In the past article I looked at some of the key approaches to delegating work effectively. In this article I will look at some of the main barriers that stop us from delegating work effectively or at all. We all have our reasons for not delegating. I myself have taken some time to understand the reasons why I didn’t do it more often.In a recent Delegation Skills Course that I ran, I tasked the group with brainstorming some of the reasons why they didn’t delegate work. Once they done this we looked at some of the ways in which they could overcome those barriers. Here are the barriers and ideas they came up with.
Time Pressures – The time you have available means it’s quicker for you to do the job yourself. This appears to be quite a common theme when I talk to people about delegation. The time pressures in today’s modern working environments means we don’t have the time to delegate – but, isn’t this one of the reasons why we should be delegating?
I introduced the delegates to Stephen Covey’s view of Delegation by using the information from page 172 of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People which aims to describe how investing one unit of effort into managing people only results in one effort of output, where investing one unit of effort in delegating work effectively produces 2-3 times more output. So, by spending the time you would take doing the job actually showing someone else how to do it, means you will reap the rewards. Ask the question, is this the real reason why I don’t delegate?
Lack of Confidence in Team Member – This is where the delegator doesn’t have confidence in the person to carry out the job. My first question to the group was why would you lack confidence? They couldn’t really answer this. After more questioning it appears that an experience where delegation has gone wrong in the past leading to the belief that no one was trustworthy enough to delegate work to.
I asked what they learnt from the experience and most of them said they didn’t really think about it. So my challenge to them was to think about their experiences of the past, really think about why things went wrong i.e. was it actually them not delegating effectively that led to ultimate failure? Without learning from this experience, it will be a belief that sticks with them.
Over Supervision – This is where the delegates believed they couldn’t leave the person to it and had to keep checking back with the person the delegated the work to. My question first of all was to ask them how they would feel if the boot was on the other foot. How would they feel if someone who had given them a job to do was to keep checking back on them?
The resulting conversation led to them agreeing that this was a state of mind. The same group of people who lacked confidence in the team member seemed to come up with this barrier to. The group agreed that they needed to take a step back and put trust in the people they are delegating to. They should ensure they use the delegation process as highlighted in the first article and ensure they set clear objectives and agreed clear milestones with the person they delegated the work to.
Barriers to delegation exist in all of us. Check back soon for the third part of this article where I take a look at the next lot of barriers to delegation.
David Lumley is Managing Director of Revolution Learning and Development. He is an experienced Management Development Trainer and Coach.
Author: David Lumley
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Pressure cooker
Comments on this entry are closed.