According to statistical surveys, more than 90% of managers answered positively to the question: “Do you delegate your authority?” However, few of them were able to expand the answer and talk about how they do it and most importantly - why. What is delegate? Is it really necessary?
Benefits
First, let’s try to formulate a clear definition of this action: to delegate is to delegate part of the manager’s authority to subordinates with all the ensuing consequences. What does this give the leader? Firstly, it frees up time for solving issues and tasks that cannot be passed on to anyone, and time, as you know, is the most valuable thing that a business person has. Secondly, this allows the lower-level personnel to gain experience, to learn professionally without interruption from direct activities, so to speak, “work in the field”. And thirdly, to delegate - this means monitoring personnel in order to identify proactive and sensible employees who are able to form a powerful and productive team that does not need constant monitoring. The whole process of curation is to issue a task and accept a report on its implementation.
back side
If everything is so rosy, why is top management in no hurry to delegate responsibilities, preferring to drown routines on their own in the sea? Here our “wisdom” can play a role, stating that a good result can be achieved only by oneself. Someone is afraid to lose control over the team, to drop their sovereign status, to find out that they themselves can be replaced by someone, and also the lack of knowledge of who and what to entrust can become a motive. All these reasons come from the unskilled leadership. The ability to delegate is a litmus test for a person occupying a chef's chair of any rank. Such a position a priori implies the ability to manage a trusted team.
It is impossible and it is possible
Let’s try to figure out which tasks are to be distributed and which remain the boss’s priority. Since any managerial position implies a wide range of actions, it will be easiest to identify those functions that the manager needs to keep for himself.
- Motivation is clearly not subject to delegation. The distribution of bonuses, various bonuses, wages, promotion of employees in the posts - all this is decided at the level of management.
- Setting strategic goals for any period also belongs only to the leader. The captain always sets the course; he also possesses the maximum information necessary for such a task.
- Jobs requiring a narrow specialization of the chief belong to the same category.
- Of course, this includes tasks associated with risk. Since it is not always possible to evaluate the results of such actions, only the leader should be responsible for them. It happens that he himself does not always have an idea, for objective reasons, about the consequences of the decision made, so you should not delegate such moments to subordinates.
Everything that did not fall into this list can be safely "lowered" down. The delegation of rights and responsibilities should be initiated and responsible employees who have the necessary knowledge and qualifications or are able to learn. Having experienced this method of work for the first time, you might think that delegation is an unreliable tool, as it takes a lot of time and effort. However, after a while everything will "get on wheels", and the car will go by itself, and the boss will be able to evaluate how much easier the role of a leader can be with a competent approach.