How to Delegate More Effectively in Business - Essay Example

Delegating Power

Needless to say, that the main source of the power of every effective and successful organisation, company, local or even international corporation is its people. To be more specific, people create companies, which in their turn consist of people and run by people. Within a framework of running the company an immensely important role play managers – those employees, “who are in charge of a certain group of tasks or a certain subset of a company” (NA, 2016). Arguably, power flows towards hierarchy more than the agency is distributed as an authority to subordinates below. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to analyse how professional managers and leaders accomplish their domination over their colleagues while they are delegating responsibilities.

Before analysing the process of delegating and empowerment of the employees, it needs to be pointed the main terms, which will be used in this paper. The first one is a manager. According to the Business Dictionary, the manager is “an individual who is in charge of a certain group of tasks, or a certain subset of a company” (2016). Usually, the manager has a team, which report to him and help him to implement everything that is required. The second definition, which is worth to be provided is the definition of delegation. So, it is a “grant of authority by one party (the delegator) to another (the delegate) for agreed purpose” (NA, 2016). Apart from it, the delegator often remains responsible for the actions, tasks as well as omissions of the delegate. This approach serves as an essence of a delegating leadership style, in which “a leader transfers decision-making power to one or more employees, but remains responsible for their decisions” (NA, 2016).

The last but not least definition, which is worth to be mentioned is the empowerment. According to Business Dictionary, empowerment is “a management practice of sharing information, rewards, and power with employees so that they can take initiative and make decisions in order to solve problems and improve service and performance” (NA, 2016). This particular approach is based on the idea that “giving employees skills, resources, authority, opportunity, motivation, as well as holding them responsible and accountable for outcomes of their actions, will contribute to their competence and satisfaction” (NA, 2016).

Therefore, as it has been already mentioned in the previous paragraphs of this paper, an effective leader or manager perfectly knows how to delegate the authority and empower the employees, in the such a way, which will allow accomplishing domination over colleagues while delegating responsibility. Such managers often know what needs to be done, what is the best for the enterprise; they develop an effective plan of actions, in which each employee has its role; took responsibility for decision and decision-making process in spite of the fact that they delegate the authority to the employees. In addition to the above-mentioned, such managers took responsibility for communicating with staff, stay focused on the opportunities rather than problems, and what is, probably, the most important they “though and say ‘we’ rather than ‘I’" (Drucker, 2004). To sum it up, during the process of delegating the authority and power to the subordinates, the manager remains to be the supervisor.

Interestingly, in some organisations delegating comes comparatively easy, while in others immensely hard. In addition to this, in the companies where empowerment comes with some difficulties, it also can cause the loose of control over the employees and in its turn negatively affect the state of affairs of the organization. The main challenge, which contributes to effective delegating process lies in the fact, that an effective manager delegates the right things and does not delegate the wrong things. Therefore, on the basis of the above-mentioned information, there is a need to define the main tenets of effective delegation and empowerment, which will provide the manager with an opportunity to accomplish domination over colleagues while delegating responsibility.

The first one is a plan of actions. It needs to be pointed out, that writing an effective plan of actions provides the managers with the opportunity to properly delegate the authority and empower subordinates to accomplish important tasks. The importance of an appropriate action plan might lie in the fact, that it helps to analyze desired results, a number of probable issues and restraints, future revisions, as well as implications. Apart from this, such action plan helps to properly divide the work between the employees and delegate them with a power in order to help them to improve their personal and professional skills.

The essence of a second principle is to choose what tasks the manager is willing to delegate. The explanation of this might lie in the fact, that in order to dominate over subordinates and remain their leader, manager “should use his/her time on the most critical tasks for the business, and the tasks which only the manager can do” (Drucker, 2004). Therefore, effective managers should delegate the processes, which they cannot accomplish and which are not interesting for them. Delegating of the processes, which the manager cannot accomplish on his/her own, leads to increasing the confidence of the employees and understanding of the importance of their work. In such a way, the workers will respect their manager and will stay loyal.

The third important aspect is the process of picking the best person to delegate to some tasks and responsibilities. To be more specific, in order to dominate over the subordinates during accomplishing the delegation process, a great manager should listen and observe. This means to “learn the traits, values, as well as characteristics of those who will perform well when you delegate to them” (Zwilling, 2013). Apart from the above-mentioned, this also means to “hire the people with the right skills instead of the least expensive” (Conger & Kanungo,, 1988).

The next tenet of effective empowerment lies in the trust with regard to those people to whom you delegate. It is worth to be mentioned, that delegating and empowering always start with the trust. To be more specific, the manager has to trust in the people and provide them with a chance to do the job in their way. In such a way, subordinates will feel the trust of the manager and will not be afraid to lose their authority in case of a wrong decision. Apart from this, such people will constantly teach and improve themselves in order to be better.

The next principle, which is particularly based on the development of an effective action plan, is to give clear assignment and instructions to those to whom the manager delegates the power and responsibilities. According to Martin Zwilling, the success of appropriate empowerment of the employees lies in the “key, the essence of which is striking the right balance between explaining so much detail that the listener is insulted, and not explaining enough for someone to grasp what is expected” (Zwilling, 2013). In addition to this, the manager should set as well as define task completion date and a follow-up system. Therefore, establishing of a specific deadline with milestones will help the employees to understand what and when they are required to do. Apart from it, the manager will have an opportunity to check up the progress before the final deadline and help in cases when something will go wrong.

It needs to be pointed out, that the next two tenets are considered to be the most important for the effective delegation of the authority and contribute to the domination of the manager over the employees during empowerment process. First of all, professional manager “gives public and written credit” (Zwilling, 2013). The explanation of this might lie in the fact, that “this is the simplest step, which inspires loyalty, provides real satisfaction for work done, and becomes the basis for mentoring and performance reviews” (Zwilling, 2013).

The next principle, which has been already mentioned in the previous paragraphs of this paper, is to delegate responsibility and authority, not just the task. Interestingly, but this is the main reason why the majority of the managers are not effective in empowerment and cannot dominate the subordinates during the delegation process. Apart from it, “managers who fail to delegate responsibility in addition to specific tasks eventually find themselves reporting to their subordinates and doing some of the work rather than vice versa” (Hollander, Offerman & Lynn, 1990).

The last but not least tenet, which is worth to be mentioned is to avoid reverse delegation. To be more specific, some team members, who are afraid of taking responsibility, try to give the task back to the manager (Conger & Kanungo, 1988). In some cases, they do not feel comfortable with the tasks they are given but sometimes just trying to dodge responsibility. In such a situation, the manager should not accept it even in extreme cases. The explanation of this lies in the fact that in the long run every team member will need to learn or leave the organization. Therefore, delegating and empowering are the best ways to check the attitude of the employee with regard to his work.

Based on the above-analysed information, it is safe to claim that “almost everyone who has grown their startup from a one-person entity to a going concern with many employees has struggled with letting go of any task” (Davenport & Leitch, 2005). On the contrary, there are such types of manager, who come from the large company to a startup and fail due to the fact, that they trying to delegate too much. Therefore, this results in a lack of control and losing the dominance over the employees. So, it needs to be pointed out, that every “entrepreneur needs to set aside their fear of delegating. If he/she does it right, every task will likely be done better than the manager could do it” (Balig & Taeger, 1984).

To sum it up, delegating and empowering are immensely important approaches to effective management of the organization. An appropriate implementation of both these techniques provides the managers and leaders with the opportunity to delegate the main tasks and responsibilities between the employees in such a way, that every subordinate will make the tasks as good as he/she can. Apart from it, an effective implementation of the delegation process helps the manager to accomplish domination over the colleagues while delegating the responsibility. Despite the fact that delegation and empowerment have a lot of advantages, they also have some drawbacks, which mostly depend on the personal professionalism of the manager, his/her skills as well as abilities.