10.3 THE SKILLS YOU NEED TO BE A GREAT BOSS: The Delegation Dilemma

(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.