Comments on: Learning to Delegate is Not Trivial

By: Ken Flowers

Ken Flowers — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 07:50:06 +0000

My two cents: I often worry that when I delegate, I’m passing the buden of a task to someone who is already too busy. I find that I have a difficult time trusting people to tell me when they can’t handle the delegated task, because so often they don’t tell me.

By: Daniel Read

Daniel Read — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 20:11:46 +0000

For a lot of people, including myself, the chief problem with delegation may be the perceived loss of control involved. For “control freaks” and quality-focused people, giving up control over the results to another person can be a terrifying prospect. I think this happens especially to highly capable technical staff who are promoted to positions of responsibility; it can be difficult to transition from being responsible for one’s own results to being responsible for the results of others.
Another delegation challenge I’ve run into is the perception (sometimes correct, probably sometimes not) that delegating the task will actually take *more* of my time or energy than just doing it myself. Giving in to the urge to hoarde tasks may help in the short term, but is destructive in the long term.
Dan

By: Mathias Meyer

Mathias Meyer — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 13:11:15 +0000

All four points are so true, and I’ve experienced them all by myself and still do. Delegation is certainly one of the hardest parts of management. But I’d add a point here:
Not knowing who’s the best person to delegate to. You gotta know your team’s skills to delegate successfully. This does not mean that you delegate all to the person who has the best knowledge in the according area, since you wanna spread it out a little and give other team members a chance to grow with their responsibilities. That’s the joy and beauty of delegation, giving people opportunities which, in my experience, they’re often glad to take and grow with.
Cheers, Mathias