Running a business can be taxing, each day presenting a new challenge to deal with and overcome its adverse effects. Managers and business owners take on a lot of responsibility, especially for small enterprises trying to establish themselves. When a leader takes on too much workload, it is only a matter of time before cracks emerge, and the whole system can start to crumble.
Delegation of tasks is the ultimate solution to avoid things falling apart. Delegating in a business has proven benefits, as revealed by Gallup research showing that CEOs who excel in delegation improve their revenue by 33 percent. Transferring specific tasks is critical for alleviating workload, freeing yourself, and avoiding getting stuck in the trenches.
If you have always run the show alone, transition to having other people take over some duties. Here are guidelines to ensure the transition process is easy for you and the people you appoint.
Know What to Delegate
If you are new at delegating, you need to transition as you figure out tasks seamlessly taken up by your team. Start by identifying what is and is not delegatable. When you transfer too many activities to people at once, they feel overwhelmed, defeating the purpose of the exercise.
If the stakes are too high in responsibility delegation or nobody else has the necessary skill set, you probably should do it yourself. Prioritizing your workload helps to identify lower priority items that are delegatable. Such tasks typically do not have strict deadlines, and you have leeway for rework as your team learns how to perfect working on them.
Use Technology
In most industries, technological tools are easily accessible to make work easier. Delegating doesn’t always mean handing a task on to another person. You can also pass over duties to technology. Assess your activities and determine which ones can be taken over by systems.
You could use a phone system that boosts communication for unified messaging or utilize a project management platform to help track project progression. Such technologies eliminate manual work and bring efficiency to your operation.
Use Your Employees’ Skills
In many organizations, employees have more skills than they use in their jobs. The staff could also have acquired new skills since they started working for you. Know what skills your team has and match tasks with those skills. You may find that you struggled with what some of your team members sailed through without much effort.
Be open to training someone to take over a particular task. It will take some investment in skill development, but eventually, it will pay off. You can identify employees dedicated to their work, willing to learn more and invest in them.
For effective leadership, you should structure your team and search for skills that can spread the tasks. Such restructuring ensures the company doesn’t rely heavily on a few people. Lack of delegation may be widespread in the business, so take action and ease your team leaders’ burden.
Establish Goals
Defining goals for delegated tasks brings clarity of expectations for both parties. Make sure the desired outcome for the activities is understood. Allow room for seeking clarifications if there are some ambiguities to avoid miscommunication and future misunderstandings.
Provide your team with examples of how you want things done. You can demonstrate a task from the beginning to the end. Have milestones within the job that the employee should present to you to ensure they are on track to meeting your goal.
You should continuously monitor the progress of delegated activities to measure their successes against the set goals. The higher the success rate, the more you should transfer duties until you achieve your ideal balanced work state. Always seek feedback from your team on how well they are coping with the new tasks.
Maintain Communication
Communication is essential in building cohesive teams and, even more, if you want to implement an effective delegation structure. Maintain an open line of communication with who you are delegating work. It is critical that your team feels they can ask questions and seek out your guidance.
You can schedule interactive sessions with the person taking on your work so you can review what they have and answer any questions. Remember, the team member is taking on new responsibility, which could be their first stab, and needs reassurance that they are doing well. In case of any corrective measures, articulate them.
Delegate and Exercise Effective Leadership
You should never wear overworking as a badge of honor. The practice drains you, and eventually, you will be too exhausted to be productive. There is a high likelihood you have talented individuals in your team who can take over some of your tasks. Technology is also at hand to rescue you. Take advantage of such relief and become a more effective leader.
