"Delegation"

Pastor Bryan Cutshall

A delegate is a person representing an organization at a meeting or conference. Consider this word in the verb form; to delegate. Delegating responsibility means to appoint a person who will represent the organization. Some people view delegation as just giving away their assignments to another a person. Delegating entails far more than that. Delegating requires recruiting and training a person who can do the job as well as you can. True delegation involves sending someone out as a representative of you. 

When you delegate something, be careful that you're not just asking others to do things that you haven't done yet or aren't willing to do yourself. You may find yourself expecting too much from others if you are asking them to do their job in addition to completing your unfinished "to do" list.
 
You must not be afraid to delegate. Most of the time people are afraid to delegate because they haven't taken the time to train anyone. Many people are always afraid to give responsibility to someone who may not represent them well. When you feel that a person is trained - it makes it easy to delegate tasks to them. People that are afraid to delegate use the excuse, "if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself." You must examine this statement to see if you are the only one who can do things right or if you can't delegate because you haven't trained anyone.
 
You must embrace the diverse perspectives and methods that are in your environment. Some people can't delegate because they haven't learned that "doing things different, doesn't mean that they did it wrong. The bottom line is that the job is completed. Each person will approach things differently and you have to celebrate differences in order to delegate properly.
 
Recruit, Train and Release
Recruiting will be done differently according to the size of your group and how many people you have to recruit from. Some leaders work with what they have until what they need comes along. Others have many resources so they use ministry fairs, applications, and such to recruit.
 
My Three Step Remedy:
 
1.   Show them how to do it
2.   Allow them to do it with you
3.   Watch them do it by themselves
 
You may need to do something several times in order for it to be how you want, but this works!
 
Training is the key to feeling comfortable in having other people take over responsibilities. Most people want their delegate to perform with excellence. The key to excellence is repetition. 

Happy delegating!