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Why delegating can fail

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, March 7, 2007

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The inability to effectively delegate tasks can be one of the greatest obstacles to time management for any nurse manager. Delegating is empowering and makes your staff accountable. Many managers feel that they do a good job of delegating when actually there may be plenty of room for improvement.

Occasionally, your attempts to delegate will fail. In these instances, it is important to review the events to identify the obstacles to successful delegating. Common reasons that delegation fails for managers include

• not investing enough time up front with the person to whom you are delegating
• not giving staff permission to make mistakes when you delegate functions to them
• having an "I'd-rather-do-it-myself" attitude
• control and power issues
• the perception that staff is not qualified to handle the task

Editor's note: The above excerpt is from the online course "Nursing CE Series: Time Management & Delegation for Nurse Managers." For more information on this and other courses in our library, go to http://www.hcprofessor.com.

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