Page Updated on February 11, 2023
Understanding how to delegate work to employees is a skill that is extremely important and is one that can have a significant impact on your business. In this post, let’s look at the benefits to managers, employees and for an organization as a whole, including with some PowerPoint ppt examples from our Delegation Skills trainers kit.
Benefits of Learning Delegation Skills
If you are wondering if ‘Delegation Skills’ is really that important and worth spending time providing as a corporate trainer, then the table below provides a powerful illustration of why this topic is such an essential one in any business.
Let’s now summarize the main benefits of delegation for the manager, the employee and the organization.
Benefits for Managers
1. Less stress
If delegation is done effectively, it allows managers to take something off their list of tasks to do, so they can concentrate on other tasks that require their attention. As a result, they should feel less stressed.
2. Better time management
By delegating, managers can free up their time and focus on other tasks that only they can do. (Learn about the 10 benefits of time management in the workplace)
3. More trust
Once a manager has successfully delegated to their team members, the manager will become more aware of the team members’ abilities As a result, trust should increase.
Benefits for Employees
For the employee, the benefits are also significant.
1. Knowledge and skills development
By being put in charge of tasks that they would have not otherwise have been doing, staff increase their knowledge and develop their skills.
2. Confidence
If they receive the trust of a manager to carry out a task and carry it out successfully, the staff will feel more confident to take on new challenges in the future.
3. Motivation
By feeling trusted and empowered, staff will be more motivated to work for a company. Motivation is, in fact, essential for staff retention, one of the biggest costs for any business.
Benefits for the Company or Organization
For the organization, the benefits are:
1. Teamwork
If managers trust their team and team members are motivated to work for that manager, teamwork can only improve.
2. Productivity & efficiency
As managers free up their time to do things that are more relevant to their jobs and team members learn a variety of new skills, productivity and efficiency increase.
3. Employees’ satisfaction
Managers will be more satisfied because they will be less stressed and team members will feel more valued as they are trusted and have more development opportunities.
4. Innovation
Through delegation, you put in charge of projects different people who otherwise might not have had a chance to be involved.
As a result, new people may come up with different solutions, therefore helping to drive innovation.
Barriers to Delegation
There are though barriers to delegating and overcoming these barriers can be essential to help your managers to delegate effectively.
Let’s summarize the main factors that stop managers from delegating.
1. Fear
Many obstacles to delegation are due to fear. As a manager, it may be your fear that things may not work out or even fear that you might be seen as redundant if you delegate your tasks to other people or that other people may be doing things better than you.
In actual fact, the role of a manager is not to be able to do everything but to be able to find the best people to carry out a job.
Your role is to manage people and to help them shine.
The thing that will make you stand out as a leader is your ability to put together high-performing teams.
2. Lack of trust
This is when you do not trust that staff in your team can do a good job.
If you work with a team though, you have to be able to trust other people. It may be that you do not trust them because you had previous bad experiences. Instead of letting those experiences put you off though, you should learn from them.
Analyze what you did, any mistakes you made (for example, choosing the wrong people or not communicating clearly), and try to do better the next time.
3. Control
Some managers want to control everything. Maybe they are perfectionists and think that there is only one way to do things (their way) and everything has to be perfect.
However, being a leader means leading, inspiring, and trusting people. If you follow your team members’ every movement, you will be stressed and they will feel oppressed.
You need to let go.
Accept that people might make mistakes and that there are many ways to do things.
A way to deal with the fear of losing control, and also with a lack of trust, is to start delegating small tasks at first and then let go.
Then, as team members accomplish the simple tasks, gradually allocate more important tasks.
4. Poor ability
This can refer to the manager’s lack of ability and experience with delegating. In this case, delegating is a skill that can be learned.
Also, the poor ability may refer to your team who may not have the skills you need. If this is the case, you can arrange for them to receive training.
If you need skills that nobody in your team can be trained in, then you need to hire someone with the required skills.
If you have done everything you can, as a manager, and also provided training but your team still does not cooperate, what do you do?
If you are sure that you are supporting your team as much as you can but they have a bad attitude, then the only choice is to proceed with disciplinary measures.
5. Feeling guilty
You may not feel comfortable giving orders. Maybe you have recently been promoted and the people you are leading are your previous co-workers. In this case, they will probably trust you more.
Also, delegating does not have to look like you are giving orders but more like you trust somebody to do something important for you and the company. Sell the delegation as a development opportunity.
You may think that your team members are overworked and you do not want to give them any extra tasks.
In this case, look at the way things are done in your department. Is there any way to make processes more efficient?
- Are there any tasks that can be automated?
- Are there any activities that could be minimized or eliminated?
- Is there anything that could be outsourced?
- Can you add any additional team members?
Giving your staff different tasks to do could help them as they may enjoy a new challenge. So, do not be afraid to make changes.
6. Too busy to delegate
Delegating can be time-consuming. It takes time to plan the delegation process, explain things clearly to your employees and follow things up. So, sometimes it is tempting to just do things yourself.
This attitude may save time in the short run, but in the long run, it is destructive.
If you do everything, your staff will always feel dependent on you, they will feel that they are not trusted and you will not have the time to focus on vision, strategy, and team development, which is what a manager should do, because you will be too busy doing things that you could delegate.
Dr Valeria (Lo Iacono) Symonds
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