The Thoughts And Ideas Of The Efficiency Coach

Does this ring any bells? I frequently hear managers complaining that’ I tell my staff what needs to get done, even how to do it, and they still don’t do it right’, or ‘I have to continually keep telling them what to do – they never seem to take the initiative. What should I do?’

This is normally symptomatic of tasks being delegated rather than responsibilities. Firstly, what do I mean by delegating tasks? This is where you dictate to your staff, ‘how’ to do the task.

Let’s firstly think about why we delegate. Delegation should be used to save yourself time or to help to develop a member of your staff. Sounds simple? There are three questions that you should use to ‘sell’ the responsibility to your member of staff – ‘why the job needs to be done’, ‘what the required end result is?’, ‘when the job needs to be done by?’. However, if you start to specify the ‘how you want the job done’, you have started to delegate a task rather than a responsibility.

The benefits of delegating responsibilities are many, for example, it means that staff are more likely to take full ownership for the task, which is likely to result in a better completion rate. If you delegate the responsibility, your staff are more likely to take the initiative and take over this part of your workload permanently – rather than you always having to tell them how to do the task.

Let’s first think why we often fall into the trap of telling our staff ‘how we want the job done’… Firstly, I see this frequently with small business owners – they believe that their way is the right way and consequently quicker, and so their staff should do it their way. This may be correct, but for a member of staff to take full ownership for a task, they need to personally decide, and often learn, how they will get the task done.

Secondly, a new member of staff, who has limited experience, may need initially need direction on how to tackle a task. However, as time goes by the relationship hasn’t changed and the manager has fallen into the trap of still telling the staff member, ‘how to do the task’.

Thirdly, delegation requires trust to be able to relinquish full control of a responsibility or activity. Very often manager’s don’t like to lose control of a task and consequently micro-manage their staff and what they are doing. Very often this is exceptionally time consuming for the manager, and very frustrating for the members of staff!

What’s your personal obstacle to delegating properly?

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