Content area
Full Text
As a manager, to do your job efficiently and effectively, you must delegate various types of tasks to your staff. If you don't, you will be overworked and your staff will be underutilized. In fact, you do a disservice to your staff if you don't delegate because this inhibits your staff's ability to learn new things and grow as professionals.
Like all management activities, delegation must be done in a thoughtful, ethical and forward-thinking manner. Here are eight tips to follow when delegating tasks to your staff, contractors, vendors and others.
1. Clearly define what can and cannot be delegated.
Be mindful of what should and should not be delegated. For example, specific tasks may contain proprietary information that should not be shared at your staff's organizational level. There also are tasks that your team members may not be qualified to perform, thus setting them up for failure. Lastly, don't just dump unwanted activities onto your staff to get them off your plate. Your team will eventually figure this out and it will hurt your credibility as their manager.
2. Create a prioritized delegation plan.
Once you know what to delegate, your next step is to develop a plan outlining what tasks should be delegated to which staff members. When assigning tasks, you should consider the following:
...