“I believe the ability to delegate effectively is one of the most important skills a manager can have. However, I’ve seen managers encounter several problems when attempting to delegate!”
- Learning the basic skills for creating initiative in the workplace – specifically preventing upward delegation and effectively delegating appropriate tasks and assignments – is a critical skill all successful managers must learn. Managers or supervisors who fail to develop these skills can easily find themselves in the trap of doing for employees what employees can and should be doing for themselves.
- The reasons for doing this are varied – anything from incorrect ideas of the role of the manager, to the need for control, to providing inappropriate “help” to employees.
- Supervisors and managers who haven’t thought through these issues can inadvertently hinder the development of initiative and personal responsibility in their employees. Under the guise of “helping their employees,” supervisors and managers step in and do the work that is the employee’s responsibility. The downstream consequence is the erosion of talent, bench strength, and employee development and motivation. An additional unintended consequence is a waste of the manager’s time.
Managers are responsible for:
- doing their own work
- Managing the work of others. Time spent managing others must be spent with purpose and focus – not doing the employee’s work.
- Leveraging supervisory time wisely is a must. A manager or supervisor who is unable to leverage their time will also lose their influence over their employees – making the job much more difficult.