Delegation: Why It Fails and What to Do About It
Highly effective delegation is a powerful and absolutely learnable
skill! The reason that delegation so often fails is because few
people know and fully understand how to work through the four distinct
stages of delegation with another person.
To consistently get high-quality results, you must learn and execute
the skills required in each stage, which are training, supervising,
coaching, and the transferring of authority. They are not hard, but
they are necessary.
The speed with which you can move a person from one stage to the
next depends on the person’s “maturity,” that is,
his or her knowledge, skill, experience, willingness, and ability
to do so. Depending on the person, some stages take longer than
others and you have to be able to recognize where the person is
in his or her learning curve. It is also necessary to understand
that not everyone is willing or able to move all the way to delegation
in every task. To
view the Delegation model PDF, click here. (Acrobat reader required for PDFs.
Get it free at Adobe.com)
Because of personality styles, I find that most people are able to
master one or two of the stages quite easily and naturally, while
the other stages may be more difficult. This is where the failure
occurs. By either misinterpreting where the person is in his or
her development or by simply skipping a stage, things suddenly start
to fall apart. By reassessing the situation and backing up to the
appropriate stage, the problem can usually be resolved.
Joan Bolmer, 3307 Lake Ridge Bend, Spring TX, 77380; Office 832.458.0455
Copyright (c) 2007-2010, by Joan Bolmer, all rights reserved. Contact
Joan Bolmer by e-mail at joan@bolmer.com Website: http://www.bolmer.com
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