One of the most difficult things I had to learn as a young business person was effective management delegation. I was afraid to delegate tasks to those beneath me; partially because I was used to doing so much on my own and partially because I was afraid the job wouldn’t be completed to my own personal standards. Rather than take the risk, I tried to finish projects by myself and rarely asked for help.

What a mistake! I soon had more work than I could handle and the quality of my completed tasks was suffering; not because I didn’t care but because I simply didn’t have enough time. I quickly realized that delegating tasks is not only integral to the successful completion of projects, but it is also an effective method of time management!

When your superiors give you a task, you automatically become responsible for the project and can be held accountable for the outcome. You’ll then delegate the task to an individual or group, thus transferring responsibility to those who are going to do the physical work. In the end, however, your superiors are going to look to you for the end product and you will always be held accountable for the quality of the work.

Your team should be properly trained and prepared for any task you hand them. You have, after all, spent countless hours working with them so there should be no question in your mind as to whether or not they can handle any given situation. Some managers are afraid of giving up power or control, but this is also an unreasonable excuse for avoiding delegation.

Delegation can be a scary concept for both new and seasoned managers, but it is one you have to learn to deal with rather quickly. There is not a single person in the world that can do everything, and you’ve been given the authority to hire a team for a reason. As long as you have taken the time to properly train your new hires, there should be no reason to hold back when it comes to delegating tasks.

Take a close look at the members of your team. Are they properly prepared for anything you may have to throw at them? If not, you haven’t done your job and you need to make a plan to remedy the situation as soon as possible!

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training

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Here is a very quick and simple, yet extremely powerful delegating tip.  This method of delegating certain tasks also helps in team building and cohesiveness, training, management and leadership within the team. 

Sooner or late you will have a situation where you have many staff that have been around a long time; which of course is a good thing.  When you are fortunate enough to have those long time experienced pros who stay current and continue to improve; you have nothing less than a treasure.  But, as with everything, there is the 80/20 rule with the more experienced, long-time team members and sometimes some of these ‘old pros’ become a little lethargic and comfortable in the fact that they ‘know it all.’ 

This causes many problems:

1. More experienced team members sometimes fail to keep up with new and emerging trends and industry advancements
2. More experienced members sometimes begin to take the “basics” for granted or forget them entirely
3. More experienced members sometimes feel they do not have to do their ‘homework’ anymore.
4. The above begins to cause dissension in the team as newer staff begin to feel a sense of favoritism toward certain employees by management
5. Communication begins to break down as the newer members begin to shun the old pros and a lack of mutual disrespect develops
6. And more

Well, this delegating tip can help: Simply delegate those tasks that involve the newer, more advanced topics, training topics or even the old basic topics and assign them to the old pros to teach.  When faced with the job to give a report on the new trend or the new product, the team member must him or herself become an expert.  When the long-time employee has the task to teach the new member the basics, they themselves must re-learn those basics.  Take those tasks that you usually do, and delegate them to the people who need to learn them the most. 

When the long-time member is successful and does a good job:

1. He or she has re-learned or learned the topic or training
2. He or she has had to do some real homework
3. They realize that they do not know everything and must keep up to date
4. They begin to empathize with the newer members as they remember what starting out was like
5. Newer members begin to respect the old pros more as they see that they really are experts and practice what they preach. 
6. Newer members begin to lose the feeling that management is playing favorites

Now, in the event that the long-term member screws it up, it actually solves a lot of problems as well:

1. They now realize that they are not as sharp as they thought
2. They are brought back “down to earth”
3. You now have a tangible situation to point to, to suggest improvement
4. A sense of camaraderie ensues as the newer members feel that those long time pros are just as human as they
5. The pro realizes that he or she must stay up to date and do the homework

The common way of thinking is to delegate a task to the person most qualified to compete it.  However, for some things do the opposite: delegate the task to the person who most needs to LEARN it, and watch what happens!

I hope this tip is useful?

Sean

Sean McPheat

MTD Management Training

0800 849 6732

Hi there,

I hope you are keeping well?

Here’s an email I received from Don Aston last week about delegation:

"Dear Sean, my problem is that I take on too much and don’t share tasks out across my team. This is through fear of them not doing a good job and I suppose the fear of just asking them to do something - sounds weird doesn’t it? Have you got any pointers as to how I can delegate more of my work?
Thanks again for all of your help.
Donald"

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