How to master the art of delegation
Delegating well is the six-pack of management: widely desired and harder to achieve the older you get. In theory, handing appropriate decisions off to people lower down the corporate ladder means greater satisfaction all round. Bosses get more time to concentrate on the issues that really deserve their attention. Middle managers and workers enjoy a greater sense of autonomy. And the organisation benefits from faster decision-making on the part of people who are better informed about the matter at hand. In practice, however, delegation is a minefield.
Some bosses do not even try to delegate. They may mistrust people below them or crave control. Their career success may simply have persuaded them of their own genius. But there are kinder explanations, too. Startup founders are conditioned to do everything, at least until firms get to a certain size. Plenty of managers shoulder more work than they should in order to protect their teams from overload.
Other managers do delegate but they do so for the wrong reasons. Studies suggest that people are likely to hand off decisions when choices are hard, when the consequences affect others and when they want to avoid being blamed for a bad outcome. In a paper from 2016 by Mary Steffel of Northeastern University and her co-authors, volunteers were told that they had to book hotel rooms at a conference, either for their own use or for their boss, and asked them if they would like to reserve the rooms themselves or delegate the task to an office manager. When they were choosing for the boss and the hotels were ropey, people were more likely to pass the job to the hapless office manager.
2023-12-14 09:06:18
Post from www.economist.com
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