Why do managers have trouble delegating

Then you might be an anti-delegator. Delegating is one of the more challenging aspects of leadership, and it actually gets harder to do the higher someone goes up the corporate ladder, said Laura Lunsford, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Arizona in the US.

It pays to delegate. Credit: Thinkstock. As people move into more senior positions, they typically have to delegate to more people and give up some oversight.

Delegating almost every task can be tough. While it may seem like doing it on your own is the easiest path to success, an inability on the part of executives and top managers to delegate can hurt a company.

All the time Lord spent working on those RFPs was time she could not spend on other important tasks, for instance. They see the task as a key part of their authority or status.

They do not what tasks to delegate. Managers who have difficulty delegating tasks can learn from this process — particularly if your workload has become overwhelming, or you need someone to pick up the slack when you are out of town. The hardest part about delegating a task to someone else is trusting that they will do it well. When a manager cannot delegate work effectively, organizational stakeholders criticize him for his inability to use his human resources effectively.

Being a good leader involves delegating tasks to employees. This can be difficult to do for many people, but there are tricks to make it easier and more effective. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Read More. Table of Contents. This can have a negative impact on the organisation in a number of ways:.

In order to deal with the situation we have to try and understand why people behave in this way. Some reasons may be related to the ego and status, some may be trust issues. Sometime people genuinely believe that the senior managers want them to do all the work and that delegating some tasks would be seen as being lazy. I suggested that the business owner needed to devise a plan to deal with the situation as soon as possible. It would not be easy to introduce a change or to persuade the manager to delegate some aspects of the work.

There would be objections and resistance to the new strategy. A key part of the planning is the realistic and honest identification of some of the objections that might be raised. They might and in fact they probably will, the first time they attempt this task. Need for Control A person with a strong need for control likes to have things done a very specific way. References U. Related Articles.