Effective Delegation

Delegation can be viewed as dumping by the employee who receives more work to do. In a recent meeting with a young employee, she complained that while she was extremely interested in more responsible work and taking on new challenges, she felt that her manager was just giving her more work to do.

Consequently, some of the delegated work was more challenging; attending meetings during which she helped impact the direction of a developing product was challenging, exciting, and responsible. She believed her manager didn't understand the difference though, so she spent her time doing more work of a mundane, repetitive nature. This workload, that had her working long hours and weekends, interfered with her ability to take on more responsibility.

Admittedly, any job has its share of the mundane tasks that have to be completed. I don't like filing and I don't like billing clients. I also don't like doing the wash. But, the manager must carefully balance the delegation of more work with the delegation of work requiring more responsibility, authority, and challenge.