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You’ve been the operations coordinator for CEN-COM, a comm center providing communications services for police, fire and EMS in a mixed suburban/urban area, for about a year, and you feel like you can never seem to get through your weekly to-do list. One day during a gripe session with the director, you tell her this. She says, “Why don’t you delegate the scheduling to Joe. He’s been around for a while, knows the agency and seems to have a good head on his shoulders.” Seeing an uncomfortable look come across your face, she asks, “You aren’t afraid to delegate, are you?”

Introduction
Delegation is a management term that everybody seems to have heard of but few seem able to actually implement to the betterment of their organization. This can be especially true with most super­visory and management level personnel at comm centers. This article explains how to delegate, what to delegate and some of the more common issues managers typically encounter when they delegate.

For various reasons, most managers are somewhat reticent to delegate. However, delegation underpins a management style that allows your staff to use and develop their skills and knowledge to their full potential. Without delegation, you have the potential to lose their full value — and perhaps some of your own. Delegation is primarily about entrusting your authority to others. This means that they can act and initiate independently, and that they assume responsibility with you for certain tasks. If something goes wrong, you remain responsible because you are the manager. The essential element here is to delegate in such a way that things get done but don’t go (badly) wrong.

Objective
The objective of delegation is to get the job done by someone else. This applies not just to the simple tasks that involve reading the proverbial instructions and turning a lever, but also the decision making and changes that depend on new information. With delegation, your staff has the authority to react to situations without referring back to you.

To enable someone else to do the job for you, you must ensure that:

• They know what you want them to do;
• They have the authority to achieve it; and
• They know how to do it.

These all depend on communicating clearly the nature of the task, the extent of the employee’s discretion, and the sources of relevant information and knowledge.

How to Delegate
Assume that most people want added responsibilities. (Don’t you?) Assume they’re eager to learn, and recognize that the short-term training investment will pay off in the long term. Following the steps outlined below will assist you in the “how-to” phase of delegation:

• Make sure the standards, as well as the outcome, of what you are delegating are clear. What needs to be done? When should it be finished and to what degree of quality or detail?
• Delegate the objective, not the procedure. Outline the desired results, not the methodology.
• Ask people to provide progress reports at various times during the project(s), and set interim deadlines to see how things are going.
• Delegate to the right person. Don’t always give tasks to the strongest, most experienced or even first available person.
• Spread delegation around, and give people new experiences as part of their training.
• Obtain feedback from employees to ensure they feel they’re being treated appropriately. A simple “How’s it going with that new project?” might be all that’s needed.
• Be sure to delegate the authority along with the responsibility. Making people come back to you for too many minor approvals will accomplish nothing.
• Trust people to do well, and don’t look over their shoulders or check up with them along the way, unless they ask. (As Ernest Hemingway once said, “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”)
• When you finish giving instructions, the last thing to ask is, “What else do you need to get started?” They will tell you.
• Give praise and feedback at the end of the project, and additional responsibilities.

Look around. Even if you’re not the boss, there are people who will help you if you approach them in the right way.

What to Delegate
There is always the question of what to delegate and what to do yourself, and you must take a long-term view on this: You want to delegate as much as possible to develop your staff to be as good as you are now. Don’t delegate what you can eliminate. If you shouldn’t be doing an activity, then perhaps you shouldn’t be giving the activity away to others. Eliminate it. Delegate routine activities, even if you don’t want to. These include:

• Fact-finding assignments;
• Preparation of rough drafts of reports;
• Problem analysis and suggested actions;
• Photocopying, printing, collating; and
• Data collection and entry.

There are some things you can’t delegate: performance reviews, discipline and firing. Also, remember to delegate, not abdicate. Someone else can do the task, but you’re still responsible for its completion, as well as managing the delegation process.

Control
One of the more common fears among managers about delegation is that by giving others authority, the manager loses control. This need not be the case.

If you train your staff to apply the same criteria you would yourself (both by example and full explanations), then they’ll be exercising your control on your behalf. And because they will witness many more situations over which control may be exercised (you can’t be in several places at once) then that control is exercised more diversely and more rapidly than you could exercise it by yourself.

Conclusions
To understand delegation, you really have to think about people. Delegation cannot be viewed in the abstract. Its success and/or failure depends on individuals and individual needs. One of the keys is to delegate gradually. Build up gradually — first a small task leading to a little development, then another small task that builds on the first; when that is achieved, add another stage; and so on. Each task delegated should have enough complexity to stretch that staff member, but only a little. Both the comm center manager and the person being managed need to feel confident or the entire delegation process will fail.

Delegation can be an extremely easy task to learn, but difficult to master. The investment in mastering it, however, is well worth it. Increased time for additional projects, team-building and more solid working relationships are just some of the fringe benefits comm centers will see when delegation techniques are used effectively.

About the Author
Raphael M. Barishansky, MPH, is the program chief for public health preparedness for the Prince George’s County (Md.) Health Department and a frequent contributor to various public safety publications. Contact him via e-mail at [email protected].

Originally published in Public Safety Communications magazine, Vol. 76(12):38-39, December 2010.