Friday, June 3, 2011
Learning to Delegate
In this article, the author speaks about a leadership theories under Bass and Colleagues called delegative leadership. The author notes that first and foremost, delegative leadership requires a lot of trust and faith on the side of the leader to actually fully delegate tasks to his followers. A person cannot use delegative leadership without empowerment. Empowering your follower doesn’t just mean giving him/her the responsibility of the task, but also means that you give the follower of yours the competency to handle the staff, the resources to back the follower up, as well as the authority to execute whatever is necessary for the completion of the task. The first thing you have to take note when delegating a task is to ask yourself if the follower has the competency to handle it. Next, you must also ensure that he has sufficient resources to achieve the task. And finally, this person must be delegated enough authority that he may execute the task smoothly. They must be given the authority to handle everything within the project in your name so that the other team will understand that following him in that project is equivalent to submitting to their leader. This article illustrates how effective delegation takes a lot of effort, but is essential in a growing organization. We must realize that in the end, you will not be able to do everything yourself and eventually you have to learn to delegate so that you may be able to perform other more pertinent tasks for the organization.
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Dr. Lawson, I agree, the article mentioned the notion of "giving competency" which how I phrased it in the article. But yes, we can only train the others so that they gain competency.I think is the point the author was trying to convey that it is the leaders job to help prepare our followers which as you point out will help to position them to gain the competency to do a job.
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ReplyDeleteTim,
This article is a good resource. It has really good information about delegating. It is basically the same as the information given in the lecture that Dr. Lawson presented to our class. The three things that are mentioned in this article are; someone needs to facilitate a job is the competency to do a specific job, the resources to gain the knowledge and skills required to carry out the job, and the authority put in place in order to get others to listen to directions while completing the job.
As I read your blog about this article I questioned what you mean by your statement, “Empowering your follower doesn’t just mean giving him/her the responsibility of the task, but also means that you give the follower of yours the competency to handle the staff”? We cannot give anyone competency. However, we can train a person so that they can possibly gain the competency to do a job. I do agree that we need to determine if a person has the competency needed. Competency can be learned and/or it can be from natural skill. Also, sometimes we can train a person and they may never gain the skill needed.
(posted by Dr. Lawson)