How to Give Responsibilities?

Giving Responsibility is very important to work in any organization, company, project team, etc. A qualified, experienced team leader who can do this properly should take this work.

Things to know about each team member

Before giving responsibilities, the Team leader should know the following about his/her team member-:

1. Potential and Performance

Potential helps to know what kind of task a team member can take in the future. Performance helps to know what task has been done before by a team member.

2. Who can do what task in the project?

First, identify the goal on which the team has to work. Then break the goals into smaller tasks. Check the difficulty of each task. Map each task with the capability of each team member.

Then assign the task accordingly. If you find that the same task can be done by more than one member, then find out who can do it better.

3. Who can be accountable for any incidents in the project?

It is not necessary that everything goes right. In case, if some work cannot be completed on time or completed at all, then prepare an answer to such an incident. For this, identify members who can help prepare the answer.

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4. Who can evaluate whom?

Self-evaluation sometimes may not help to ensure that the person has done the work right. For this, peer evaluation is important. Find out all team member pairs who can evaluate each other’s work.

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5. Who can consult whom?

This part is important because tasks are generally not easy to complete. So, team members might need help. Identify team member’s who are expert in such task or has already done such similar task before. If you find no such members, then identify people outside the team.

They can either be your friend, coach, mentor, senior, etc. Connect with them so that you can consult them with your team member if a problem comes.

6. Who are the late workers?

Identify team members who can work for the longest hours in a day. Assign bigger tasks to them. Then based on reducing the working hours of other members, assign smaller tasks.

To do the planning, conduct a meeting of either all or required team members.

Before deciding to meet, understand whether it is necessary to meet or not. Don’t unnecessarily call your team members if there is no important planning to achieve progress. This will create boredom and they will lose interest. Hence, allow things to happen as it is.

Giving Responsibilities in Appropriate Manner

Give responsibilities to team members optimally with perfect execution without fail using a table.

Now, make a table with ‘N’ rows and 6 columns where ‘N’ means the number of team members in the project. Following are the names of six columns with details.

1. Performer

The performer is a team member who has taken responsibility. Each performer will take different responsibilities based on his/her potential and performance.

2. Task

Write the name of the task given to the corresponding name of a team member in a couple of words.

3. Task Description

This column will cover a maximum area as it is descriptive in nature and will mention all possible details of how to do the given task. So, guide the member who has taken a responsibility to fill it.

4. Deadline

This column will mention the exact date to complete the task. Check the flexibility of deadlines. It depends upon the behavior of the client, the nature of the task, the contribution of the task in the entire project. Deadlines can be strict in the case of dependent tasks.

5. Reviewer

This column has the name of a member who is going to check the punctuality, regularity, efforts of a performer. Make sure that the knowledge of the reviewer is sufficient enough to evaluate correctly.

For this, check that performer’s and reviewer’s knowledge are aligned towards the work given to the performer. Also, the knowledge of the reviewer should be more than that of the performer.

6. Helper

This column will contain the name of a member who is going to help the performer. Performer consults Helper for any difficulties coming while doing the work.

That’s it. Fill the table with information after understanding the above column details and share it with team members.

Such a strategy for giving responsibilities will serve as an optimized project execution. Sometimes, it becomes too optimized in terms of the time period that such meetings take place within 5 minutes only.

Precautions while giving Responsibilities

1. Balancing between what to do and what has to be done.

Don’t take too much work on yourself or give too much work to team members. Have a balance between what work you have to do and what work team members have to do.

2. Directing Team Members

Take care of directions given to each team member. Give as many materials, instructions, documents as much as possible to each team member based on the nature of work given to him/her.

3. Check the difficulty level of each member’s task.

Make sure that each member should not be given too difficult or too easy tasks. The too difficult tasks will create stress and kills motivation faster. Too easy work will leave a gap of time within the deadline. This will cut a part of the efforts of the entire team.

4. Evaluate Work Progress

Take separate time to evaluate the work progress of all team members after every short time period. Let other team members know how the team is performing.

5. Team communication

Have effective communication with team members. Don’t just put a mail on what work a team member has to do. Give crisp and easy-to-understand materials. Instead of mail, use project management tools.

6. Work Ownership

Give full authority of giving tasks to the team member. Let team member take full ownership of the work and do as efficiently as possible. Don’t interfere with strategies made by a team member to complete it.

7. Team Motivation

Keep your team motivated. Do not let yourself or your team be overwhelmed by any problem or unwanted situation of any scale related to the project.

For you: 9 Super Effective Ways to Motivate Your Team

8. Appraising Team Members

Always praise each member in public or within team members to maintain his/her motivation. Because while doing work, due to some problems or unwanted situations, difficulties faced by the team member, his/her motivation reduces badly sometimes.

This must be recovered otherwise, that team member will not be able to join you for the next goals.

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