According to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, Delegation is a transfer of tasks, functions, powers and authority, which is carried out between a person who occupies a higher position to a lower one from the hierarchical perspective, to operate in a limited field, ususally with specific goals.
The delegation process is one of the areas with more cornerstones in the development of an organization, as well as for the parts involved in the process:
- Delegating well provides growth opportunities for organizations and people, allows everyone to see the business from another point of view and focus on looking for other opportunities.
- On the contrary, delegating badly can lead to a difficult digestion process of the parts involved and even sometimes to a point of no return, as we will see later.
That is why it is important to carry out a delegation process in an orderly and transparent manner, properly choosing the parties involved, giving real empowerment and responsibility, and leaving an open door in case we need to return to the previous situation.
Whatever the motivation is, delegating is a task that sooner or later must be faced if we want to grow, both as an organization and as professionals.
Benefits of delegating
Delegation should be seen as a glidepath to search for potential assets within the team. Once found, it must be effective:- Empower him/her in front of others
- Make him/her feel responsible for each and every one of the areas invoved.
This allows delegators to worry instead of taking on the work they previously did, better manage their time, and be able to start aspiring to other goals and objectives, while improving leadership skills.
Another of the benefits of delegating is the ability to learn and extra motivation received to whom functions are delegated, being able to extract the best from him/her as a professional. In particular, initiative, responsibility, and the expansion and consolidation of theoretical and practical knowledge. Ultimately, it is a covert form of training.
Delegating must also imply, on the part of the company, some type of bonus or economic benefit. The company must take the initiative in this regard and make some proposals in the mi term, once the person and the organization have been consolidated.
Looking for an analogy in the world of construction, delegating allows us to lay the foundations for subsequent growth, since it allows us to climb steps as long as the foundations on which we base that growth are well established. That is why the delegator is said to be the other great beneficiary.
Why managers do not delegate
But ... why managers do not delegate? There may be organizational, company culture, or even personal reasons. Here is a non-exhaustive list:- Consider nobody can do it better: considering that you are essential is one of the main factors. Aligned with this point, there are those who think that there is only one way to do things well, and it is their own.
- Lack of trust: aligned with the previous point; in addition to that it may have connotations related to the honesty of the work that has been carried out until then.
- It takes time and effort: certainly in the short term you need to dedicate specific time, which can be from a few hours to weeks or months. That is why the opportunity cost must be worth it to the delegate.
- Avoid sharing knowledge: delegating implies an exercise in transparency, and sometimes this is uncomfortable. Although it is less and less common, there may be certain processes or ways of doing things that puts certain individuals in a position of force in front of other stakeholders. For this reason, companies must able to retain knowledge in-house, instead of it being retained in workers.
- Being the creator: some people have created a creature from scratch and it has become their modus vivendi: it is their baby, and they find themselves trapped in it, in a certain way. It is a feeling similar to what a mother can feel for her child.
- Out of habit: this is how it has been done so far and nobody has considered changing it. This statement reveals a bit of accommodation and passivity, so it should be avoided, in a way.
- Because there are things to hide: cases in which the delegate makes fraudulent use of the job, for his own benefit. Logically in these cases, the latter's last interest is to delegate. Here again the honesty of the people are inputs of the equation.
How to proceed when delegating
Where to start? Once the delegator is fully convinced, he/she must face the challenge of choosing the right person and establish a time-limited work plan between the two parties, stating the scope of the activities to delegate and defining the way in which the process will take place. Once this is done, the most complicated part remains, which is to monitor the delegate. For this, the following points are a must:- Establish clear and measurable objectives: fundamental and inalienable. It allows to clearly establish the framework and priorities, not leaving the person now responsible disoriented.
- Establish a follow-up system: set up regular meetings on the objectives set above.
- Give guidance and advice without interfering, face to face and privately.
- Letting oneself make mistakes, since it allows us to learn and understand the whys.
- Publicly express the trust, in order to make it visible to all parties of interest. In return, this provides confidence to the person to whom you delegate.
- The delegation brings with it authority, empowerment and responsibility for each and every one of the business areas: both parties must recognize this point.
- Disappear from the stage: once you delegate, it is done with all the consequences, for good and bad. That is why the person who finally delegates must have internalized it and strive not to interfere in the activities of the person now responsible for the activities.
Suggestions for the person delegating
It is, most likely, the bittest role of those exposed in the article. You must show a firm and unwavering will to carry out the delegation, along with what we comments below:- It is important to internalize that others will not do it in the same way as oneself, probably not so perfectly, but that the end result may be the same.
- Apply the 80-20 rule: that is, accepting achievements of project development percentage of 80% with respect to how you would have done it yourself, is more than enough.
- Avoid micromanagement, because it burns both parts: the delegator and the delegate, ruining the productivity of everything else.
- Publicly recognize the objectives achieved: very important to strengthen the confidence of the person in charge.
On the other hand, negative attitudes that can lead to the failure of the delegation process are the following:
- Always be on top of the subordinate and tell him how the work should be done: he must breathe and carry out activities in his own way, with his methodology and approach - of course advice should be welcome. In this sense, a coaching job is the most successful task.
- Criticizing the subordinate's work, especially in front of third parties: it causes frustration to the one who wants to take command, apart from the fact that it subtracts authority. On the other hand, third parties will not consider the newcomer the appropriate interlocutor until they are publicly endorsed from above.
- Finish delegated tasks yourself: again the message transmitted is of complete lack of confidence. In any case, and in any scenario, the responsible person is the one who has to finish the tasks.
Consequences of not delegating
And what are the consequences of not delegating? Well basically there are two consequences:- From the Team perspective, lack of professional development, and therefore frustration. Sometimes it happens that not delegating causes potential gifted colleagues and workers that seemed promising to abandon the project, because they do not feel fulfilled or feel that there is a glass ceiling that is not possible to overcome.
- Stagnation of the company: the company will reach a certain critical mass that it will be unable to surpass. Managers can double, triple, ... quintuple themshelves when they don´t want to delegate, but there comes a time when they are not able to give more.
Conclusions
As a corollary: the delegation process must be the result of a path of responsibility truffled with the following ideas:- Thinking more about the common benefit than the personal benefit
- Holistically contemplate how delegation processes can best be started
Some funny stuff as well: the Delegation Poker, a cards game thas was first played at the Scrum Gathering in Amsterdam, can help people delegating.
For Spanish Original Version: click here.
