Time management - Delegation towards independence
Delegation towards independence
Low independence
Personnel at this level will require a lot more input from you. You will provide all of the information and make all of the key decisions.
Your level of control will be high and your personal freedom low.
As an individual moves towards the right and full independence they will gain in terms of experience, skills, job satisfaction and self control.
This has the advantage of freeing your time to carry out more strategic thinking activities.
Some people only want to function at the low level and will be spoon fed accordingly and will never develop.
The rise from ‘low independence’ to ‘high independence’ can move through several stages.
These could be.
- Never requests anything and must be told.
- Can start to ask what is the next step.
- Begins to take on actions after checking with the boss.
- Independent actions followed by reporting to the boss.
- Full independence, little if any monitoring, with freedom to act on their own.
For the purpose of good delegation you should try to move all of your staff along to the right.
Those on the left side may feel like cogs in a wheel and feel undervalued and not involved.
It will be up to you to develop them.
We talk about delegating to help develop an individual but you can’t do this until certain other features are in place.
- Competence. In terms of possessing the correct training and skills.
- Motivation. Improving the underlying confidence of the individual so they have a desire to tackle projects in order to increase their ‘competence’.
You can try to move personnel through the levels by careful management.
Never requests anything and must be told.Start to involve them in some of the planning. It will help to encourage good estimation of completion times whilst asking for some justification.
What standard will they achieve. Get them to see where their efforts fit into the grand scheme of things. Always encourage and give praise.
Define clearly the level of authority before taking any action. Increase the involvement in planning by seeking suggestions. Encourage the eveldopment of solutions.
Begins to take on actions after checking with the boss.Increase the risk of projects by increasing the size of the tasks. Little control is required in decision making provided adequate reports are planned into the tasks. Praise and encouragement are needed as usual.
Independent actions followed by reporting to the boss.Allow them to take on tasks that require no checks before actions are implemented. Encourage them to solve their own problems and just report on progress at a given interval, for example, once per month.
Full independence little if any monitoring and freedom to act on their own.
Reports are still required.