Delegating Work: Expert Solutions to Everyday Challenges

This is one of the volumes in the Harvard Business Press "Pocket Mentor" series, each of which offers "immediate solutions to common challenges managers face on the job every day." No matter where you are, "these portable guides enable you to tackle the daily demands of your work with greater speed, savvy, and effectiveness." In this instance, the advice is provided by Thomas L. Brown, author of more than 400 published articles as well as The Anatomy of Fire: Sparking a New Spirit of Enterprise. His subject is delegation of work. He explains why and how it offers significant advantages to those who delegate (freeing up more time for them to concentrate on tasks that require their particular skills and authority), to their direct reports (increasing their motivation by helping them to enhance existing skills and develop new ones) "and it can also strengthen trust and communication between you and your group. For your company, effective delegation ensures that the right person, at the right level, performs a task, thereby improving overall efficiency and productivity." Within a narrative of only 53 pages plus a section of "Tips and Tools" for delegating, a self-audit, FAQs, and additional sources (Pages 55-77), Brown manages to cover most of the key points insofar as what effective delegation is (and isn't) is concerned. As is also true of the other booklets in this series, the one provides a number of checklists such as the benefits of delegating common arguments against delegating and appropriate responses to them, practices that will help the reader to overcome barriers to effective delegation, how to establish the right environment for delegating, how to select the best approach (i.e. by task by project, or by function), how to know what not to delegate, steps for delegating to the right person, steps for communicating a delegated assignment, how to provide support, how to handle reverse delegation (i.e. "when a staff person wants to return the job to you or expects you to solve problems and make decisions"), and how to "return the monkey" to the "back" on which it belongs by "delegating so that it sticks." In recent years especially, there has been a significant increase in the number of books and articles in which their authors explain how to "grow" employees so that, over time, ordinary workers can accomplish extraordinary results. That is indeed a worthy objective. I cannot think of a greater challenge that supervisors now face...and I cannot think of better ways to meet that challenge than by becoming a skillful mentor and a skill delegator. It is no coincidence that, during exit interviews of highly valued employees who have accepted a job elsewhere, three of their most common complaints are that (1) performance expectations were either vague or inconsistent, (2) there was insufficient feedback (e.g. constructive criticism) from supervisors, and (3) performance appraisals were unfair and/or inaccurate. The advice that Jordan offers i