Sometimes it's necessary to upwards delegate. But even though you delegated task to your boss, you remain responsible for task. In other words, if your boss forgets to sign order, that's your fault. It's your responsibility to keep checking with your boss to make sure task is completed.

- Sometimes a task is upwards delegated even though individual doing delegation is completely capable of doing task themself. This is called "putting monkey back on bosses back". If you're a manager or supervisor, you need to know how to recognize monkey and toss it back to whom it belongs.

Choosing a Delegatee

You would assume that it would always be advantageous to delegate a task to individual most qualified to perform task. That is not always possible because most qualified individual may already be carrying a full load of assignments. There are several reasons why it may be advantageous to delegate a task to an individual who is not most qualified to perform task.

- Growth Delegation. If you always delegate a task to individual most qualified to perform task, you will not be expanding competencies of your department. It's better to delegate a task to an individual that will be required to "stretch" a little to complete task. If all tasks are delegated to individuals who are required to "stretch" a little to complete task, competency of department will always be increasing.

- Fairness Delegation. Some tasks are boring and tedious, while others are interesting and challenging. If you always delegate boring tasks to same individuals and interesting tasks to same individuals, moral and performance of individuals always getting boring tasks will decline. Tasks should be assigned so everyone gets a little good with bad.

How to Delegate

- Make sure delegatee has resources to complete task; tools, time, and authority.

- Make sure delegatee knows task deadline. Make occasional checks to be sure task is progressing. It's not uncommon for a delegatee to receive a higher priority assignment and not mention that they have stopped working on your task.

- Describe in detail what final result of task should be.

- It's not uncommon for an individual to accept a task without faintest clue how to get started. Ask delegatee what their first step will be to begin task.

- Leave as many of details as to how to accomplish task to delegatee. Not everyone applies same skills and methods to accomplishing a task. Let delegatee take ownership and you may be pleasantly surprised with results.

Multitasking

Some people can work on same thing for hours or days without getting bored. Other people will show a productivity drop after working on something for only a short time. The secret to keeping easily bored people productive is to let them multi-task. When they get bored working on one project they can jump to something different, eventually getting bored with second task and returning to first task. Being able to jump from one task to another keeps their overall productivity up.

To make this work, you have to let worker in on plan; otherwise, they will think you are loading them up with too many tasks. You must explain relative priority of each task so they understand which task should get most attention.

Many people don't understand delegation. Proper delegation can make your team into a high performance machine. Poor delegation can result in mistakes, poor quality, and missed schedules. Use delegation techniques described in this article and watch your department's productivity soar.

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