Even the ‘Super You’ needs help!

Delegation may very well be one the most important management skills every line manager should develop proficient competencies. The better one is at delegation, the stronger the leadership bench of your organisation. Good delegation saves time, develops your team and gets them engaged. Poor delegation will definitely cause you frustration, demotivate and confuse your employees, and more importantly, fail to achieve the task.

The temptation line leaders face is to want to do all the work themselves instead of ‘wasting time’ by asking someone else to do it.  Sometimes this may be true and actually the way to go but in the long run, if you really plan to be effective, there’s only a limited amount of work you can do, however hard you work.

With delegation, getting things done through your team and giving others the opportunity to learn by practice ensures your success is not limited to the availability of your time, energy or effort.

Believe it or not, this is the secret of teams who win championships the coach delegates responsibilities to team players and watch them make things happen while offering guidance and support where necessary. Think about it, the better you are at your job as a line leader, the greater the demand on you. This can lead to multiplied pressure, stress and work overload which has a downing effect on your effectiveness.

From studies and observation, it has been noted that the issue most leaders have with delegation is that they are too busy and see the time spent explaining the details of getting a task done to an employee as time that can be put into better use. A lot of supervisors can operate in this mode for years and get by.

The route of delegating must become second nature to be better effective. There are definitely some tasks that shouldn’t be delegated and must not be. But there are a lot of jobs that can and should be delegated if you want to maintain that supervisory edge that brings everything together to achieve the common purpose of your team and organisation. We must choose to interpret those delegation moments as time well spent, training people become better at what they do. This speaks directly to employee engagement and gets team members sufficiently challenged, motivated and make the choice to stay.

To effectively delegate:

•        You must invest time and properly explain what is expected.

•        Be clear as to what is required of the employee per task delegated.

•        Don’t let ambiguity rob you of the blessings of delegation – ensure the task and objectives delegated are clear.

“You don’t have to do everything, even Batman had Robin” #DelegateButDontAbdicate

Ngozi Adebiyi