Delegation isn’t a “fire and forget” activity. As a manager, you can delegate decision-making to your direct reports, but you can’t delegate away your accountability for the outcome. The key is delegating without micromanaging. Effective managers monitor and guide the progress of delegated work – and they do it in a way that doesn’t feel like micromanagement.
Delegation is an essential practice for managers. In any organization, one of the vital functions of management is to distribute and coordinate work among the group. However, delegating well requires understanding what delegation is and isn’t. Here are three common delegation myths that effective managers don’t fall prey to.
Working with other people is hard – for a variety of reasons. One of the promises of working together is that you can help each other to get things done. One of the biggest obstacles to doing this is not sharing a brain. Asking for clarity helps you avoid the trap of only thinking you know what someone wants. But all too often, when someone asks you for help or wants to delegate something to you, you can find yourself playing “Bring Me a Rock.”