Delegation is simply assigning authority or responsibility to other persons to enable them to execute specific activities, and it’s one of the major concepts of management leadership. The process of the delegation will often require assigning authority, assigning tasks, creating responsibilities and accountability. In most organizations, leaders are often faced with the challenge of making a shift from doing to leading. It’s quite easy to hold onto work and even get admired and praised by your bosses and peers for having the ability to roll up your sleeves and carry out technical jobs. However, things may not continue like that for long because as your responsibilities gradually become more complex, you will need to start doing things differently.
There is a great difference between an individual with a leadership title that’s just a contributor and an effective leader. As a leader, you might have the strength to wake up early and also stay late in order to meet up with the ever-increasing demands of your work. However, over time, the effect of increasing demands at work and the shrinking resources at your disposal will set in and at this point, your ability to involve other people will determine how impactful you will be as a leader.
The extent to which you achieve your goals will be determined by how many individuals or collaborators you empower to contribute their best to your shared priorities. Interestingly, your power will also decrease with every single initiative you unnecessarily hold onto.
Delegating is not easy; however, you must be “more essential” and less involved in order to continuously elevate your impact. For every time you make excuses for holding onto work, you confuse being involved with being essential. Of course, being busy and being productive are not really the same, and your involvement should be a mix of mandates, opportunities, and the choices you make about your work. The way you wisely and decisively activate those around you will determine how important you are to the success of the portfolio.
So, rather than dictating and trying to control others, a leader should be able to shape the thoughts and ideas of others. Instead of being a “required pass-through” a leader should have a sought-after perspective, and this will no doubt help you as a leader to see the realization of your priorities through inspired actions of other people.
Delegation not only benefits you as a leader but also it provides several benefits to members of your team and the organization as a whole. Through delegation, members of your team can learn new skills and even enhance their existing skills. They will have a sense of being part of the team, and this leads to an increase in their self-confidence and motivation.
Also, organizations will experience increased productivity when tasks are properly delegated, and it helps to build a connected culture for the employees. So, what should you really delegate? Although delegating certain tasks may not be difficult, when it comes to your personal tasks, it becomes more difficult to trust someone else to do it well or even better. So, ask yourself if someone else in your team has the right training to do it and if not, can the person be trained to do it? If yes, then you should train the person and let go of the task or find someone else that can do it.