This week I wanted to look at the other side of the delegation scale, at under delegation and the causes and consequences of failing to hand down work appropriately. Under delegation is when a superior withholds work, whether they realise it or not. Some of the reasons managers may under delegate include:
1. Feeling that the work they are doing would take too long to teach to their subordinate and that they can do it faster and more accurately.
2. Not wanting to trouble their subordinates.
3. Not trusting their subordinates.
4. Deliberately withholding work as a means of demoralising a disliked employee (creates a lack of trust, boredom, feeling useless)
Similar to over delegation, under delegation has a negative impact on both the manager and the employee. Looking at the first reason, while in the short term it might be quicker to do the work yourself instead of passing it on, you create a long term issue in that your subordinate lacks the ability to undertake some of your tasks should you be unable to complete them due to various reasons. In doing so, you are left open to having a backlog of work which you are unable to pass on.
Sometimes the manager may feel that, by delegating their work, they are troubling their subordinates and so hold back on passing on work they could otherwise handover. I know this to be an issue from personal experience. However, this is something managers must get over. There is work that has to be done which takes precedence over other tasks and its simply not possible to complete that work and these other tasks in a reasonable amount of time. At the same time, I’m going to make the assumption that most employees want to advance their careers and so would want to gain as much experience as possible.
If a manager does not trust their subordinate, either in terms of skills or as a person, then this a more complicated relationship issue and may require a broader culture change or simply training the employee to a point where their skills are trustworthy.
Finally, a manager deliberately withholding work as a means of hurting an employee obviously has some issues and would require some form of intervention from higher up in the company.
Overall, under delegation simply creates more work for the manager and less for the employee who will fail to gain necessary skills or process understanding to advance themselves and the company. At its worst, under delegation can engender mistrust and boredom for subordinates who may leave in pursuit of something more interesting. Overcoming this requires the ability to prioritise work and to make the time to teach employees about the processes involved. By doing so managers have more time to do higher priority work and can also rely on better skilled employees who are able to complete the work assigned to them.