Delegating to Employees

Delegating is a critical skill for supervisors. Delegating involves working with an employee to establish goals, granting them sufficient authority and responsibility to achieve the goals, often giving them substantial freedom in deciding how the goals will be achieved, remaining available as a resource to help them achieve the goals, assessing their performance (the quality of their effort and attainment of the goals), addressing performance issues and/or rewarding their performance. Ultimately, the supervisor retains responsibility for the attainment of the goals, but chooses to achieve the goals by delegating to someone else.

Delegation can sometimes be a major challenge for new supervisors to learn because they are concerned about giving up control or struggle to have confidence in the abilities of others. Supervisors that can effectively delegate can free up a great deal of their own time, help their direct reports to cultivate expertise in learning, and can develop their own leadership skills -- skills that are critical for problem solving, goal attainment and learning.

Various Perspectives

Basics of Delegating
Leadership (includes well-organized info about basics of delegation)
Delegation (overall steps and put in a larger context)
Delegation Tips (rounds out your knowledge, once you get basic steps down)
Management and the Five R’s of Delegation
Small Business Owners Need To Delegate!
Delegation And Accountability - Two Strings Of The Same Bow

For the Category of Leadership:

Recommended Books

For Leading Yourself, See
Personal Development -- Related Books

For Leading Other Individuals, See
Supervision -- Related Books

For Leading Teams, See
Facilitation and Teams -- Related Books

For Leading Organizations, See
Organizational Development -- Recommended Books

For Management, See
Management -- Recommended Books

Basics and General Information

Field Guide to Leadership and Supervision in Business: by Carter McNamara, published by Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Provides step-by-step, highly practical guidelines to recruit, utilize and evaluate the best employees for your business. Includes guidelines to effectively lead yourself (as Board member or employee), other individuals, groups and organizations. Includes guidelines to avoid burnout -- a very common problem among employees of small businesses. Many materials in this Library's topic about staffing are adapted from this book.

Field Guide to Leadership and Supervision With Nonprofit Staff: by Carter McNamara, published by Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Provides step-by-step, highly practical guidelines to recruit, utilize and evaluate the best staff members for your nonprofit. Includes guidelines to effectively lead yourself (as Board member or staff member), other individuals, groups and organizations. Includes guidelines to avoid burnout -- a very common problem among nonprofit staff. Many materials in this Library's topic about staffing are adapted from this book.

The following books are recommended because of their highly practical nature and often because they include a wide range of information about this Library topic. To get more information about each book, just hover your cursor over the image of the book. A "bubble" of information will be displayed. You can click on the title of the book in that bubble to get more information, too.