Delegating vs shirking responsibilities

Delegation is not just “when your boss tells you what to do” as it’s often considered. Neither it can be punting away things you can’t do all yourself. And definitely, delegation is not about abdicating responsibilities.

But delegation is a real superpower that is an essential skill for senior and lead developers which helps to run projects on higher standards and deliver the product much faster.

So how can we define delegation and how can it be profitable for both sides? We can call “fair” delegation if:

• You can delegate a task to give the opportunity to the most qualified person to make the decisions. The fact you’re a senior/lead/CTO, etc doesn’t make you the best in all fields and you might not always be the right person for a specific project success. If the task is assigned to a competent employee, the cost of the development and the time required, most likely, will be decreased.
• Lead developers often delegate to develop or challenge employees. You provide people a chance to grow by giving them more responsibilities and letting them broaden their skill sets and deepen their abilities.
• Arrange a better workflow and life-work balance for an entire team. It is, probably, the main reason to delegate. When someone is in the burnout stage and another employee is fully motivated it won’t be odd to delegate some tasks to achieve balance and reach higher productivity among the team. We can say that the goal of this is to make people work the most efficiently as a team and most likely this can be visible only to the manager or supervisor with a project/team/company vision.

Sounds cool? Why you are not always happy when you get new tasks? Let’s discuss the “bad” delegation — when someone in your company tries to avoid his tasks and shirks his responsibilities.

Delegation:

• You have time to finish the task. The delegation is planned and deadlines are reasonable.
• You get tasks you’re familiar with or a little bit over your usual level.
• There is one responsible person for the quality and deadlines. It is clear who is in charge.
• Goals and results are defined and understandable before the development process starts.
• The task is assigned to the employee who has the best qualification for it or the willing to improve in the specific field.
• The one who gives the task is available during the development process, answers the questions, and provides help if needed.

Shirking responsibilities:

• You get the task at the last moment, the deadline is hardly reachable or you need to overwork.
• You get tasks that are out of your field and you don’t get any guidance or supervisor. You feel frustrated and have no idea about how to approach it.
• Rather often — the same task is assigned to several employees and there is no one leading/responsible for the process.
• The task can be given to anyone (probably the one who has more time at the exact moment), regardless of how good this employee is.
• The one who gives the task is not approachable, he ignores the questions or answers in a very common and brief way.

Overall — if you feel lost or stressed when you got a delegated task — probably you are just doing someone else’s job.