NEVER DELEGATE TO A JOKER

You must be thinking DELEGATION involves only serious professionals.
But every person manages problems and needs to delegate some job to others e.g. a homemaker delegates household chores to a maidservant.

 Now the crucial question is," Who is a joker & why should he never be delegated?"

A joker in a playing card is a man without loyalty or commitment to anyone. It mixes with two aces and becomes a trail. It combines with two running cards to become a sequence of 3. Trusting a joker with any task is futile.

Delegation is a delicate art. By delegating responsibility to a person, we make him our agent and give him controls, but the responsibility lies with us.

  Suppose we want to go to Delhi from Mumbai in 2 hours. We will buy an air ticket from an airline. The concerned airline takes responsibility to receive us safely at Mumbai and leave us safely at Delhi. It delegates this job to the Pilot of the Aeroplane, although responsibility for our safe travel lies with the Airline, the pilot takes controls to execute the job.

 However, a professional airline draws the detailed map on which the pilot will fly the plane and also gives detailed instructions in writing.

Will the Airline delegate the job to an inexperienced pilot?
Will the Airline delegate the task to a skilled but unwilling pilot?

Will the Airline delegate the job to a drunk pilot?

Will the Airline delegate the task to a pilot whose skin is not involved?

Will any professional airline entrust the job to even an expert pilot without giving him detailed instructions in black and white?

The airline does not delegate its responsibility to any Tom Dick & Harry but to the most suitable person after doing due diligence.

When a sick man decides to consult a doctor, he chooses the most appropriate doctor to treat his disease. Neither he will choose a heart surgeon for treatment of cold & cough nor will he select a simple MBBS to operate upon a malignant tumor. 

So when one has a choice to delegate someone, one needs to make it after doing due diligence. But the real challenge lies when one has no choice. One has the least choice as the head of a family. Whatever one wants to achieve, one has to achieve with the same family members. Brothers/sisters & sons/daughters can't be sacked and replaced. So one needs to remember the famous devotional song," Meera ne piya vish ka pyala, vish ko amrit kar dala".(Meera, the devotee of Lord Krishna, drank poison and turned it into nectar). The importance of proper training and motivational skills comes into the picture here.

I have explained my method of motivation & training in my article, "CHANGE THE ENVIRONMENT & MAKE DYNASAURS EXTINCT SPECIES." 

I learned much about training & motivation from "Situational Leadership" theory developed jointly by Mr. Paul Hersey, Professor & Author of the book, “Situational Leadership" and Keneth Blanchard, the Management Guru.

The crux of "Situational Leadership" theory is that while engaging a person for some work, please judge his knowledge and willingness to do the delegated job. Please give the concerned person detailed instructions and also make close supervision with lots of motivation in the beginning if the individual is new to the assigned job. Please recall how parents teach writing alphabets to their children. The level of instructions, supervision & motivation may be adjusted as the concerned person becomes more experienced & willing. 

Many Managers/Parents commit the blunder of adopting "Leave Alone & Rebuke Approach." They assume that their subordinates/children are magicians and know by magic what they are supposed to do. So after delegating the job they just forget about it, then on one day they call their subordinates/children and find that the poor fellows have not performed as per their expectations. The Managers/parents start yelling, the subordinates/children start sulking & cursing.

So before delegating any job, please make a list of things you want to get done & draw action plan how you want them to be done. Please discuss the action plan in detail with your subordinates and ensure that they understand it so that there remains no room for communication gap at all. Please judge their maturity level (their knowledge & willingness level) to decide the standard of supervision and motivation to be done and set the ball rolling for the spectacular performance by your able team.