Delegating to your staff
I was hoping to get some pointer's on how I can become better about delegating tasks to my staff? I am new to my Program Director position and I find that I am having problems delegating to my team. Your help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Pam
Pamela,
I would encourage you to take a good,honest look at your tasks (perhaps with someone else) & try to determine what you should be doing & what others on your team can do. Along with this, are there any tasks that would help develop your team in their skills & help them achieve their goals in a faster way?
Dr. Ryan Meers
Dr. Meers,
Thank you for your suggestion about having someone else look at my tasks and help me to see what I can do to enable my instructors to be more assertive and meet with them to see what they feel are their strengths and weaknesses. I guess the issue comes down to time. They are currently working 34 hours in the classroom and that does not include their prep time. Would I be able to work that into part of their day as we already have several mandatory meetings we must attend weekly and monthly meetings, so being overwhelmed does not help with things, any helpful hints would be welcomed, thank you!
Pam
Pamela,
unfortunately this is the great problem of many, especially in education. One suggestion I could make is to look at the non-mandatory meetings & determine if any of these can be cut out, can the information be handled through email, etc? I try to look for time-savers anywhere possible.
Dr. Ryan Meers
I think you should delegate certain tasks that you know some of your staff is good at doing to take the load off yourself.
cindy,
I completely agree with you. In addition I encourage managers to make sure that we are being clear with our staff as to why we are delegating certain tasks to them & we follow up to make sure they are doing well & learning, growing, etc.
Dr. Ryan Meers
Cindy,
You are right. Initially, as a new Program Director, I frequently lack the skill of delegating task. Becoming familiar with my talented staff members, I started incorporating the staffs’ talents as developmental actions. The staff received the development actions as professional development activities and appreciated the added responsibilities.
Shana,
you nailed it! We must learn our staff's strengths & interests so then we can delegate to them appropriately.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
I have had some resistance to me delegating some responsibilities to my staff members. One actually said that she should get paid for doing my job since she was helping me do it. How do you handle that?
Dana,
I think you have to be very careful in what you are delegating & making sure that it is truly a part of what they should be doing. There are certain duties that you should do as the manager & others that are shared tasks.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
I have the same issue, specially becausw i like things to be done a certain way but training people on how to do things your way might work so it makes your job easier.
Aranzu,
it really does. And yes, this can be frustrating & painfully slow sometimes, but in the end it's more profitable for all.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
In some circunstances the mananger need to delegate responsibilities to the staff. Delegating is one of the situation create to prove the capacity of your team. Also give the opportunity to the staff to share the brainstorming of the strategies to be use to complete the goal of the company.
MIRIAM,
excellent point made here in regard to delegation improving the capacity of your team.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
Dr. Meers,
I totally agree with you and Aranzu. I have found that delegating can be a challenge especially when a manager is accustomed to having a task completed a certain way. Sometimes it’s easier to just do it yourself. However, as a manager it becomes our duty to properly train direct reports on assigned tasks. This takes patience, but the outcome is a win-win for all involved resulting in accurate and efficient project completion. It also builds trust as the manager is able to further determine the strengths and weaknesses of staff members and their capabilities for performing future tasks.
Tonia,
so true & this is a primary way we can develop the new leaders who we need in our organizations.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
And what if you have a staff that you can’t delegate anything to because they don’t want to do any more than they are doing.
Joe ,
this is a common question & definitely a challenge. One thing you have to consider is what you are delegating to them? Is it things that really are in your area of responsibility? If so, maybe you shouldn't delegate them. If they really fall under the others' area of responsibility, then they need to step up to the plate.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
