Delegating is a process in which tasks, duties, and decision-making authority is assigned to others. Delegating in the workplace allows management to distribute work based on each employees’ skills or in order to enhance/hone their skills.

Is Delegating Important?

When delegating in the workplace, the manager engages in the following for themselves and their team:

• • Better decision making – Delegating encourages teamwork, by activating all employees in their team while focusing on their area of expertise, a manager can effectively ensure better results with tasks.

• • Enhanced productivity – Employees that receive delegated tasks that mirror or enhance their personal skills will hone their abilities and they will start showing better results within a shorter amount of time.

• • Improved efficiency – Delegating effectively allows for distributing tasks so that employees with certain skills sets can yield a higher input to tasks in their area of expertise.

• • Skill development – Delegating tasks allows for employees’ to develop certain skills and professional growth.

• • Team empowerment – By giving employees in a team control over certain decision making, it results in a sense of ownership and engages the team more efficiently to work together as whole.

• • Time management – Effectively delegating tasks allows the manager to prioritize their work, and free up time in order to focus on higher-value activities.

Why is Delegating so Hard for Some?

Delegating might sound simple, but it can be both hard in action and execution. Common pitfalls individuals face are:

• • Clear communication – This is necessary so that delegation is effective, and that expectations, possible outcomes and deadlines with the delegated task are properly handed over. Any miscommunication can lead to confusion from the employee accepting the task, delays in the task and reduced quality in the work or results.

• • Delegation overload – Burdening one employee with too many tasks does not lead to any benefits. It is important that management focuses on their employees’ capacity while considering delegation.

• • Failure – Tasks are often delegated in order to enhance or engage an employee in a learning curve of a certain matter or skill. It is important that management knows that delegating a task to an individual who has never experienced handling such a task before may lead in failure. It is equally important that management is okay with such an outcome and knows how to handle the situation if it comes to it.

• • Feedback – When delegating a task, the act of handling the task and the outcome of the task are important, but giving the employee feedback after the task has been handled is equally important. This ensures that the employee who accepted the task receives full support before, during, as well as after a task has been finalized and ensures the employee learns as much as possible from the delegated task.

• • Misreading capability – Delegating a task to an employee whose skill set does not match nor is capable of growing for the set task can lead to future trust and control issues from management. It is important that managers learn to read their team, their capabilities, and how far said capabilities can be stretched at any given moment.

• • Not knowing when to delegate – Just because one can delegate, it doesn’t mean one should. Some tasks belong with a certain person who has the necessary authority, some tasks belong as a part of a whole, and some tasks are beyond an employee’s skill set.

• • Resources and authority – Delegating a task is one thing, but without having the necessary resources and authority to see a task through, there isn’t much an employee can do. It is important that management understands the task, the employee’s capabilities to do the task, as well as what is needed so that the employee can successfully see the task to fruition.

• • Trust and control – Trust or control issues result in management that find delegating hard. It is important for manager to learn to provide oversight with out controlling, and trust in their employees’ accountability while providing adequate support and empowerment.

Steps for Delegating

Delegating can be as simple as asking someone to do a certain task – than walking away. Following a certain process while delegating isn’t always necessary, especially for smaller or simpler tasks.

However, when the purpose of delegating is to hone or enhance an employee’s skill set, it is important to follow certain steps to ensure that the delegation is as efficient as possible:

1. 1. The manager should begin by defining the task, what objectives or outcome should be achieved from the task. This can include setting measurable targets for the employee, to ensure the manager has milestones to monitor the learning process and offer support and mentoring where necessary.
   2. After defining the task, the manager could be seeing a single task that one employee can handle, or a multifaceted task that can be broken down into smaller tasks and handed over to a team of people. The manager needs to determine how the delegated task best suits their team, either per employee or for the team as a whole, and set up clear guidelines and instructions to ensure all employees involved understand their assigned duties and what expectations there are for all.
   3. Next the manager must ensure that all employees have access to the necessary resources and/or authority necessary to ensure they can carry out the task to fruition.
   4. Lastly, the manager needs to ensure that all applicable employees understand their accountability with the task. This means that the manager must establish clear lines of responsibility regarding parts of the task, or the task as a whole, and hold all employees accountable for their part. This can be done by setting specific performance standards or metrics, set up deadlines or milestones where the manager can monitor the progress and offer feedback and guidance, and even for the manager to evaluate the outcome once the task is finalized.

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It is important to know that while transferring responsibility on employees for a delegated task, it is still the manager who is ultimately accountable for all tasks worked by their subordinates.

The responsibility isn’t to lay blame on an employee is something goes wrong, but to help the manager better support and empower their subordinates while handling the delegated task. However, should a situation rise where an employee proves themselves to be unable to handle their given task, the responsibility of handling the matter ultimately falls back on the manager.

Keep in Mind

There are several issues that most often arise with delegation of tasks, and that is:

• • A manager has trust and/or control issues

• • A manager doesn’t offer proper support when delegating

• • A manger doesn’t properly follow through on a delegated task

What ever the issue is, the issue is always with the manager – not the employees.