How to delegate
You can’t do everything yourself, so you have to delegate. At
first sight delegation looks simple. Just tell people what you
want them to do and then let them do it. But there is more to it
than that.
It may be that you would wish to delegate everything except
what your subordinate cannot do. But you cannot then with-
draw. You have arranged for someone else to do the job, but you
have not passed on the responsibility for it. You are always
accountable to your superior for what your subordinate does.
Hence, as is often said, you can’t delegate responsibility.
Delegation is difficult. It is perhaps the hardest task that
managers have to do. The problem is achieving the right balance
between delegating too much or too little and between over- or
under-supervision. When you give people a job to do you have
to make sure that it is done. And you have to do that without
breathing down their neck, wasting your time and theirs, and
getting in the way. There has to be trust as well as guidance and
supervision.
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