important is that the manager is still responsible for the completion of the task and accountable to their boss, or the company for the completion of the task.   Here is what I suggest.  There will always be those individuals that a manager will consider their "go to" person and there will be those who are barely capable of doing the tasks in their minimal job description.  Both types of individuals are needed.  A manager must stretch them both.  The first is the manager's successor and the second is the one who does the routine and clerical tasks.

In today's workplace, everyone is busy.  A manager may want to delegate to their subordinates, but the manager believes their subordinates are already stretched thin.  The manager may come to the conclusion that if the subordinate gets one more task, they will burn out.  Obviously this is an extreme hypothetical situation, but I want to use it to illustrate a point.  Let's say that the manager is also close to burnout.  Is it better for the company if the manager burns out, or if the subordinate burns out?  The answer is obvious, but many managers would argue that it is their responsibility to make sure their subordinates are treated fairly and if that means helping them do their work to prevent them from burning out, or quitting, then that's what they should do.  After all, there is no time to train a new employee and the company will lose everything that has been  invested in them.  Unfortunately this is the exact wrong answer.  It is important that the executives and managers in a company protect themselves from burn out, or overburdening themselves with non-critical tasks.  It is also not just burn out that the manager must worry about.  The executives and managers of a company are expected to make good decisions, that are the result of consideration of all the available options.  If they allow themselves to get bogged down in the details of the work that subordinates could do, then they lose their effectiveness.  That's why it is critical that a company preach delegation and learn to do it effectively at all levels of the organization.  An excellent illustration of this point is the movie "12 O'clock High" with Gregory Peck.  Watch the movie with the whole management team and stop it frequently to discuss what is happening.  It is a great movie and one of the best leadership movies Hollywood has ever produced.

The only thing left to discuss on the topic of delegating skills is how does the manager effectively delegate tasks and assignments to their subordinates.  Obviously a manager can't just throw the tasks at them and hope everything works out well.  Here are elements of a properly executed task:

1. Be specific.  What is the deliverable to the manager, or the company.  How long does the person have to complete the task.  Are they expected to do this only one time, or is this to become part of their job responsibilities going forward.
2. Be realistic.  Delegating a task that can not be accomplished, or can't be completed in the allotted time will degrade the manager's credibility as an expert delegator.  I like to be "over reasonable" whenever possible.  Ask the subordinate how long a task should take.  If they say two weeks and you can live with three weeks, give them the extra week.  That way, if inevitably they don't complete the task in three weeks, it is clear to both the manager and the subordinate that the performance has been unacceptable.  The subordinate will respond better to the repercussions of this poor performance if they know the manager was "over reasonable" in their expectations.
3. Make sure progress and completion is measurable. 
4. Make level of autonomy very clear.  This can range from gathering the data and waiting to be told how to proceed, to deciding how to proceed but getting permission first, to implementing decisions but keeping the manager apprised, to implementing what the subordinate thinks best without checking back. 

A few more comments on delegating. 

1. Make sure to give complete credit to the person delegated a task or assignment.  Upper management will know that the manager is ultimately responsible for the completion of the task and that the manager accomplished this through the management of their team.  If the manager takes credit without recognizing the person who actually did the work, they will destroy their credibility.  
2. The ultimate goal of any delegation should be to get it off the manager's desk permanently.  That means that whenever possible, anything that is delegated to a subordinate should become part of their job description.  The more a manager can do this, the more time they will have to perform higher level tasks and work on the assignments their boss has delegated to them.