(SHORT
NOTES FROM TEAM MANAGEMENT: Delegating Effectively at http://www.mindtools.com)
Sometimes, when you delegate a task, it
can actually get done better than you could do it yourself. Delegation is an area of personal and
professional management that many people struggle with. The difficulty stems from the need to control
outcomes and a strongly rooted belief that we know how to do things best. It's hard to let go of control.
Managers fear the repercussions when an
employee fails to complete something correctly or in a timely manner. The failure might reflect badly on us so we
take the path of least resistance. Rather
than working on improving our delegation skills, sometimes we simply keep hold
of more tasks. Being overworked somehow
seems less risky than having things done that might not meet our exact
requirements.
True delegation means giving up a little
of what we would like to hold onto (some measure of control) while keeping what
we might prefer to give up (accountability). By nature we love to keep control. That way we
can make sure things are done completely the way we want them done. It's tempting to want to hold onto control. Giving up control it often (wrongly) equated
with giving up leadership as well. In
fact leadership has much, much more to do with responsibility than authority or
control. Delegation means taking true
responsibility and inevitably means giving up some control.
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