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BUSINESS SKILLS TIPS 23 – EFFECTIVE DELEGATION
Do you stomp around feeling stressed, overpowered with work and not enough time? Have you tried to delegate tasks to other people only to have a disaster of a result and have now given up? What you need is to learn more about the rules of Effective Delegation, and how this can answer all your needs.
When you begin to delegate you must fully understand the situation from the standpoint of the person you are delegating jobs to. They will most likely be afraid that they might get it wrong and earn criticism or worse. They might also fear recriminations, wrath and disaster as an outcome, all by themselves. Fear can sometimes be what causes people to mis-hear what you are saying, and it is fear that blocks understanding sometimes too. So before you start, say something nice to put the other person at ease. Then break down the task in easy steps and get them to write each step down if possible. When you have finished instructing them, check that they have completely understood and that you are both in agreement with what is to take place, to ensure effective delegation.
Step two is about the degree of authority you are giving away to the other person. This means how much permission you have given them to take action before checking back to you. They may be able to take full authority for the decisions that they may need to take to carry out the task. This would apply if they have done the task successfully for you previously. You might want them to do the task but refer back to you with alternative options if they meet up with problems. Alternatively, you might prefer them to take no action but to refer the matter back to you if a decision has to be made so you can make effective decisions. You might take this option if the person has never done this task before or if they are still in training.
Basically, giving away the authority to act is all about the amount of control that you want the individual to have over the outcome. It is based on previous performance and trust. There are 6 stages involved and these will be discussed in part 2, tomorrow.
Step 3 is all about responsibility. In a way, it is tied up with Authority too, so it depends exactly how much responsibility the individual is to have over actions and outcome. If they have total responsibility when they first undertake the task they might be afraid to act. If they have no responsibility at all, they might keep bringing information to your door every time they do a bit of research or move from one stage of the task to another. You might get irritated by this, so be sure how much responsibility you give away at the start, and make sure that both of you fully understand a), the task and the stages or methods to be employed to carry each stage out, and b) the degree of authority and the degree of responsibility you are giving them for the task or tasks or stages of the task. This way, you stand a very good chance of the outcome turning out the way you imagined it would.
Tomorrow we will be looking at what can go wrong, and ways you can avoid that using effective delegation.