Tracy - Delegation & Supervision

DELEGATION & SUPERVISION

DELEGATION & SUPERVISION

BRIAN TRACY

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tracy, Brian.

Delegation & Supervision / Brian Tracy.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8144-3314-0 ISBN-10: 0-8144-3314-6

1. Delegation of authority. 2. EmployeesSupervision of. 3. Management. I. Title.

HD50.T73 2013

658.402dc23

2013013613

2013 Brian Tracy

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

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Printing number

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

Introduction

DELEGATION is one of the essential skills of effective management. Without the ability to delegate effectively and well, it is not possible to fulfill your potential as an executive.

Management has been defined as getting results through others. Inherent in this definition is the idea of effective delegation of tasks, duties, and responsibilities to your staff. Your ability and willingness to delegate is crucial to your advancement and to your success in business.

Many managers have difficulty delegating. They are often unwilling or unable to delegate, greatly limiting their chances for advancement. Since the alternative to delegating is doing it yourself, these managers end up with so many responsibilities and jobs to do personally that they are unable to make their full contribution to their organizations.

The Benefits of Delegating

Delegation has a variety of benefits and advantages. Delegation allows you to expand your work scope from what you can do to what you can control or manage. That means you can concentrate on doing the few things in the course of your workday that only you can do for your company.

Delegation allows you to increase the quality and quantity of your results. And your results will, more than any other single factor, determine your income, your position, and your level of personal satisfaction in your work.

Delegation also enables you to increase the capability and the competence of the people working under you, so you can unlock human potential.

Managers today are working at full capacity; they have far more things to do than time to do them. To get anything of importance done, a manager must delegate everything that can possibly be done by others. This is a simple fact of business life.

Delegation Is Learnable

Fortunately, delegation is a skill set that can be developed. You learn any skill by first learning how to do it, and then by practicing regularly until you make it a habit; its like driving a car.

Most managers have never been trained in delegation, and anytime you adopt any new behavior, you will feel awkward at first. However, the more you practice delegation, the easier it becomes.

This book will help you to become excellent at delegating and greatly multiply your ability to make a significant contribution to your organization. You are going to learn a series of key ideas that you can use to become far more effective as a delegator. Each of these methods, techniques, and strategies are time-tested and proven over the years, and guaranteed to work.

If you will just practice these techniques over and over, you will soon reach the point where people will refer to you as one of the best delegators that they know.

ONE

Develop Your Most Valuable Resource

YOUR MOST valuable resources in business are the human resources entrusted to you to get the job done. They are far more valuable than computers or office space. Excellent managers are those who are capable of eliciting the highest quality performance from the people they manage.

Your job as a manager is to get the maximum return on the companys investment in people. As much as 85 percent of the operating budget of any organization, especially a service business, is spent on salaries and benefits. The question is, Are you getting the maximum return out of these expenditures? Delegation is one of the ways to do just that.

The average person works at 50 percent to 60 percent of capacity. That means that in the average organization, half of the capability of employees is not being tapped. An excellent organization is one in which people are using more and more of their potential capacity to achieve the goals of the organization.

Grow Your People

Your job as a manager is to grow people. You are entrusted with the responsibility of taking care of your people and developing them. Only people can be made to increase in value. Computers and other equipment depreciate and eventually become obsolete. People, however, can be made to grow in value, depending on how they are managed and utilized. Delegation is a wonderful tool to challenge your people and cause them to stretch, achieving greater results and making a greater contribution.

Most important of all is how delegation allows you to fulfill your own personal potential. The wonderful discovery is that your potential as a manager or executive is virtually unlimited, provided you are able to unleash the talents and abilities of others by delegating and supervising effectively.

You have two choices in the world of work. When work has been assigned to you and you are accountable to your boss, you can either do it yourself, or you can get someone else to do it. Your ability to get someone else to do the workor, more precisely, to entrust the work to someone else who can, in fact, do itlets you focus on the work you have to do. More than anything else, this ability to effectively delegate is going to determine your career track, your rate of promotion, your pay, your status, your position, your prestige, and your success in management.

TWO

Challenge the Myths That Block Effective Delegation

THERE ARE several myths in management that often hold managers back from delegating. They may or may not be true, but they are the mental blocks of the individual manager. You may be aware of some of these myths or blocks and not aware of others. Whenever you see a poor delegator, you will probably see one or more of these myths at work.