This is the first of three blog posts on delegation and the spectrum of delegation that exists, at least in my mind, in any workplace. As someone who has been on both the giving and receiving ends of delegation throughout my time at uni and work (relatively short as they may be) I wanted to share my thoughts on delegation in the workplace. Personally, I like to think of delegation as a scale where on one end is the individual who over delegates and on the other end is the individual that under delegates. Both of these situations are far from ideal and end up hurting both the one who delegates and the one whom work is delegated to. Ideally, in the middle of this scale is the individual who delegates the right amount of work. In this trilogy of blogposts I intend to look at each of these points on the spectrum in greater detail. In doing so I also recognise that individuals are not confined to only these three points on the scale, rather, many lie in between.
To start off I wanted to look at individuals who over delegate work. The reasoning behind over delegation (for the sake of this post) could be narrowed down to a few reasons:
1. The individual doesn’t realise they are delegating too much work.
2. The individual believes that all tasks they think menial are beneath them or not worthy of their time and, as such, delegate it.
3. The individual harbours a deep dislike for one of their subordinates and wants to overload them work they believe the subordinate would enjoy the least. (I would like to think this is a very rare occurrence).
Whether innocently or intentionally, over delegation has consequences. For the person who is receiving all the work, they may begin to become bored or disenchanted with their job as they become bogged down with tasks that create little value and don’t satisfy their own motivations and goals. The result of which is a disengaged employee whose full potential remains unnoticed or an employee who ends up leaving the company in search of more satisfying work. There are also consequences for the individual doing the delegating. People who delegate parts of their role which only they can genuinely undertake or aren’t meant to be delegating in the first place will be held responsible for any mistake the person they have delegated the work to makes. Assuming they are handing down parts of their job which someone else is not qualified to do, this is definitely a possibility and, as such, the delegator will face retribution from their superiors. But some work is more important than others you say? This is true, however, a distinction must be made as to what must be prioritised and what can be delegated. Low priorities can’t always be thrown down the hierarchy as they can still requires skills and knowledge only that person possesses.
So how would you deal with over delegation? For me, the most obvious solution is communicating. Other reasons, such as ignoring the delegator, purposely sabotaging your work so that the delegator is reprimanded, or leaving the company are fairly destructive reactions. For all the reasons above, communicating the issue to either your manager or your manager’s superior can shift the point of the scale towards the middle (hopefully) as the issues are discussed and new arrangements made. Of course, if it is the third reason (and I would be a little surprised if an individual admitted to disliking their subordinate so much that it infringes on their working relationship rather than making an excuse) then further action such as mediation, or possibly a transfer, may be required.
Therefore, as you can see, there are consequences for both parties in over delegating work and yet the solution is simple. In writing this blog post I am reminded of something Clare had told me about the FinOps team in my first few weeks working here “Nothing is beneath you”. I would hope this notion would hold true in all organisations.
Any thoughts or comments are appreciated, part 2 coming soon.