By Mike Cieri, Vice President, Mardac Consultants
A manager who does not delegate is not managing.
Delegation is accomplishing organizational purposes through the proper utilization of people.
Defined this way, delegation is equal with leadership. In fact, delegation involves skills that are necessary qualities of leaders.
Only responsibilities that demand personal attention, such as handling a performance problem, or duties inherent in the manager’s job, such as setting his or her unit’s goals, should not be delegated.
There are many reasons managers use to justify not delegating. Some common reasons for not delegating are:
• Insufficient time
• The perception that the job is too important to take risks
• The manager’s belief that he/she can do the job best
• The fact that the manager enjoys doing certain jobs
• A lack of confidence in subordinates
• The desire to maintain control
• Fear that a subordinate might do the job better than the manager
• Concern that the manager’s boss will think that the manager is not working.
It is important to note that the extent to which delegation occurs reflects a manager’s personality and sense of personal competence as well as his or her sense of subordinates’ competence. Furthermore, a manager who does not delegate is not managing. There is one additional reason that managers do not delegate:
Delegation in 5 steps:
1. Preparation: establishing the goals of the delegation, specifying the task that needs to be accomplished, and deciding who should accomplish it;
2. Planning: meeting with the subordinate to describe the task and to ask the subordinate to devise a plan of action;
3. Discussion: reviewing the objectives of the task as well as the subordinate’s plan of action, any potential obstacles, and ways to avoid or deal with these obstacles;
4. Audit: monitoring the progress and making adjustments in response to unforeseen problems;
5. Appreciation: accepting the completed task and acknowledging the subordinate’s efforts.
Important points to keep in mind:
1. Unless the manager knows what he/she wants in terms of results, the process will fail.
2. The manager must stretch the capabilities of his/her staff; repeatedly assigning the same jobs to the same people because they do them well does not foster development within the department
3. The manager must let the chosen subordinate know how the assigned task fits into the department’s/company’s major objectives and to what extent the subordinate is empowered to act. Without this information, it is difficult for the subordinate to operate independently.
4. The delegation should never be revoked. Doing so undermines what a manager wishes to establish: initiative.
5. The manager should never accept unfinished or unsatisfactory work. Such acceptance communicates tolerance of low standards.
6. Completed work should be evaluated against the results that the manager wanted to achieve, not against the way in which the manager would have achieved them.
7. A satisfactory outcome should be recognized. Many delegations fail because hard work goes unappreciated and forgotten.
Next nonth, we will explore the 5 steps to successful delegation in more depth.
Mike Cieri, MSIR, is Vice President of Mardac Consultants and been in the Human Resource Management field for over 20 years. During this time he has held a variety of management positions, including several years on the executive management team of a large corporation as Vice President of Human Resources and Safety, as well as Vice President of Operations. His areas of expertise include legal compliance, workers’ compensation, leadership development, performance management, coaching, training and development, compensation analysis, strategic planning, and developing best practices.
Mike has a Masters degree in Industrial Relations & Human Resources from the University of Oregon, is a Certified Safety Director, and a national speaker. He has a coaching certificate from The Coaches Training Institute, San Rafael, California and a Practioner’s Certificate in Neuro-Linguistic Programming from the NLP Institute of Oregon, as well as a certified MBTI trainer through CAPT. Mike also is an adjunct professor at Oregon State University in the college of business.
