Delegation

Delegation is a skill of which we have all heard - but which few understand. It can be used either as an excuse for dumping failure onto the shoulders of subordinates, or as a dynamic tool for motivating and training your team to realize their full potential.
(Palsgrave 1530)

I often hear that you want to be better at delegation. When I ask you what exactly is it that you want to get better at – what skill is it that you want to improve - you don’t know or you answer ”delegation.” Which is not a skill.

So it’s hard to train.

Here’s my take on this:

Delegation is a process that consists of 5 steps. Each step requires different skills or understanding:

1. You have to know what it is you want to delegate (what is the job?)
2. You have to know who to delegate to (who can do the job?)
3. You have to dare to let go of the task (do I trust anyone else to do this?)
4. You have to be able to specify what your expected result is (what is the product?)
5. You have to ensure that the result is acceptable afterwards (Is this good enough?)

Each one of you have different challenges with one or more of these steps, in a series of blog entries I’ll address each one of them.

Stay tuned.