Adapting Delegation to You Situation
There are few universal rules about what tasks you should delegate and what you should keep for yourself. Generally, you should not delegate responsibility that involves your relationship with subordinates, such as hiring, evaluating, disciplining, terminating. You should not delegate tasks that require technical expertise that only you have, or tasks that involve confidential information, and you should not dump unpleasant tasks on people who don't want them by passing them of as "delegating responsibility." Other then these, there are few tasks that you should avoid delegating if the delegation makes sense.
It makes sense to delegate time-consuming and routine detail that other people can and will take care of. It frees your time and attention for managing.
It makes sense to train others to take over tasks and responsibilities that must continue when you are not there. You must provide for emergencies and for your off-hours and vacations. You must have people who can assume your day-to-day responsibilities when necessary. If your unit or department cannot run without you for a while, you are not doing your job.
It makes sense to delegate tasks and responsibilities that motivate and develop your people. If you know your people and their interests, talents, and shortcomings, you can match the responsibility to the person. You can give them work that interests them, challenges them, makes them feel important and valued, give them the satisfication of achievement, and helps them grow.
It makes sense to plan such growth for people of high potential, to add further responsibilities over a period of time, to groom them to take your place someday or climb your company's career ladder or move to a better position somewhere else.
Although you may lose them in the end, they will more than repay you in what they contribute to you and your operation as they grow.
You are the only person who can decide what makes sense in your area of supervision. You are the only one who know the tasks and the people. Taking the first steps of delegating can be scary and even painful, but once you have done it, you are on your way to being a manager in every sense of the world. You do not have to do it all at once; there are degrees and stages of delegation. Take it one task at a time, one step at a time, and start with a task and a person you are pretty sure are made for each other.
Delegating responsibilities, making jobs more interesting and challenging, and helping people grow multiplies your own effectiveness many time over-far, far beyond anything you could do by keeping all your responsibilities to youself.