Management: Delegation
I was feeling pretty down about how crappy my meetings are. I am glad to hear that not all academic meetings are so bad from readers and friends. It gives me hope that my meetings will go better if I try and practice good meeting habits.
The same week, we also talked about delegation. As bad as my meetings are, my ability to delegate was inversely awesome! We took a little quiz, and I scored great on it. Take the quiz here:
Delegation Quiz:
| YES | NO | |
| 1. I spend more time than I should doing the work of my students. | Y | N |
| 2. I often find myself working while my students are idle. | Y | N |
| 3. I believe I should be able to personally answer any question about any project in my group. | Y | N |
| 4. My inbox mail is usually full. | Y | N |
| 5. My students usually take the initiative to solve problems without my direction. | Y | N |
| 6. My research group operates smoothly when I am away. | Y | N |
| 7. I spend more time working on details than I do on planning or supervising. | Y | N |
| 8. My students feel they have sufficient authority over personnel, finances, facilities, and other resources for which they are responsible. | Y | N |
| 9. I have bypassed my students by making decisions that were part of their job. | Y | N |
| 10. If I were incapacitated for an extended period of time, there is someone who could take my place. | Y | N |
| 11. There is usually a big pile of work requiring my action when I return from an absence. | Y | N |
| 12. I have assigned a task to a student mainly because it was distasteful to me. | Y | N |
| 13. I know the interests and goals of every student in the research group. | Y | N |
| 14. I make it a habit to follow up on jobs I delegate. | Y | N |
| 15. I delegate complete projects as opposed to individual tasks whenever possible. | Y | N |
| 16. My students are trained to maximum potential. | Y | N |
| 17. I find it difficult to ask others to do things. | Y | N |
| 18. I trust my students to do their best in my absence. | Y | N |
| 19. My students are performing below their capacities. | Y | N |
| 20. I nearly always give credit for a job well done. | Y | N |
| 21. My students refer more work to me than I delegate to them. | Y | N |
| 22. I support my students when their authority is questioned. | Y | N |
| 23. I personally do those assignments one I can or should do. | Y | N |
| 24. Work piles up at some point in my operation. | Y | N |
| 25. All students know what is expected of them in order of priority. | Y | N |
Scoring:
Give yourself one point each if you answered “Yes” for #5, 6, 8, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 22, 23, 25
Give yourself one point each is you answered “No” for #1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 11, 12, 17, 19, 21, 24.
Score 20-25: You have excellent delegation skills that help the efficiency and morale of your research group. You maximize your effectiveness as a leader and help develop the full potential of your students.
Score 15-19: Your score is adequate, but not excellent. To correct, review the questions you did not receive a point for and take appropriate steps so as to not repeat the mistakes.
Score <14: Inability to delegate is reducing your effectiveness as a leader. This results in lower performance. Determine if you are unwilling to relinquish power and why. Inability to delegate can cause dissatisfaction among your students. They will not develop job interest and important skills unless you improve.
How did you score? I had a 22/25. The other classmates, who all work in regular offices or as crew managers, were grumbling about my awesome score. One person said, “I know what the correct answers are, but I answered honestly,” (not meanly, but in a dejected sort of way). The thing is, delegation is essential to running a research group. If you do not properly delegate, you will probably not succeed at running a research group in academic science.
The reason for this is two fold:
1. You cannot do all the things to get this job done by yourself. You will not be able to do all the research, write all the papers, make all the figures, write all the grants, teach all the courses, review all the papers and grants, serve on all the committees, yadda yadda yadda. Delegation is a matter of survival.
2. Your job is to train people. The best way to train someone to replace you is to give them some parts of your job to try out. This means not just doing the research, but all practice writing the papers and making figures, practice giving the talks, even practice reviewing papers. These things will have to be done with more or less supervision depending on the student’s abilities and maturity in research. But, by delegating tasks, the student will learn, feel apart of the team, and you will get more work done.
Another reason why I can delegate more than my peers in the management course is that running a lab is like running a small business. I can run it how I see fit. Delegating certain responsibilities of the job to my students make me more effective and efficient, so I take full advantage. I can also hire and fire, which many of my peers cannot do. If someone really can’t handle any task I give them (including research), I let them go. I don’t think it does anyone any good to keep someone in the lab who cannot make any contribution at all.
What do you think? Is delegation important? How well do you delegate? Is there a difference between delegation and training? Post or comment here. To receive an email every time I post, push the +Follow button.
Woman Of Science 
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