A guideline to every Nigerian worker on how to delegate jobs to their subordinates in the office, which has been a very serious issue in so many organizations. To minimize the stress, the handbook entitled “Dynamics of Delegation” written by Godwin Onuorah is actually a book that can reduce the rate of high blood pressure in the society.
Dedicated to the chairman of Honeywell Group of Companies and the President of Nigerian Stock Exchange Dr. Oba Otudeko, the author says exposed him to the various dimensions of delegation for several years.

The 90 pages handbook is divided into six chapters. The chapter one introduced clearly the definition of delegation. Delegation is not giving away your job rather it is getting people to do their job so that the superior can find time to do the real job that of thinking, planning and monitoring of the job. It is also a form of job enlargement, during delegation; superiors will explain why they want jobs carried out for the subordinate’s contribution to fit the overall plan of the organization.

After that there is also need for delegation, which is to develop workers, depending on who you use for the job to increase the quality of his output and also to maximize return on the worker/people. The reluctance to delegate is the fear of loosing the tried and tested subordinates who may be promoted or transferred, superior’s fear of being blamed for subordinates failure and lack of staff and not being in control of the existing subordinate. The reason why subordinate fail is due to the absence or inadequacy of incentives to motivate subordinates to accept delegation, fear of being overworked and subordinate’s lack of confidence.

Chapter two explain more on how to plan or think out job responsibilities. Like to make a list of what has to be done, time available to your subordinate and yourself, ensure the requisite resources for the job are available and also job discussed with your worker as superior executives in terms of explaining results to be achieved and the workers’ acceptance of accountability. In pg 37 of chapter two, it explained as superior how to ensure that your subordinate gave you a desired results; firstly superiors should state and emphasize the expected or end result before giving instruction or interpretation or decision on the assignments.

Benefits of delegation of tasks to superiors are; when it relieves the superiors from excessive strain and overworks and to develop his professional skills and abilities, when do not exhaust them physically and mentally, as they do not make every decision themselves. It also takes job off the superiors and helps them to develop their subordinates.

Then to subordinates-it gives subordinates chance to have a say in the achievement of the organization targets or goals, it builds good team spirit and improves interpersonal relationship, it creates a sense of belonging, recognition, involvement in management and leads to high level of satisfaction.
In the chapter three, explained the barriers to delegation and possible solutions, that is the factors restricting effective delegation in the sense that a superior feels he is indispensable to the organization, superior feels he is unable to delegate the authority to do so.

In the chapter four and five, the author explained tips for effective delegation and its various dimension and strategy for effective delegation. In this regard every delegate should have a direct source of reporting line because they are not meant to delegate tasks they do not understand in terms of performance, conditions for performance and standard expected. Delegates can gradually in stage and prioritize jobs into urgent important and less important ones. Factors superiors identified as being crucial to effective delegation are; confidence, objectives, responsibility, competence, authority, opportunity and accountability.

Effective delegation implies a trustful attitude between superior and subordinates that involves the willingness to give other people’s idea a chance and let subordinates make some mistakes which should be considered as an investment in their personal development. It also requires trust from both the subordinate and superior alike. Chapter six is the cases on delegation, which are the practical cases for delegation.

The author hails from Ota, in Ogun State, he is a management and training consultant of repute for over 25 years. He is a post graduate diploma in labour studies (Personal Administration) and holds a Masters in Business Administration. Infact the author is a member of many professional bodies.