Proper delegation.

Delegation is something everyone wants to do but few do well. I usually struggle to delegate and I am aware that I’ve often been badly delegated to, as well as correctly. In this post I want to cover two excellent resources. One is a podcast by the Mark & Mike at Manager-Tools and the other is the example of Jesus in training his disciples. Two very different stories but ultimately the same result. This is part of the series I’ve been doing on discipleship.Jesus didn’t tell the disciples about the mission. He didn’t put it on their shoulders but he got them to participate. The first year all they did was see Jesus doing his work. They observed. But once he thought they were ready… (Mark 6)

He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands?
And he went about among the villages teaching.
And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.

So his disciples were following him and observing him, like everyone else. But then Jesus calls them and I guess he has a staff meeting and sends them out. He gives them authority(7). He gives them support(7). He gives them guidelines(8) and instructions. Then he gives them freedom. We cannot, probably, write a how-to of management based on Jesus life but we can see that he led properly and sought to pass that on to his disciples. He also made it clear to them that they needed to pass things on to others. In Matthew 10:11 Jesus tells the disciples to do what he did with them; find a worthy person and spend time with them. Jesus also made it clear to the disciples to not waste any time on people who weren’t interested or hospitable. We often feel a need to struggle to communicate the gospel to people who don’t want to hear it. Jesus seems like he has better things to do with his time.

(Tangent: He, OF COURSE, loved people but didn’t waste time with them. There’s probably a lot of mileage in this discussion because it’s potentially quite controversial to say that there are groups of people Jesus wasn’t interested in. But in it’s simplest from: if you have a mission it’s only worth using people that are up for it. Jesus loves the world and died for it but he also allows people to ignore that.)

We see here that Jesus was sending people before he gave them “the great comsission”. In Luke 24 Jesus reminds them what they saw and sends them as witnesses.

On to Manager Tools. They say that effective delegation has three components:
It assigns responsibility.
It provides authority.
It requires accountability.
(These are also elements we see in scripture.)

It’s a great practical pod-cast (like all their material) and it’s significantly boiled down into the following steps:

A) State your need for help.
B) Say why you are asking this person (trust, skill, development, interest).
C) Ask for specific acceptance.
D) Describe the task in detail.
E) State deadline and quality standards.
F) Discuss reporting standards
G) Discuss Skill/Training Needs
- Follow up.
- And, when results are achieved… Celebrate!

The above is just a summary and if you want to put it into practice I’d suggest the pod-cast! I haven’t linked to it here because there’s so many links to their site already in my blog. Ultimately all the demonstration and learning is only going to be beneficial if you are putting it into practice.