As a business owner you may have consistently heard or been told to delegate your tasks and/or lower level responsibilities, but what does it mean to delegate and what exactly does it entail? Delegating can simply be defined as giving or assigning someone tasks/responsibilities to either supervise or execute. This does not remove you from all accountability as you will still need to monitor your progress, and will remain accountable for the overall results, however, it significantly lightens the burden and gives you more time to focus on higher priorities. All successful business owners and/or entrepreneurs would attest that delegating has been a major key to their success as they realize that they cannot do it alone. It takes a trustworthy team to drive growth. If you haven’t begun the process of delegating, here are some reasons why you should:
- You are overwhelmed with tasks
- You need to increase efficiency
- So you can gain more free time
- You spend more time working your business instead of running it
- You business is complacent
If you can relate to any of these factors, it may be time to revisit your drawing board and re-think a portion of your growth strategy. Delegating tasks is very helpful to your business, and may benefit you in ways that it may:
- Foster creativity and innovation
- Build your skills as a leader
- Free up time and give you the ability to reallocate it toward strategies to build your vision, long-term planning, strategic networking and partnerships, and other critical priorities leading to the growth of your business
- Increase efficiency and flexibility
- Preserve skilled people
- Balance workloads and increase productivity
- Be a powerful tool used for managing priorities
- Collective success
As stated before, when you begin to delegate tasks, you are still accountable for the outcome. It is important that you delegate effectively in order to achieve your overall purpose. To delegate effectively, you will need to:
- Overcome any barriers you may have for delegating tasks
- Know what tasks you will specifically need to delegate
- Identify who you would like to delegate the tasks to
- Make sure the person you would like delegate to is skilled enough to execute the task
- Outline your expectations
- Set clear expectations
- Clearly communicate tasks and make sure all requirements are fully understood
- Provide a deadline and monitor the progress
- Check in, follow up, and provide feedback
- Provide all necessary resources to complete the task
- Be available for any questions or concerns
- Provide training if needed
- Make sure they understand your goals and the importance of their role in achieving those goals
- Express appreciation
- Trust your team
- Avoid reverse delegation (unfinished tasks given back to you to complete)
While delegating is an important process, it is just as important that you do not micromanage, be inconsistent, insist on doing things only your way, delegate to someone who doesn’t have the required skills/abilities, delegate an overload of tasks, ignore poor performance and missed deadlines, or completely remove yourself from the process once it is handed off. Building a great team and sharing responsibilities is a process, but in the end, the art of delegation is very rewarding. Delegating is a major factor in the success of your business, and your success matters.
Thank you for reading!
