Delegating in a professional atmosphere boasts several benefits for both your company’s morale and its overall health. A productive company begins with productive employees, and productive employees are born through a strong sense of self-reliance and confidence in their professional abilities. Both of these aspects of productive employees can be developed through the effective usage of delegation. As an executive and the leader of the team, one of your most vital roles is to understand the importance of asking for help and allowing your employees to play a part in the productivity and success of your business. Not only does delegation promote your employees’ commitments to their positions, but it also establishes you, the authority, as a team player who acknowledges the value of your employees’ contributions. We’ve compiled a list of a few of the ways that delegation creates a healthier and more productive workplace.
1. Delegation Creates Better Leaders
As a leader, delegation creates room on your calendar and in your workload, freeing you to focus on the larger, more important tasks in your professional life. A stressed-out leader can often fail to communicate professionally in high-stress situations, causing a sense of intimidation and discomfort among employees. This intimidation translates to increased absenteeism, lowered productivity, and decreased commitment to the job.
By delegating tasks to your employees, you not only relieve yourself of the stress of shouldering too many responsibilities at once, but you also express a confidence in their abilities as professionals and as vital parts of the machine that makes your company run. A leader who expresses his or her confidence in their employees through action, rather than simply words, is a leader who is efficient and respected.
2. Delegation Creates Better Employees
An authority’s delegation of tasks and problems to subordinates improves morale by, as we mentioned before, expressing confidence in their abilities to deliver a solution by themselves and of their own merit. True delegation, however, lies in being able to surrender control of a particular issue and not insist on being the ultimate word on its solution. If you “delegate” a task to an employee and then insist upon their constant correspondence with you to keep tabs on its progress, you have not delegated anything.
You have, however, developed an incidence of micro-managing that might actually decrease your employee’s morale. When employees are entrusted with the completion of a task on their own, knowing that its results will reflect their abilities and level of dedication, there is usually a strong impetus within them to do a thorough and efficient job. This sense of self-reliance and identity improves office morale and provides the employee with a feeling of purpose within their professional world.
3. Delegation Creates Better Workplaces
Effective delegation also creates a workplace environment that is generally more healthy and conducive to productivity. Because good delegation is based on the practice of assigning tasks to employees based on their particular strengths and weaknesses, delegation’s ultimate dividend should be a workplace wherein everyone (or almost everyone) feels that they are performing to their fullest potentials and are being appreciated for said successes. Good delegation should also make employees feel as if they are learning and improving their skills, thus actually making them better employees who are more suited to assuming roles of authority in future scenarios.
The secrets to effective delegation can’t be learned in a day, and with a new leader, a few management missteps are to be expected. However, effective delegation is one of the most important factors to having and maintaining a productive, enjoyable workplace environment.