Why do people delegate? Or why not? What makes people hesitate to delegate tasks that can actually be delegated to fellow team members? Possibly the assumption that delegation is the sole privilege of managers!
When it comes to achieving major business objectives and long-term goals, it usually takes much more than one person’s hard work and devotion to bring the expected results. Hence, delegation as a collaborative mechanism that can boost both value co-creation & time and therefore cost efficiency.
Officially delegation stands for “the act of delegating a particular job, duty, right, etc. to someone” and the example provided by Cambridge Dictionary on the web is “Delegation of responsibility is a key part of a manager’s job.” We don’t wonder why delegation is considered to be a “management tool”.
To maximise the potential of delegation as a team time-management practice, we firstly need to remove the bias that tasks delegated are often “tedious”, not important enough, boring etc. So, “delegation” needs rebranding; we need to rethink delegation as an employee empowerment tool as well as an effective time & cost efficiency best practice. If delegation is done, only a person is clearly overloaded, or as a last resort to achieve a project deadline, we have lost the opportunity. For delegation to work, the person been delegated to must feel excited, empowered and engaged with the ultimate goal that needs to be achieved through the various tasks in the chain. This clearly means that delegation means handing over enough autonomy and responsibility for the other person to consider this new task as an opportunity to excel, a task that he/she can be recognised for.
Remember everyone can be benefited from effective delegation, when used as a time-management tool that frees employees’ time that can be spent on other activities that maximise their potential!
