Delegating is one of the best approaches that managers or leaders in an organization can use in ensuring that more tasks are handled within a limited time, and team capacity building is achieved. Delegation is a process that unfortunately many managers fail to put into consideration.
Primarily, there are 6 steps of delegation of tasks successfully. In most occasions, managers fail to implement all of them and later complain about their employees’ inefficiency in getting their job done.
To help you understand the 6 steps of delegation, first we would like to tell you the common tasks that you should delegate. A manager can always delegate several tasks within the organization, and some of these tasks include the following;
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TASKS YOU SHOULD DELEGATE
a) Detail work
As a Manager, your key role is to steer the employees in achieving the common organizational goals. You, therefore, need not be involved too much in detailed tasks. You should rather outline the processes and guidelines for undertaking such tasks and leave the rest for the team to handle. What you should do is to hold them to account for the results from the tasks assigned.
b) Gathering of information
In many occasions, managers usually try to stay afloat with the competitors by finding out information on how they carry out various business dealings from time to time. It is indeed a good idea to do so, but you need to know that a better approach to getting an ideal perspective of real information is by delegating the task of collecting information to your junior employees. This makes your work easy because you only need to do analysis of reports provided and come up with details of how to execute recommended strategies.
c) Repetitive assignments
The chances are high that anyone holding a managerial position must have gone through various stages as they rise in their career. In this case, you ought to have done several roles and therefore familiar with most of these tasks. What this simply means is that whenever you become familiar with how a particular aspect is carried out, it becomes easy for you to move on to the other assignment and only revert when the employees undertaking it are in crisis. Therefore, you need to assign the repetitive tasks to the junior employees and focus on doing other key things.
d) Surrogate roles
Managers are seemingly busy and highly regarded people in the organization. It, therefore, means that on most occasions, they will be given attention such as getting invitations to attend certain conferences, meetings, answering calls and replying to emails among others.
As a manager, it would be essential if you choose an employee to stand in on your behalf whenever possible. It helps you in getting less stretched with several commitments as well as preventing you from being everywhere all the time when yourpresence is needed. The other good thing with delegating surrogate roles is that it helps in grooming and building your employees as well as placing them in better positions of handling some of your roles even in your absence. It creates synergy and seamlessness in the organization.
Here are the six steps of Delegation
Step 1 of Delegation: Prepare
If you want to achieve best results from employees, prepare them sufficiently for the awaiting task. Preparation, in this case, means communicating effectively regarding the tasks to be done, by describing precisely the various aspects you want to be put into consideration.
Preparation also involves effective communication on the deadline for the task as well as the expectations after the job is done. Ensure that you take enough time to develop the discipline to allow you in mapping out what you are looking for.
Step 2 of Delegation: Confirm understanding
This is all about providing detailed information in ascertaining whether employees have understood the details, importance of the task and probably intricacies that may arise regarding the task assigned.
Ask questions to know areas or aspects that need to be clarified to make sure that everything is well understood to avert cases of doing the wrong thing especially when the manager is not around to provide guidance.
Step 3 of Delegation: Determine standards
It is significant to set standards that should be adhered to in making it easy for you to measure the realization of the accomplished assignment. When setting these standards, it is also necessary to ensure that they are realistic and achievable to challenge the employees accordingly. This, therefore, is vital amongst all steps of delegation that you should never overlook.
Step 4 of Delegation: Confirm Commitment
In this step, you are primarily supposed to give employees independence to work on delegated tasks without unnecessary obstructions and sabotage from other employees. It is also a delegation process where you need to ascertain that the chosen employee has accepted to undertake the assignment. This is important because it enables the assigned employees to demonstrate undivided commitment that enables them to offer best results.
During this stage, also remember to inform the employees of the possible consequences that may arise on an individual or organizational basis should the desirable outcomes fail to materialize.
Step 5 of Delegation: Provide support
It is of significance to ensure that every ideal equipment, tools, and resources needed for accomplishing the tasks are given to the employees before and when undertaking the assignment accordingly.
Accomplishing such tasks may require things such as training, financial aid, and gadgets such as phones and computers among others. All you need to do is to ensure that support is provided promptly to prevent any cause of inconvenience that may arise.
Step 6 of Delegation: Ensure accountability
This is also among the basic steps of delegation in management. You need to know that communication between the manager and employees is a significant part of delegating. You need to make sure that employees are responsible to a great extent to the task entrusted. The reason for this is that it can be terrifying when you realize that a task has not been delivered satisfactorily or has not been completed within the set deadlines.
You, therefore, need to establish an effective two-way communication and accountability program to enable the employees to always communicate to you regarding the status of the project from time to time.
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