Why You Need to Get Better at Delegating
Your business is your baby; you dreamed up the idea, willed it into existence, and have nurtured it along. You’ve done everything for this business. You know it inside and out.
And when the workload became too much, you finally broke down and hired your first employee. And then another. And maybe another. Pretty soon, you looked around and found yourself leading a team. Woo-hoo!
But for some strange reason, you’re still as busy as ever. You find yourself doing tasks yourself because you know exactly what needs to be done, or you don’t think you have time to train someone else and it’s faster to just do the task yourself, or you’ve developed an expectation that employees need to seek your opinion and approval even in areas that are not your expertise.
What’s going on?
It’s simple.
You need to learn to let go… and delegate.
Why delegate?
You’re only one person; chances are, you are better at some tasks than others—or you dislike some more than others. Or you’re good at everything, but there just are not enough hours in the day!
Delegating frees you up to spend focused time on the mission-critical tasks that can grow your business or simply on the tasks that you love and that steered you toward this particular business in the first place. And it provides the opportunity to offload the jobs you dislike or feel less competent at, moving them to the desk of a carefully hired employee whose strengths complement your weaknesses.
When you delegate key tasks to senior employees and coach them through learning those tasks, you enable them to grow into leadership roles as your company expands. At the same time, you are building up corporate memory and institutional knowledge and relieving some of the pressure of being the only person in the company who can do x or the only one who knows y.
Perhaps most importantly, delegating can make it possible to improve that all-important work-life balance.
If none of those arguments is convincing, how about this one: Gallup found that CEOs who excelled at delegating generated 33% more revenue than those who were poor delegators. They also created more new jobs in their companies. Learning to delegate is key to growing your business!
Learn to let go
If you cleverly hired an assistant or second-in-command who excels at the things you find mystifying or frustrating, congratulations! Deciding what to delegate will be easy. Actually letting go may prove more challenging.
And at some point, as your business grows, you may find that you need to share even tasks you love—and even the things you’re sure no one else could ever do the right way.
If you find yourself in either of these situations, you may need to give yourself a little encouragement. Telling yourself that you’re shaping the career of a rising star might help. Or convincing yourself that your organization needs multiple people who can take inventory or do payroll or design the holiday window display or … whatever.
You can also start small. Delegate small parts of larger tasks or processes, and work with the employee to slowly teach them to take on more and more responsibility. This is managing, mentoring, and growing your business, all rolled into a single process that also nurtures a valuable employee. Providing a growth path and investing in employees’ development are proven ways to keep employees engaged—and employed with you—rather than searching out more challenging work from a competitor.
5 tips for successful delegation
Delegating effectively is a lot like managing effectively. Many of the same skills are needed, including:
Give your employee the tools and information they need: Teach your employee what is needed and how they will know if they’ve done a task, or done it correctly. Provide access to the tools and resources they need. Don’t assume that your deep knowledge of the company and all its processes has magically seeped into their brain; share knowledge, make sure relevant documents are accessible, and be available to coach them through their first attempts at complex and important tasks. Provide any necessary training, and ensure that they not only understand what the job is but also why it matters.
Choose the right employee for each job: If you have more than one employee, consider their strengths and weaknesses, skill sets, and eagerness to take on new challenges. Look at what you’ve already assigned them, and consider whether taking on new task a means you need to reassign something else—and whether that is even feasible.
Be willing to focus on outcomes, not on process: You have to give up some control here, which is a challenge for many visionaries and entrepreneurs. Trusting that you hired the right person, you must then trust that individual to get the task done. This is more likely if you’ve followed steps 1 & 2. Once you’ve prepared the employee, delegate the task and step back. Their approach might be different from yours, but if it leads to an equal (or superior!) outcome, the process shouldn’t matter.
Ensure clear, open communication: Depending on the complexity of a task, delegating may not be a one-and-done deal. You may need to invest considerable time in coaching, overseeing, and answering questions before you can be confident that the employee has fully taken over a task or role. Make it safe for the employee to ask questions and, yes, to make mistakes. Resist the urge to step in and do something over or fix mistakes; the employee will get better with practice and coaching and learn more from fixing their own errors. At the outset, and throughout training, make sure you’re clear about what’s expected, and check that the employee understands. Don’t assume that it’s obvious; whatever “it” is, it’s not.
Provide feedback: Feedback is essential to learning. When an employee is doing well, praise is a huge motivator and reward. When the employee is struggling, constructive feedback helps them learn what they got wrong and figure out how to fix problems. When the worst happens, take a deep breath, resist the urge to blame, and coach the employee in how to recover from the mistake or failure.
Enjoy the payoff
After weeks or maybe months of investment, your delegation efforts will bear fruit. The employee will feel empowered by their success at learning and taking over an important or challenging new task or role. You can enjoy the feeling of being a successful leader and mentor, in addition to reveling in your new freedom to focus on other tasks. And in the long run, your willingness to nurture your employees will pay off in a successful, innovative business staffed by loyal, longtime, highly skilled employees.
You built that!
