The Art of Real Delegation

Pages: 170
Publication: January 2008
Publisher: Blackhall Publishing
Price: €15.00 Paperback
ISBN 9781842181195

Tom McConalogue, a management and organisation development consultant and trainer, is known to many of us through his successful training sessions at the Institute Of Management of Ireland. He has become one of Ireland’s leading writers on management skills and development. This is his third book in the last five years, and follows two other well-received titles:  Dealing with Change, Lessons for Irish Managers and Eat the Elephants and Fight the Ants - How to Take More Control of Your Time.

This book develops a theme the author first explored in 1993, in an article in Management Decision. The challenges to managers that he addressed fifteen years ago, albeit in a very different business environment, are still with us. Perhaps, with even greater time pressures, these challenges are even more relevant.

Because you have invested in your business, maybe financially as well as emotionally, it\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s a tough call to let go of those roles that you\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'ve personally nurtured and grown. Yet as your business grows, effectively delegating tasks to other people who are able to do it as well as, if not better than you can, is vital. Of course, as many of us recognise, with that comes a fear of losing control and all the concerns that raises.

So, it\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'s important for us to settle upon a process that lets us give up to others some of the things that we personally do, without the business crashing down on us. It’s exactly that process that I was hoping would be revealed to me in McConalogue’s book. I searched in vain, other than a few very useful Tools for Delegation in the final chapter, Making Delegation Happen.

However, perhaps what I was searching for is the ‘holy grail’ of delegation. Indeed the author himself comments: ‘As much an art as a science, delegation cannot be distilled into a neat set of principles.’ What you will find instead is a well-written book about learning to trust your staff so they can do their job and you can do yours. McConalogue understands that getting the very best from staff is not just about giving them more tasks; it is about letting go of real responsibility for results. The author offers this gem, amongst several others: ‘Trust is critical in delegation. In the absence of trust you never let go of responsibility, and yet, how can you trust people if you are unwilling to let go?’ Arguably ‘the process’ I was searching for is simply to read this book and complete the exercises that McConalogue scatters across its pages.

Perhaps surprising to some readers is the amount of space that the book gives to areas such as Challenging Your People to Perform, Coaching For Confidence and Building A Winning Team. Surprising maybe but as the author comments, ‘you can’t build trusting relationships [with your staff] unless you also make time to clarify what you want from your people, listen to their views, monitor what you give away, and recognise and reward them for their commitment and achievements’. Aha! There’s my process. So, while proposing that managers should start by looking at their own functions and style, the book examines a host of methods and techniques for bringing out the very best in others.

A small point really but I would like to see a section in the book on why people don’t delegate. Perhaps, to figure out how to delegate properly, it’s important to understand why people avoid it. I figure that often, the reason people don’t delegate because it takes a lot of up-front effort. After all, which is easier: designing and writing content for a brochure that promotes a new service you helped spearhead, or having other members of your team do it?

An excellent and thought-provoking read that should encourage managers to, at least, re-evaluate how much delegation they really do, even increase the amount of real responsibility they delegate. Perhaps a podcast version would encourage more mangers to experience its wisdom?

Guy Flouch