Monica, I really enjoyed reading your inspiring article! She asked the question: “When is delegating not helpful to an employee or how much risk can you take?”
I believe that delegating is not helpful to an employee when they do not have the prerequisites or competence to complete the task. One of the characteristics of team effectiveness that Larson & Lafasto define is called “competent team members,” whereby the individual(s) should have the proper store of knowledge and experience to complete the desired task (Northouse, 2017: p. 377-378). Although an employee should be challenged and pushed outside of his or her comfort zone to grow, the task should still be in their breadth of knowledge and skill set. Delegation is an important tool that leaders need to fine-tune to build and grow an organization. It is the art of consistently reproducing the leader and exponentially growing skills, output, and results.
A rule of thumb that an article recommends to consider when a leader is trying to determine if he or she should delegate is called “The 70% Rule” (Schleckser, 2014). According to Schleckser (2014), the leader should delegate if the individual can perform the task at least 70% as well as the leader. Evidently, the most difficult part of delegation is for a leader to give up control and trust that the task will be completed to the best of the employee’s ability (Schleckser, 2014). This requires an understanding that the employee may complete the task using a different approach than the leader; however, the leader must value the time that can be reinvested into higher-level priorities vital to the growth of the organization. If the leader needs the task to be completed at 100% performance level, then the leader should not delegate the task (Schleckser, 2014).
Thank you for your post! Looking forward to reading more!
Christina
References
Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: theory and practice (Eighth ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Schleckser, J. (2014, Aug 14). When to delegate? Try the 70% Rule. Inc. Retrieved on October 28, 2018, from https://www.inc.com/jim-schleckser/the-70-rule-when-to-delegate.html
Hey Christina,
Thank you for your encouraging post and your answers to my questions. Very helpful!
Appreciate you sharing that article too!