Whether you are a team leader, a business owner or in a similar position of authority, delegating a task is going to be a key if you want to maximize your productivity and keep yourself from stress during stressful situations, large workloads and deadlines.
The big problem is, a lot of business owners and office leaders do not know how to delegate tasks effectively. Not only that, they are not willing to do it unless they are trapped in the corner and needs to do it out of necessity. Delegating the tasks at hand is an essential skill that every leader or entrepreneurs need to develop and learn.
You can improve this skill over time with proper research. If you put these delegation strategies into good practice, there is a big chance that your company or organization will have a very successful run.
To make sure that you will have a clear idea of what delegation is all about, visit websites like Grit Daily or other sites related to this topic.
Learn and know how to let go of the tasks
One of the biggest problems a lot of leaders and upper management face is their ability to let go of some of their jobs. There are times that they feel so dedicated to finish their work that they refuse to let go of it and let their co-worker help. There are also times that they fear nobody else has the ability and skills necessary to do the task at hand the right way.
Whatever may be the case, your priority should be to learn how to let go of the job and let other people help you achieve success. If you are not comfortable letting go, you can start small and only delegate the most straightforward task. You can gradually increase them as time goes by and your confidence with your team is starting to grow.
You have to know your team. Find out their strengths and weaknesses. Improve the trust between you and your team. Take small steps and see that you will have to let go of the tasks in the near future if you want your team to grow, improve their skills and have a successful business.
Establish a clear priority system
As part of your letting-go process, you need to start and develop a good priority system for your tasks. This system will differ depending on your expertise, the types of jobs you are handling, as well as, the industry you are in. But you have to create at the very least, four categories according to the degree of skill and the degree of effort that is needed to complete the tasks.
High-skilled categories should contain functions that you need to do while categories that belonged to the lower-skilled ones can be assigned to your team. The degree of effort can tell you which of the jobs have a higher level of importance when it comes to delegation.
To find out more about this topic, you can check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegation for more information.
For example, delegating responsibility to someone else for a high-effort and low-skill work will save you a lot of your time, effort and resources. Creating a firm priority system will help you and your company understand what your responsibilities are all about. Not only that, you can delegate tasks to your team a lot more efficient.
Know your team’s strength, and know how to use it.
As a business owner or a team leader, you will have to learn the expertise of everyone from your team. You also need to know the strength and weakness of each team member, including their potential and the current range of skills. When you are delegating, take a closer look at your team and assign jobs to members that has the highest and with the most amount of relevant skills needed to finish the job.
It seems like an undeniable choice, but a lot of leaders are delegatingjobs to people who have the lightest workload. It is also crucial to be steady. For example, assigning the same functions to the same person will expand thatperson’s skill to finish the task.
Always include necessary instructions
Even if the job process looks very obvious to you, you need to make sure to include the necessary instructions with the task that you are delegating. If you have particular preferences for how the job will be carried out, ALWAYS include instructions.
If you want to finish the task at a specific day or time, or milestones that need to be hit, you need to make it clear to the people you are delegating the jobs to. Include in your instruction the details and easy-to-follow steps on how to successfully finish the job from the get-go to avoid miscommunication between you and your team members. It is a “take-charge” strategy that you and your team members or employees will respect and appreciate.
Do not hesitate to teach other people with new skills
Lacking people on your company or on your team that has the skills and ability to finish specific tasks on your list does not mean that the work cannot be delegated. A lot of skills, if not all, can be learned (some a lot easier compared to others).
Click here if you want to know more about the importance of development and strategic training.
That is why you do not have to be afraid to share the skills you have learned to other people as part of your delegation process. Although, the assignment of the first few sets of jobs will take a lot of time compared to the time that you will save since you still need to train the people you want to delegate the duties to.
Do not take it as a bad thing; think of it as an investment. By transferring skills to your team members, you will be opening new doors to assigning similar tasks to that person in the near future. It will save you more time than spending time teaching the same functions to different people.
Delegating tasks is not always easy. The process is not always clear, but the sooner you start the delegation, the sooner you will grow and develop the expertise to do the job effectively. You need to realize that the delegation process is not perfect and it will never be, but you have to learn from your past experiences and make necessary adjustments to improve.