Top Management Story

Writen by Manik Thapar

Why Delegate?

Delegation has a number of benefits. When you streamline your workload, you increase the amount of time available for essential managerial tasks. Your staff feel motivated and more confident, and stress level decrease across the workforce.

Note

Delegate to boost staff morale, build confidence, and reduce stress

Increasing Your Time

Managers commonly complain that the short-term demands of operational and minor duties make it impossible to devote sufficient time to more important long term matters. Strategic planning control, and training are among the higher level activities that will suffer under the burden of under delegated, routine tasks that you wrongly attempt to do yourself. To create more time for yourself, more routine work should be handed down by delegation. Also, the more frequently you delegate the more experienced staff becomes, and the less time you need to spend on briefing.

Points To Remember

Am I devoting enough time and recourses to strategic planning and overall monitoring?

Is my desk overflowing with uncompleted tasks?

Are staff enthusiastic and sufficiently motivated?

Am I delegating routine but necessary tasks to staff?

Is staff training given priority to ensure effective skills for future delegation plans?

Reducing Stress

The pressure of managers to perform under demanding conditions can lead to a marked increase in stress levels. The symptoms are visible in erratic and sometimes disoriented personal behavior, mounting paper work on desk, and overcrowded diaries. Clearing your desk, and your diary is best accomplished through delegation. Finally effective delegation not only eases the pressure on the delegator, but can benefit the delegate and the team or department as a whole. Before delegating, consider carefully the task requirements, and make a realistic assessment of your proposed delegate's ability.

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Set aside enough time each day for concentrating on your long-term projects.

Delegating To Motivate

A sense of achievement is central to any employees job satisfaction. Effective delegation involves the stimulus of increased responsibility and can provide a delegate with an enriched level of satisfaction as well as greater sense of worth. Delegation is empowerment, and that is the main spring of better work. Your staff will not develop unless they are given tasks that build their abilities, experience, and confidence. They will perform best in a structured environment in which every one is aware of delegated duties and responsibilities and each has the necessary skills and resources to carry out tasks efficiently. Use regular and effective feedback sessions as tools for maintaining a delegate's motivation.

Note

Make sure you have right experience to coach others

If delegation is not working, ask yourself, "What am I doing wrong?"

The Cost Of Avoiding Delegation

Delegation takes time to organize and prioritize but the cost of avoiding it is high. The manager who does not delegate or delegates inefficiently will not only seem disorganized, but will spend many hours each week completing low-propriety tasks. This can result in excessive hours worked by senior managers, low moral among underemployed staff, basic process slowed down by bottlenecks, poor quality of work, and missed deadlines. Together, all of these factors will have a detrimental effect on long-tem performance.

Delegating Ineffectively

A manager who avoids delegation cannot possibly hope to complete effectively all of the tasks that find their way on his or her desk

Manik Thapar (MBA) http://www.careerpath.cc