Thursday, October 29, 2009

A Guide To Effective And Efficient Delegation

By Martin Haworth

As a manager, it's useful to understand what delegation is and how valuable it can be for you. In fact, any business is usually run by managers operating at various levels who all need to delegate authority and tasks to their team members, so that they themselves can handle more relevant activities.

The hallmark of a strong leader is that it requires learning to let go and being strong enough to put your faith in others to do things that you do not need to do on your own.

For many managers, delegating work and authority seems to be nothing more than a means of exercising free will in handing down tasks and responsibilities to others, who must then complete the task assigned to them and be accountable for the outcomes.

However, in its truest sense, delegating tasks and authority is not really an exercise of free will; it is meant to be a means whereby a manager can alleviate heavy workload and additional responsibilities that they cannot do on their own. By delegating some work and authority to others, it allows you to free your time and focus on doing more important work.

It always pay to understand that you must be in agreement regarding the standards that you expect, in order to measure how successfully or otherwise the job has been completed. That said, obviously the standards that you require have to be attainable as well as realistic.

Another important aspect to properly delegating work, is understanding the need to grant some authority to the person to whom you are delegating work. This means that the employee to whom you are entrusting the job must take ownership, overcome roadblocks and be as self-sufficient in their work as you feel comfortable with.

To delegate work and tasks successfully also requires that you provide the employee your complete support. To do this requires that you identify the resources that are necessary for the employee to perform and complete the work entrusted to them.

Delegating tasks and responsibilities is something that you will be more effective with as you practice. Once you have learnt the fine art of delegating, you will soon find that you have more time on hand to devote to other and more important tasks.

After delegating activities, you will then need to look at the work done by the employee and use their performance as a yardstick with which to measure their effectiveness. Someone who performs their delegated work well and shoulders responsibility in a desired manner can be developed further, perhaps leading to later promotion, while an employee that fails to produce desired results may be best left at their existing level.

The bottom line is that managers can use delegation as a means to resolve short-term activities, where they themselves need support. In fact, by delegating it is possible to create enough time to personally deal with more important tasks, improving effectiveness, whilst being more efficient in your work, whilst developing your people too.

A good manager who delegates, will be able to manage better and those entrusting new and interesting tasks will be more motivated and committed to their work - and an amazing win-win that works for all.

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