You must have heard hundreds of times that there are two types of people or two ways you can approach a girl or something like that. This is my story about two ways.
My rule is very simple: There are always two ways to do something. Some might say that this is the right and the wrong way, the easier and harder way, the direct way or way with some detours. My answer is that one way is to do that alone, and another way is to make someone else do it. If I can choose between two ways to do something, I always choose another way.
Of course, I do not mean to underestimate the value of teamwork, but almost every job can be divided into smaller tasks that an individual executes. There are also exceptions, such as pushing the car that is jammed in the mud, which always requires several powerful guys’ joint work, but we shall return to the initial thesis to clarify it in a little bit more detail.
If you are doing something on your own, it has its advantages – what you are doing does not depend on others, you can control the deadlines and match the quality of deliveries. On the other hand, the resources you have as an individual in a managerial position, primarily the limited time you have available, lead to some things being delegated to others to do.
For things that someone else gets as a task, there are always expectations about the quality of the deliveries and the deadlines for realization. What is often the problem is that the final result is not in line with expectations. What can we do to avoid it?
The task given may seem to the person who delegates it simple and unimaginable, but for the person who gets it can be very challenging. When you assign someone to do a task, always try to give a task that requires a bit more knowledge than you are sure the person has. In this way, you will develop your colleagues’ analytics and problem-solving skills and enable them to progress through learning new things.
On the part of the task-taker, we must first ensure that the person who gets the task has the necessary resources – enough knowledge and the time to fulfill the task. If either of these two conditions is not met, the result will either not be good or will be delayed. The task-maker is responsible for evaluating what knowledge and how much time it takes for the delivery and making the expectations realistic. The one who gets the task has the responsibility for quality and time needed for delivery and for communication and questions if anything is unclear.
Various errors often occur in this process. A task-maker often delegates tasks with too short delivery or a task that a task-taker cannot complete. On the other hand, the task-taker often does not admit that he lacks some knowledge or time, does not ask for help, and the final result is poor. When the task is to be completed, sometimes task-taker doesn’t even communicate he has not finished and when he thinks the task will be finalized.
The cause of all these problems is the disparity between expectation and the real possibility of delivery – the one who has got the task has no knowledge or time needed for realization, and in the worst case it may happen that simply for some reason he does not want to do the task he has received.
Delegating tasks is a complex process that requires knowledge and understanding from both sides. This rule applies to both business and leisure life; for example, you can use it in your child’s upbringing and the tasks and challenges you give him or her in a particular period of life.
In conclusion – yes, I would always prefer to delegate work to someone else, but I have to know to whom and what I am delegating to ensure that the result we get will align with my expectations. This way, I can make sure that I have time for the tasks I need to do, like writing this blog. A bad task delivery is coming back like a boomerang, always hits you back when you least expect it, creating not just extra work but also additional frustration.
