Johanna Rothman writes:
I taught a management tutorial at the Better Software conference this week. One of the points I discussed (and asked participants to discuss) was delegation. The managers in my tutorial said they ran into these problems when trying to delegate:
- Being too concerned with how the delegatee did the work, not the results.
- Wanting people new to type of task to perform the task at the same speed that an experienced person would.
- Not wanting to delegate technical work (“because I like it”).
- Not taking the time to think about what to delegate.
I faced the same questions in my early days. The biggest was “whether the guy will do the task as good as I would?’ – the answer always came as a strong “no”, and I resisted delegation. Delegation initially came in as the last option. Now, I am much more willing to delegate work and ready to accept whatever comes out. In most cases, it turns out good, in others, I have things to learn!
Read the full story here. And don’t miss the simple steps to effective delegation here.