WOW Word-Of-the-Week #498: Delegating
February 19, 2014 by Susan Clarke
Delegating – giving the responsibility of a task to another person.
How comfortable are you giving another person a task to complete? Do you trust that it will get done? Do you feel a need to micromanage it? How willing are you to accept your strengths and your weaknesses?
This week’s WOW is in celebration of my delegating a task to Evan my “computer guru.” My good friend Mary said, “I love reading your travel logs but I can’t follow them on my phone because it is so small on my screen.” Well, that triggered my email to Evan who said he could “make my website mobile-optimized for ideal viewing and usability on smart phones and tablets.” It was my goal to have it all ready by January 1st.
Things happen! And Evan got backlogged and it finally just got done. I was not stressing out about that. In a perfect world I would have been able to do it myself and it would have gotten done just as I planned. However, my trying to learn how to do that would not have been a good use of my time and probably would have caused me massive frustration!
One of the best things that I have learned is how to use WordPress. Having control over my website has been wonderful! And once I got through the learning curve, it is now very easy to do. I have learned to let go and delegate those tasks that are best suited having someone else do!
“Delegation is one of the most important management skills. Good delegation saves you time, develops your people, grooms a successor, and motivates. Poor delegation will cause you frustration, demotivates and confuses the other person, and fails to achieve the task or purpose itself. So it’s a management skill that’s worth improving.” – businessballs.com
This week’s focus is on delegating. Is one of your goals to move up in your company? When given a task by your supervisor can they trust that you will get it done? How does it make you feel to give responsibility to someone else? Can you trust them or do you need to micromanage it?