In the “manager’s toolbox,” delegation is one of the essential skills. By delegating successfully, managers free themselves up to invest their time more effectively.
You want to expand your production and business activities, want to participate in new projects. You want to spend more time on strategy building activities or for your family. You also want to have more time to "upgrade yourself", want to expand your business but still have to maintain existing activities... Immediately, we see the frustrations that require managers to prove their true abilities. In other words, they need to have enough skills of a professional manager. The harsh reality and fierce competition in the market make managers not simply behave in the way they see others do. In other words, when we do not understand how to manage, all our efforts will only bring about a spineless system ready to collapse at any time.
Effective delegation of work can help managers solve some of the problems described above. However, even though managers know the benefits of delegation, they are still struggling with worries such as: “I really want to delegate the work I have done, but I am afraid that the employees I trust to delegate may later split off and establish their own companies that directly compete with me. Or some others will leave to work for a competitor and take all their customers with them; some will take advantage of being delegated to seek personal benefits.”
Bad experiences in the past make managers increasingly bend their backs under the weight of the workload. How can we escape from that burden? One of the solutions is to understand and master the skill of delegating work, not simply consider delegating as a skill of "giving up work". To do this, managers must understand and master the process of delegating work, must know which work and tasks need to be delegated, to whom, when to delegate and what to do at that time, what to do after delegating, how to do it...
To begin, managers need to master the 7-step delegation process divided into 3 parts as follows:
Part 1: Preparing for Effective Delegation
-Step 1: Identify the work and tasks that need to be delegated, and the reasons why it needs to be delegated. Delegation is used to reduce the workload for managers, strengthen trust in developing subordinates, or improve relationships within the organization.
-Step 2: Determine the scope of authority and responsibility delegated, the level of authority and responsibility that will be assigned.
-Step 3: Choose a person to delegate. What are the criteria to consider when choosing a delegate? Prioritize capacity, development orientation, experience or time…?
Part 2: Performing the delegated work
-Step 4: Delegate the work to the selected person (if failed, return to step 3). In this step, the manager needs to show the employee the importance of the delegated work, identify with them the expected results, specify the assigned authority and responsibilities, and agree on the reporting and feedback evaluation processes.
-Step 5: Notify relevant individuals and departments. To ensure conditions for the delegated person to perform the work, the manager must notify the delegated work, tasks, and level of authority and responsibility to relevant places along with requests for assistance and support.
Part 3: Feedback information.
-Step 6: Follow up and support the delegate. To ensure that the work is done well, there needs to be an effective feedback system from the manager to the delegated employee.
-Step 7: Evaluate and draw lessons for future activities.
Managers are always faced with choices, to have more time to expand production and business activities effectively must be successful in delegating work. Delegating work back requires managers to have skills and constantly improve their own skills.
