Not one person in this world is an expert in every single aspect of a companies function, nor can they accomplish many different tasks at the same time while still trying to manage a company or lead soldiers. To deal with multiple tasks at the same time effectively, a leader needs to know how to delegate responsibility to people that are experts in that one particular area and/or have the time to perform the task in question. Delegation is more then just assigning a task to a subordinate, it takes skill and knowledge of each person's background to know who can accomplish the mission in question. In this paper we will discuss what delegation is and how it is effectively used in the US Army.
Before we can even start to discuss delegation we must first know what delegation is. Delegation is"the assignment of authority and responsibility to another person to carry out specific activities" (Delegation, 2005). When an activity is delegated to a person that person has the responsibility to take full control of the assignment until it is completed or assigned to someone else. Managers usually delegate tasks to subordinates because an employee has a better understanding of the assignment or has time to take on the assignment. Delegation allows the manager to devote more time to higher level issues and tasks. Delegation may seem like an easy task and anyone can do it, but it takes experience and skill to delegate tasks to others. A manager must know the employee that he is assigning the task to and know if they can accomplish the task that is delegated to them. There are some people, managers as well as employees, who abuse delegation leading to not only the managers being at fault when a project fails to be completed. For instance, in some cases mangers us ...