Learning to delegate can help your business in important ways. First, it frees you to focus on the most critical tasks, the things you do best, and the tasks that only you can handle. If you’re juggling everything else too, it’s hard to be efficient. Second, delegating can help you reduce stress. When you aren’t trying to do too much by yourself, you’re likely to feel less stressed, exhibit the best of your personality traits, and win more prospects over. Third, delegating allows you to tap into the talents others possess and use them to better your business.
Here are four practical tips for becoming a better delegator:
1. Prioritize and Categorize:
Your own understanding of your project is key to successful delegation. Though you might find some amazing people who can step into a project and figure out what needs to be done all on their own, your helpers will be more efficient and get to the heart of matters faster if you lay it all out for them. Categorize your project into smaller tasks. Perhaps you can hand some projects over to your helpers in their entirety, but you can almost always hand portions of a project over and lighten your load considerably. Prioritize the various tasks in your project by assigning letters or numbers to each task (such as A: follow-up phone calls, B: initiate direct mail campaign).
2. Choose the Right Person for the Job:
You can find someone to take on part of your workload, but you cannot pick just anyone if you want the project to proceed smoothly. Instead, you’ll need to choose the right person for the job. Evaluate the skills and talents of the people who are available to help you. Then select the people most suited to the tasks at hand. While you can try to fit a square peg into a round hole, the time it takes to train, encourage and support some people will probably exceed the time it would take to just handle the whole project yourself. This doesn’t mean, however, that you shouldn’t allow your helpers to grow into taking on more responsibility. If you think their performance demonstrates that they can make the leap into a different type of project, go ahead and give them a try.
3. Provide the Right Atmosphere:
Of course, you do not want the people to whom you delegate tasks to make mistakes, but the fact is everyone does (even you!). No one is perfect, and creating an atmosphere in which your helpers are afraid to make a move for fear of being penalized or humiliated will likely backfire. In such situations, the talented people you could delegate to may refuse to take on more responsibility out of fear and anxiety. Instead of wanting to try new things, make suggestions and work to better your business, they may become more concerned with escaping your notice. The right atmosphere for successful delegation is one in which people make every effort to avoid mistakes but use them as learning experiences when they do occur. If your helpers learn from their mistakes, they are less likely to make them again and more likely to use what they learn to improve their work and better your business.
4. Communicate Your Expectations Effectively:
Don’t pass off a project or task and just expect your helper to know what you want. Give a clear deadline for the work. If you want the tasks completed first thing in the morning rather than right before closing time, state that. Don’t just tell your helper that you need something ASAP. Remember that her ASAP will take into account the other things she has on her plate. Instead, you might say you’d like a task completed ASAP and then provide a date by which you absolutely must have it on your desk.
Share what you expect in terms of updates and documentation as well. Let your helper know if you want him to provide updates daily, weekly or monthly. If you want copies of completed work, make this clear when you assign the project. On the other hand, if you want your helper to take the reins fully and provide updates just once a month, share that information at the outset of the project. By providing your helpers with as much information as possible, you help them do a great job for you.
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