Delegation Is One of the Most Important Skills a Leader Fails to Learn

If you want to do things right, do it yourself. How often do we hear this quote from leaders and managers? Sometimes when things go wrong our leaders tend to blame themselves for not doing the work themselves; but they are actually the ones at fault because they failed to mentor and coach you into someone that could perform his task at a high level.
Delegation is a skill a lot of leaders and managers fail to learn; and this is most likely seen in newly promoted leaders or as they progress one level up the ladder. Delegation is a necessity in organizations because it is impossible for one person to do the entire task of business and learning this skill would not only free you of tasks for higher and more difficult jobs; but you would also help the organization progress as a whole.

Reason why we don’t delegate?
1. Skills – there is always a skill gap between the leader and subordinate and often the leaders have apprehensions when delegating tasks for fear of failure because of lack of skills.
2. Trust – when there is a skill gap, the leader finds it difficult to trust his subordinate to perform their deliverables. They don’t feel the person will deliver on time and would rather do the task their own.
3. Responsibility – leaders can’t delegate the responsibility because they could not take full responsibility if anything wrong happens and as such they would rather cover their own-self right from the start.
4. Patience – leaders do not have the patience to wait for something to be delivered. Whenever timelines are created they are too concerned that it takes their subordinates more time to accomplish something they feel they could do in a snap.
5. Extra work – it’s takes time and effort investment to teach people how to do a job and as such, leaders feel they have to go the extra mile for actually teaching others.
6. Fear of competition – delegation means you have to teach people to do things you can do and sometimes this creates fear on the leader that the person may overtake him in the future.
Reason why we have to delegate?
1. Skills – we have to identify and understand the skill gap the person is facing; we can do two things are that: a.) Get someone of higher skill sets to work alongside the person until he build his skills b:) Send him to training c:) He could self-study but make sure you extend the timeline to account for his learning curve and provide him with resources.
2. Trust – old school leaders always say that trust should be earned; but as a leader you need to start trusting your people and showing them how much you believe in them. Remember the first time you worked when you don’t have the experience and has not proven anything in the corporate world?
3. Responsibility – as a leader you should be aware you will take the fall when things go wrong. It’s part of your job to take responsibility, so start functioning as a leader everyone wants to work with.
4. Patience – It takes time to build skills so you should always place buffer in your timeline whenever people are still learning what they were assigned. It’s always expected that you could do tasks faster especially when you have done it multiple times over already.
5. Extra work – the time and effort you invest today will be paid multiple folds in the future because when your people perform it creates a ripple effect to your team which is reflected on your leadership. Don’t be selfish.
6. Fear of competition – the more reason for you to delegate. Stop doing tasks of subordinates and start learning skills of people high up in the ladder.
A leader’s failure to delegate also means he failed to mentor his people, and mentoring people is one of the basic qualities of being a leader or manager. The more people you teach, the more people you have in helping you succeed.
[tags]Career, Delegation, Leader, Leadership, Management[/tags]