Delegation is a balancing act

Delegating is all about entrusting another person with a task but remaining ultimately responsible. It's a balancing act between autonomy and control.

Five Steps of Delegation:
1. Define task - define objectives & sort workload into manageable chunks
2. Select staff - name delegates based on skills & experience
3. Inform delegate - prepare brief, explain plan, and record process
4. Monitor progress - control and manage
5. Final review - appraise, review & record outcomes

Some Delegates Caveats
Tasks to retain are:

- Leadership
- Reward: salaries & bonuses
- Control: ensuring that monitoring is effective
- Personal issues: conduct & discipline
- Strategic planning: thinking ahead
- Information flow: effective communication
- Performance: assessing outcomes

Not everything can, or should, be delegated. Great managers, however, retain only strategic tasks. Lower level tasks should be passed on. Anything involving strategic planning, crises or sensitive issues must be retained. The key to brilliant management is making sure that these are the only types of tasks you are performing yourself.

~ all the above were extracted from Delegate or Suffocate - the art of working through others. Global Knowlegde.

Personally, i believe in teaching "people to fish rather than to fish for them". If they're able to 'fish' independently, it would be easy to delegate. However, it does depend on the situation if it's better to delegate or do it yourself - there lies wisdom to know when..