Excellence in IT : Achieving Success in an Information Technology Career by Warren C. Zabloudil

Author:Warren C. Zabloudil [Zabloudil, Warren C.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Universal Publishers
Published: 2017-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

Delegating Without Checking First

Another form of poor delegating is relying too heavily on others who are not as capable as they should be. You should always judge delegation carefully. It can be a risk to your credibility if the person you delegated a job task to ever fails you. If you made the call that allowed others to drag you down, then you’ve demonstrated bad decision making skills. How you can get into these predicaments varies with each situation, but there are a few common causes to consider.

If you are trying to mentor a younger tech by giving them a tough task, then gauge your role carefully. Mentors are important to IT because creating a learning opportunity to beginners will help grow the quality of the IT professionals around you. In fact, in an industry that reinvents itself every three years or so, mentoring is critical. Just keep in mind that delegating tasks to others who are less qualified than you in hopes of providing some needed experience can be a dangerous thing to do. Even if nothing comes of it, the danger will still add a bit of stress. Make sure you monitor as well as mentor, so that any actions taken by the less experienced tech can be amended if they ever head in a wrong direction.

The best means of mentoring is to use a purpose-built bench environment. All IT departments should have some learning environment for techs to use when training on new systems. This could be hardware left over from a former development project or something permanent that occasionally doubles for the testing and validation of systems in production. It could also be a pure learning environment where new skills can be developed on systems that aren’t attached to anything at all. The more savvy IT shops usually set aside some equipment for this purpose in a side room where techs can try things out during downtime.

Since stress comes from allowing others to make you worry, be careful when delegating tasks. Someone who seems qualified and someone who is qualified are two different things. Always have a complete understanding of the depth of skills the people around you have so that you can distribute responsibilities knowingly and carefully. If you simply point to the first person in line and ask him/her for help, you’re looking for trouble. On the other hand, if you have too low of an opinion of your team members to be able delegate anything at all, you’ll end up doing everything yourself. It’s critical to remember that both outcomes are the result of the same thing: allowing the skills of others to lead you into a stressful situation that could affect your credibility.

You can become knowledgeable of other tech’s skill levels by simply communicating. If you have doubts about how well another teammate can handle a job that also affects you, just ask them in a kind manner that lets them know you only want to be stress free about the whole thing.

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