Effective delegation: High octane stimulus for the growth of your company.

Delegation is a greatly underused resource, yet it’s arguably one of a business owner’s most useful tools. It’s also the one that’s most often poorly executed. 

Effective delegation is critical to ensuring that you, as the business leader, have sufficient time to focus on the tasks that only you can perform. However, amongst the business leaders and owners we work with we tend to find a common theme: their delegation often seems to produce more work and not less, and stress levels are consequently increased instead of reduced.

If you find yourself frequently disappointed in the way people carry out the tasks you’ve set them, or that they haven’t done things in the correct manner, then it’s likely that you haven’t achieved the most effective delegation process. This will have the knock-on effect that results aren’t what you expected, and you may find yourself losing confidence in achieving your targets.

These key tips will help you to delegate effectively.

Select the right tasks for the right people 

It sounds so obvious, it should be blinding, but you must consider whether you’re spending too much time on unnecessary tasks simply because you’ve always executed them yourself. Could others now be taking them over? Ask yourself what outcomes you want, then determine what experience, skills, and particularly attitude are required for each task or project. Then you’ll be ready to delegate each task to someone whom you know has all the requisite qualities and will deliver on your expectations.

If you consider your team’s qualities and can’t come up with someone who fits the bill, then you may also have to ask yourself whether you have gathered the best team around you. For more information on how we can help you to develop your management team, click here. 

Take the time to get things right 

Clarity is the key to successful delegation, and will involve several steps that might at first glance appear onerous. However, investing time at the outset to execute these necessary steps will save you additional work further down the line and is much more likely to produce a successful outcome. This will give you the confidence that matters are indeed progressing as you expected, and free you up to deal with more appropriate tasks. These are the principal steps to achieving effective delegation:

• outline exactly what is required;
• determine why it’s important for the success of the business;
• evaluate what specific processes need to be completed;
• envision what success will mean and how it might be measured;
• schedule update meetings for important milestones along the way.

 

We will have more tips to help you delegate more effectively next time.