Delegation Case - Five Behaviors of Delegators

Weekly Reflection

Delegation is a critical skill that must be taught to managers at every company for improved success. In the case of Ricky Lee, he has been assigned a task that has required him to show how well he can delegate and handle multiple activities within the organization at once. For his assignment, given to him by his boss Anne Zumwalt, he has requested help from coworker Bill Harmon. Together, through the direction of Ricky, they will complete a new procedure manual for negotiating contracts.

Five Behaviors of Delegators

Ricky's first step in delegating this assignment to Bill is to clarify the assignment. Bill will have to specify what needs to be accomplished, the deadline for completion, and the result that he expects. In this case, Ricky is entrusting Bill with creating the new procedures manual for contract negotiation with office supply manufacturers who supply their products. Bill will need to specify that this is to be completed by the end of the month according to his boss Anne. He will need to communicate that the office procedures manual needs to outline the steps to follow when negotiating contracts with the suppliers, and any other expectations that need to be met for Bill to succeed.

Next he will need to clarify Bill's range of discretion. Bill will need to know any specific parameters to work within in relation to this task. For example, if Anne expects the manual to be written in outline form and the results be a written printed document to distribute it should be clearly defined. If Bill does not know this, he could be well intentioned and try to do something different, like put the information in a different format (PowerPoint for example) and post it online on SharePoint. This could be a great way to distribute this information, but Bill doesn't have the latitude to do this because Anne wants it in a written printed manual. This is why Ricky needs to be as clear as possible about what Bill's range of discretion is.

In order for Ricky to determine how much authority he will grant to Bill to accomplish this project, Ricky will need to cover this topic with Bill during their initial meeting. Ricky has chosen Bill for the project, so it is assumed that Ricky trusts that Bill can use responsibility with the necessary influence he will utilize to complete the project successfully. However, Ricky may only be basing his selection of Bill on other traits such as punctuality, motivation, and knowledge without any clue of how Bill handles the opportunity to use supplementary power. Ricky will need to establish with Bill the importance of using his delegated authority with restraint and only where necessary to aid Bill in his work on the project. Ricky can inform Bill that he will be communicating to staff and other necessary parties the details of the project and the scope of Bill's authority