“The first rule of management is delegation. Don’t try and do everything yourself because you can’t” - Anthea Turner
The above quote speaks words of wisdom from a prudent lady who was once one of the most influential English television presenters. It takes an extraordinary character and some visionary risk-taking to be an enchanting leader. These rare qualities are the reason why the world has a literal dearth of great leaders who can steer positive changes around them. Speaking of business leaders, in particular, those who have the ability to delegate authority go the farthest.
As a business leader, you have a wide spectrum of goals and objectives to meet. You set goals for driving active employee engagement in the workplace, bringing down employee turnover costs, managing performances, expanding your business, and so on. To facilitate and accomplish these goals, you work around certain business and management strategies. Well, little do people know that delegation of authority and responsibilities is one of the most worthwhile approaches to leadership for organizational growth.
To further elucidate, in this blog, we look at the various merits of delegation as a trait of business leadership. On the other side of this blog, you will be able to decipher why the greatest leaders of the world staunchly believe in the delegation of authority. You will be amazed to realize how immense is the power of delegation in the workplace. So without further ado, let’s get started!
Ways in which delegation drives positive workplace changes
Delegation can drive greater engagement
Business leaders know how paramount high employee engagement is to the growth of a business. Employee engagement has a direct correlation with the profitability and affluence of a business. To elucidate, as per Gallup, companies with high engagement can be 22 percent more profitable than their contemporaries. This is why you have a responsibility to have firm strategies in place that can drive high employee engagement.
Of course, you are already doing some commendable work at keeping engagement going. However, there is always scope for improvement, isn’t it? You can take the engagement game to the next level with the simple approach of delegation. When you delegate authority to your team members, you introduce them to new challenges and greater empowerment. They will feel that their significance in the workplace is increasing. Besides, they would view these additional responsibilities as prospects for career advancement.
All these above factors will inspire employees to unleash new horizons of active engagement. They will invest greater commitment and sincerity in their work because of the sense of empowerment you render to them by delegating additional responsibilities.
Employees who are true to their career goals and manifest integrity would love to take added responsibilities. They will respond to these opportunities with overwhelming motivation and engagement. Therefore, delegation in the workplace can be an extraordinary strategy for higher employee engagement.
Delegation promotes a sense of belonging
When business leaders delegate authority and responsibilities, it promotes a sense of belonging among employees. They begin to feel that they are valuable to the organization. Having said that, this feeling of belonging in your employees can inspire greater allegiance in them. They will feel a greater sense of attachment to the organization and align their interests with those of the company.
In the ultimate sense, all of this will materialize into better performances and profitability. In fact, as per Deloitte Insights, a sense of belonging in the workplace can lead to a 56 percent hike in job performance. To add, workplace belonging can also pull down employee attrition rates by 50 percent. As we know, the heavy losses incurred by high turnover can wreck businesses.
But with the simple art of delegation, you can keep both productivity and retention going. The sense of belonging you create via delegation is going to be priceless for your employees. You will be amused to see how they respond then greater zeal and diligence.
Delegation facilitates trust-building
We often keep looking at numbers and graphs as metrics of organizational success. However, one of the most quintessential core competencies for success is trust. Organizations thrive on winning ways when there is trust and reliability among employees and leaders. As a business leader, it is your prerogative to foster trust in the workplace. But why do you think it is necessary for commercial organizations to build trust?
Well, trust is what determines the efficiency of collaboration, communication, and transparency within an organization. In the absence of trust, all these virtues will become inefficient leading to negative outcomes that can translate into financial losses. To substantiate, as per SalesForce, 86 percent of executives and corporate workers cite ineffective collaboration as the key reason for project failures. Having said that all leaders have the obligation to build trust among their team members.
Speaking of ways to build trust delegation provides you a great opportunity to do that. Of course, when you delegate power and important tasks to your team members, you do that with great trust. You would not simply delegate a task to someone you do not trust, right? Hence, when you delegate functionalities and employees do complete justice to them, it aids mutual trust-building. Furthermore, this trust will add great positivity to workplace culture attracting the greatest enthusiasm in everyone. Thus, delegation of power has to be one of the greatest leadership lessons by all means!
Delegation can help in identifying future leaders
Leadership is not an entitlement that comes to people from the virtue of birth. No one is a born leader and the notion of dynastic leaders is almost obsolete in the contemporary world. However, with the right opportunities to learn and exposure to realistic scenarios, anyone can develop into an exemplary leader. True leaders are those who not only coach their subordinates but also mentor them. The differences between a coach and a mentor are subtle, but they do exist. A coach is someone who cares about an individual’s performance in specific activities, whereas a mentor is someone who works on the holistic development of his mentees. Successful leadership requires a good combination of coaching and mentoring.
You would need such self-made true leaders in your organization to meet your entrepreneurial ambitions. In fact, you would have to create leaders out of your best employees. After all, an incredible leader is one who can create some excellent leaders around them! So, how do you plan on doing that? How are you going to identify potential leaders in your team and groom them further?
Well, again, the answer lies in delegating authority and crucial tasks to your team members. When you do that, you will get a clear idea of who is happy to take additional responsibilities and who is reluctant in doing so. You will be able to recognize who has the flamboyance, character, and diligence to take up new challenges and who lacks the same.
Besides, how your team members perform in delegated tasks will speak for their skills and efficiency. Eventually, you get the opportunity to identify people who can take up leadership roles in the near future. You will know who has the same spark, intellect, and leadership potential as you!
Delegation is an excellent time management strategy
As a business owner, you have a lot on your plate to take care of. It is understandable why you want to keep authority centralized and get personally involved in every domain of your business. However, that may be interfering with your time management proficiency! You need to keep your time management productive if you aspire to be a Fortune 500 company in the future.
You need to ensure that you have your best efficiency going into the most imperative business functionalities and planning. Important commitments like planning business expansion, mergers, performance management etcetera should attain the best of your focus. But that cannot be the case if you look to manage everything on your own and leave yourself drained at the end of the day. You know it well that in the business world, time is money and you cannot afford to lose it!
Having said that, delegation of authority and work can prove to be a worthwhile time management tactic. You can delegate the usual tasks to your team members and save your time and energy for catering to the exclusive work commitments of the top management. For example, if you have a conference coming up, you can delegate the responsibility of making suitable arrangements to a team of trusted employees. You can also provide them with tools to assist them with the task. For instance, abstract management software can simplify the process of evaluating submissions, for them. In this way, you’ll save time, your own productivity will increase and you will not find yourself reeling under horrific stress. With more time on your hands and a more relaxed mind, you can lead your organization to new milestones. In fact, this is the reason why the top CEOs and managers call delegation the golden rule of management.
Delegation can reduce training expenses
Employee training and development is a salient part of business operations for any organization. It is quintessential that employees are trained for better alignment of objectives as well as for the development of pivotal job skills. Besides, constructive and conducive on boarding training is also essential for new employees. Hence, companies lay great emphasis on employee training and it makes a considerable part of their operating expenses.
As per insights from Statista, the average training cost per employee is USD 1300 per annum. Hence, the larger the organizations in terms of the workforce the greater will be the training costs. However, with delegation, companies can make substantial cuts in their training costs. This is because when you delegate additional tasks to employees, you give them hands-on experience. This practical exposure under your supervision will facilitate effective learning and development in your team members.
In fact, this on-job experience from the virtue of delegation can be more worthwhile than classroom training. Delegating will provide them realistic scenarios and a real feel of the environment and workflow pace they need to work in. The best part is that such practical learning can help you eliminate a few training modules from the employee training curriculum. Consequently, because of delegation, you will be able to cut down on training expenses.
Delegation can cultivate workplace innovation
In the modern business world, innovation is a competitive advantage every business is looking for. While some are driving innovation with the integration of IoT, AI, and other technologies, others are looking to devise innovative strategies in performance management. The bottom line is that there is a need and scope for innovation in every vertical of business operations.
Another great thing about delegation as a business strategy is that you can leverage it to drive greater workplace innovation. To explain, when you delegate tasks and responsibilities, there would be different perspectives and ideas on the table. There will be greater deliberation and inclusiveness going into every discussion and decision. What this inclusiveness will further promote is a greater magnitude of innovation in the workplace.
Moreover, because of the trust and allegiance inspired in employees through delegation, they will be keen to go the extra mile for their organization. They would feel the great urge to make exceptional contributions to see their organization advance to new horizons. They will revel in the success of the organization as their own success given their loyalty. This exuberance in them will drive them to explore new verticals of innovation and outside the box thinking in the best interest of their organization.
To recapitulate, delegation is a rewarding business strategy, and from the morale of employees to the profitability of a company, it offers multi-dimensional contributions. For business leaders, it can be both a great business strategy and a positive habit to drive greater productivity. It is true for a fact that you cannot do everything on your own with identical efficiency. In fact, when you have a team with you, you should anyway not be doing everything on your own. Hence, for the sake of greater success, let delegation be the central idea for business and performance management.
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