Top Tips
- Encourage new members to take on responsibility even if it seems like it would be quicker to do it yourself at first.
- Encourage active participation in decisions
Spreading the workloads for campaigns and actions around the whole group will improve group cohesion and knowledge, allow you to get more done and help ensure no-one feels overburdened or excluded.
Why delegation?
- Empowerment. Delegation requires the sharing out of information and responsibility, which spreads power.
- Sharing and developing skills. Delegation makes sure that knowledge and skills aren’t just held within a few key members of the group. This will help with attracting and keeping new members, developing effective campaigners, the sustainability of your group over the coming years and the stress levels of key co-ordinators. A win-win situation!
- Greater Impact. Not all people have the same skills and talents. By involving the whole group in planning and preparing actions you’ll be much more effective.
- Improving democratic decision making. People will be much more likely to take on roles if they’re involved in the decision making of the group and a project was partly their idea.
How to delegate
Example: Running a Stall
List of things to be done:
- 1 hour running the stall (x10)
- 1/2 hour setting up and taking down the stall
- 1/2 hour booking and publicising weekly meetings (x10)
- 5 hours designing poster
- 1/2 hour printing posters
- 1 hour putting up posters (x3)
- 2 hours writing to Vice Chancellor
- 1 hour writing press release for the student newspaper
Make sure everyone is happy with the roles, then go through the list putting names beside them or distribute the roles on pieces of paper.
Here is a suggested process for delegating roles:
- BRAINSTORM all the roles
- LIST them
- EXPLAIN what they are, how long they’ll take, what they’re for
- OFFER SUPPORT for new people wishing to take roles on. Some groups have an apprenticeship model - deliberately grouping skilled individuals with interested individuals, who shadow them and learn from their skills and experience.
- SHARE OUT the roles. You can do this through small working groups or skill-sharing pairs taking chunks of work and reporting back. You could write the tasks on cards and then get everyone to take the one(s) they feel most comfortable with; if there are still cards left over you’ve probably taken on too much. Alternatively, hand the cards out and trade with each other for the ones you want to or can do.
- Don’t guilt trip people into taking on roles, but you could encourage them to think about their priorities, and the part they want to play in making a difference.
Obstacles to delegation
There are lots of reasons why we don’t delegate:
- too much of a hurry
- egos
- shyness
- knowledge
- worry that things won’t get done
Usually we’ve got a lot to do and not enough time, so it seems easier to do the job ourselves than take the time to explain how it’s done to anyone else. However, make the time to coach others and share your experience and you’ll leave your group stronger than when you arrived.