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You touched on both of them. 1. Delegating management tasks. If you are a new manager and your subordinate has no management experience at all, you are the blind leading the blind. By all means be patient and compassionate, but you also have to be helpful. Get both of your tushies into some management training ASAP. Depending on your relationship it may or may not be beneficial to be in the same class. 2. Delegating work when there's simply too much work to go around. Don't ever make a subordinate work overtime just to make your own job easier; you make the big bucks and you signed up for the headaches that go with them. If everyone is working overtime and you're just equalizing the load that's okay in the short run, but make it clear that your goal is to work smarter, not harder, and that the work week will soon return to the 40-hour standard. And follow through; time management is one of a manager's most sacred duties. If you inherited a 50-hour schedule, fixing it is your top priority, period. Never make anyone work overtime for more than three weeks. Not only will it make you unpopular and therefore less effective, it will make them so inefficient and error-prone that productivity will actually drop below baseline, if it hasn't already.
Good article.
The whole point of delegation is to function as a team.
As a manager, if you set up your team to fail, you will fail. So concentrate on setting them up to succeed.
As a manager, the point is NOT to do it yourself. If you do then you aren't a manager - you are a doer with a title. Let others take the responsibility, concentrate on helping them succeed.
Glen Ford
Can Da Software
IS Project Management
Business Systems Improvement
The whole point of delegation is to function as a team.
As a manager, if you set up your team to fail, you will fail. So concentrate on setting them up to succeed.
As a manager, the point is NOT to do it yourself. If you do then you aren't a manager - you are a doer with a title. Let others take the responsibility, concentrate on helping them succeed.
Glen Ford
Can Da Software
IS Project Management
Business Systems Improvement
The point of management is to achieve the greatest amount of productivity with the limited resources at hand, all the while promoting a sense of harmony within the production environment.
If a manager is delegating to a subordinate, only to then "snatch" the task back before giving the subordinate a fair chance at accomplishing the task, they are simply demonstrating a need for managerial training themselves - and their immediate manager (or HR) needs a talking to about their screening/training skills.
The example in the article is ridiculous. We're no longer talking about management; we're talking about maturity here, folks. Maturity is not something that can be learned in business school and regurgitated in practice.
Let's face it - technical management is fairly straightforward - a little project management here, a little skills assessment there, mix in some organizational capability maturity modeling and poof! But does mere ownership of such skills beget a manager? NOT.
Management is not just a cookbook approach. The world cannot always be boiled down to something suitable for the "Dummies" series. The best managers learn about the complex dynamics of managing by learning at the elbow of senior managers, people notable for their track record of composing and/or encouraging a group of moderate performers to compose themselves into an ensemble capable of great things.
Note that I said "compose themselves into" - part of what makes for a successful management career is the ability to gauge whether or not a candidate for the team is (1) right technically (2) right socially and (3) right psychically for the task and immediate environment at hand.
That takes experience, insight, an observant nature and deep appreciation of the power and frailties of the human spirit.
It's rather deeper than what this article alludes to. Management is a calling, not just a pleasing title.
If a manager is delegating to a subordinate, only to then "snatch" the task back before giving the subordinate a fair chance at accomplishing the task, they are simply demonstrating a need for managerial training themselves - and their immediate manager (or HR) needs a talking to about their screening/training skills.
The example in the article is ridiculous. We're no longer talking about management; we're talking about maturity here, folks. Maturity is not something that can be learned in business school and regurgitated in practice.
Let's face it - technical management is fairly straightforward - a little project management here, a little skills assessment there, mix in some organizational capability maturity modeling and poof! But does mere ownership of such skills beget a manager? NOT.
Management is not just a cookbook approach. The world cannot always be boiled down to something suitable for the "Dummies" series. The best managers learn about the complex dynamics of managing by learning at the elbow of senior managers, people notable for their track record of composing and/or encouraging a group of moderate performers to compose themselves into an ensemble capable of great things.
Note that I said "compose themselves into" - part of what makes for a successful management career is the ability to gauge whether or not a candidate for the team is (1) right technically (2) right socially and (3) right psychically for the task and immediate environment at hand.
That takes experience, insight, an observant nature and deep appreciation of the power and frailties of the human spirit.
It's rather deeper than what this article alludes to. Management is a calling, not just a pleasing title.
I know it is easier to take the heat for a personal failure than it is to take the heat for the failure of others.
As manager, you take the heat either way. But, if is a personal failure, one doesn't feel stupid for picking the "wrong" person to do a task.
Everyone experiences events beyound their control, or a lack of authority(and/or resources) to do tasks for which they are responsible. Everybody has made poor decisions. Unfortunately, the only way a person gains the flexibility to respond, rather than react, and the ability to recognize the subtle signs of disaster--is to experience failure for themselves. Education is not a subtitute for this.
Truely great managers have the courage to "step off of the edge", they experience it as something other than the gut-clenching fear that I have been known to feel. They find it exciting. They are also capable of choosing non-catastrophic projects for the people they are training to practice upon.
True, I believe good managers have a talent for choosing the right people. Those people still need experience, refinement, coaching, and training; to develop the self-assurance and perception necessary to be fully productive.
My brother is one of the great ones. I, on the other hand, am a crappy manager. I can at least perceive the difference.
As manager, you take the heat either way. But, if is a personal failure, one doesn't feel stupid for picking the "wrong" person to do a task.
Everyone experiences events beyound their control, or a lack of authority(and/or resources) to do tasks for which they are responsible. Everybody has made poor decisions. Unfortunately, the only way a person gains the flexibility to respond, rather than react, and the ability to recognize the subtle signs of disaster--is to experience failure for themselves. Education is not a subtitute for this.
Truely great managers have the courage to "step off of the edge", they experience it as something other than the gut-clenching fear that I have been known to feel. They find it exciting. They are also capable of choosing non-catastrophic projects for the people they are training to practice upon.
True, I believe good managers have a talent for choosing the right people. Those people still need experience, refinement, coaching, and training; to develop the self-assurance and perception necessary to be fully productive.
My brother is one of the great ones. I, on the other hand, am a crappy manager. I can at least perceive the difference.
The easiest way to make delegation work is to have a development plan for each team member. This plan will take the guess work out of which tasks to delegate to which person.
Some other quick suggestions.
Delegate ASAP; don't let the task sit around in your e-mail box and give it to someone at the last minute.
Have a contingency plan if the person is struggling. Set a deadline to re-take or re-assign the task is someone is trying but not succeeding.
Have a contingency plan if the person ignores the task. I usually have a shorter deadline if I see no effort being expended than if the person is trying.
Hav an oversight plan. Depending upon the task, person, and nearnest to a deadline, plan how much oversight to give. This also will be affected by your staff development plan.
Delegation is really the flip side to staff development. If you want your staff to learn new things, you must give them new things to do.
Some other quick suggestions.
Delegate ASAP; don't let the task sit around in your e-mail box and give it to someone at the last minute.
Have a contingency plan if the person is struggling. Set a deadline to re-take or re-assign the task is someone is trying but not succeeding.
Have a contingency plan if the person ignores the task. I usually have a shorter deadline if I see no effort being expended than if the person is trying.
Hav an oversight plan. Depending upon the task, person, and nearnest to a deadline, plan how much oversight to give. This also will be affected by your staff development plan.
Delegation is really the flip side to staff development. If you want your staff to learn new things, you must give them new things to do.
Several of the comments already posted here have touched on a core issue with new managers: they have to learn how to manage.
It's not sufficient for a senior mananger to promote a member of staff to a management role and just expect the new manager to cope with their responsibilities to their team and their management without being prepared fo the role.
The best management candidates are identified, groomed, mentored and then deployed. This may involve aptitude testing, sending them on managemnt training courses and/or delegating small management role to them initially to judge their competence (team leader roles are a perfect transitional position for this stage). In all cases, though, an experienced manager should be available to them to help them through the issues they will encounter, which will include learning how to build trust, identify reliable resources and be able to safely delegate tasks.
A mentor is also responsible for the political education of the new manager too, ensuring that they understand the importance of their decisions no only to their projects and departments, but how delegation choices can eventually add up to form part of how that new manager will be judged by the rest of the management heirarchy.
It's not sufficient for a senior mananger to promote a member of staff to a management role and just expect the new manager to cope with their responsibilities to their team and their management without being prepared fo the role.
The best management candidates are identified, groomed, mentored and then deployed. This may involve aptitude testing, sending them on managemnt training courses and/or delegating small management role to them initially to judge their competence (team leader roles are a perfect transitional position for this stage). In all cases, though, an experienced manager should be available to them to help them through the issues they will encounter, which will include learning how to build trust, identify reliable resources and be able to safely delegate tasks.
A mentor is also responsible for the political education of the new manager too, ensuring that they understand the importance of their decisions no only to their projects and departments, but how delegation choices can eventually add up to form part of how that new manager will be judged by the rest of the management heirarchy.
I just retired after 41 years with the same company. Was responsible for field service operations - if you are a manager and can't learn to delegate you better get another position. The key to delegation is follow-up, follow-up, follow-up. People "respect what you inspect" - let them know what you expect, don't micro manage. Let them know you have an open door policy and that you want to be made aware of developing problems or are always available for input and feedback. When they do a good job tell them so, if they screw up don't kill them, let them know where the job went wrong, nobody is perfect and we all fail from time to time. Just don't make a habit of it.
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