Delegation

Delegation

It is impractical for the supervisor to handle all of the work of the department directly. In order to meet the organization's goals, focus on objectives, and ensure that all work is accomplished, supervisors must delegate authority. Delegation is “the ability to effectively assign task responsibility and authority to others. In other words, delegation is the ability of management to get things done by using work and time of other people” (Time Management, 2002). Effective delegation is a critical survival skill for managers and supervisors.

The first important component of delegation is choosing the right person to delegate the task to or the “delegate”. Outside the standard boss-employee relationship, a key component of delegation is the ability to find a win-win deal, and still delegate the task to someone. A common win-win situation is when delegating the task saves your time and gives a valuable learning experience, skill training, or an interesting opportunity for the delegatee.

What is given to the delegatee is the responsibility for how the task is executed and the method of execution needed. For the delegation to be effective, it is important that the whole task is delegated. Communication needs to be clear and effective to the delegatees as to what outcome is expected and what requirements are needed for the end results.

For the delegation to work, the manager must make sure that he or she is able to monitor the progress of task execution and know if the task is actually completed or needs for input. When delegating, normally the manager is still responsible for the completion of the task.

As part of their managerial responsibilities, managers of my organization delegate tasks according to the individual’s skill level, knowledge of the topic, and availability of time. For example, individuals are asked to be a “product specialist” for a certain tool or software that is frequently used by the customers. The product specialist would be the main contact for other employees to go to for further instructions on troubleshooting the issue. This frees the manager’s time so he or she is able to handle greater tasks.

Another way my managers delegate is they assigned complete task to individuals. It is much easier to work on a single task than on many fragments of the task. By accepting the complete task, the finished solution would be more tightly integrated and less room for error.

All report dates are scheduled ahead of time for review so the managers here never watch over one’s shoulder. As employees, we are allowed the freedom to exercise some personal initiatives troubleshooting. Management is open-minded and recognizes that we may know a better way of doing something than they do and they accept that there may be different ways of achieving a particular task.

Delegation

Managers are always challenging you to resolve the issue first by using all your knowledge and resources available, but their assistance is there to help.

A situation where my manager excels is communicating information between his employees and upper management. Our meetings are very open and all employees are free to express their concerns, problems, or questions with how a situation is progressing or the way a task is handled by upper management. It’s ensuring to know our manager answers all our concerns and questions to the best of his ability wile still being truthful and straight forward. A situation never has occurred were I felt he was talking down to us.

With delegation, the staff is given the authority to react to situations without referring back to you. For example, our manager has us follow up on older unresolved problems by the end of each week but leaves the decision up to us to determine the when and how much time is needed. He let’s us apply our knowledge to the problem to determine the amount of time and effort that should be given to each tasks.

Most important is management gives recognition for work completed. Our managers always give credit when a project has been successfully completed