It goes without saying that you need to delegate as the business owner if you’re to optimise your opportunities for success.
But it isn’t always easy!
There are some key ways to delegate more effectively so that you can achieve better results while also allowing your employees to grow their skills and confidence.
Understand your strengths and weaknesses
Business owners or not, we all have different strengths and weaknesses. It’s essential to be aware of this when it comes to managing and delegating to your team. Spending your own time in an area of your business that makes the most of your strengths will significantly benefit your business. Doing this will alsogive you a clearer idea of what tasks to delegate to your employees.
Tasks that sit within your weaknesses may be an employee’s biggest strength.
Save yourself time and consider these tips:
- List your strengths and weaknesses.
- Understand what you can delegate.
- Understand what you can’t delegate (and why).
- Finally, understand what you should delegate and what you shouldn’t.
Be upfront about your overall goals
You may think that you’ve made your goals clear to everyone, but you can never be too sure. If someone doesn’t understand why they’re doing something or why it’s important, they won’t do a good job at it, and they’ll probably feel unappreciated as well.
To ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to what’s expected of them and what their role entails, make sure your employees are following these steps:
- Get feedback from employees regularly
- Ask them how they feel they’re performing within each task or project.
- One way to get this information is through an anonymous survey if your team is large enough for anonymised feedback.
- Ask for regular feedback to provide support and encouragement. This will help you and your team during stressful periods. This practice will help create trust between yourself and those who work for you—and ultimately benefit both parties involved!
Give clear instructions
When delegating, it’s essential to be clear about what you need to be done. Your instructions should include:
- the problem you want to be solved
- the solution you’re looking for
- any particular parameters or limitations (for example, “Please create a report that details our monthly sales by region”)
- be upfront about any deadlines and consequences for not completing within a specified time frame
Check-in regularly
You’ll want to check in regularly with your employees, especially at first. Use these opportunities to:
- Ensure that everything is going well and that the employee knows you care about their progress. This will help keep your team members motivated.
- Check that the work being done is still giving you the results you need.
- If not, it may be time to rethink what responsibilities are being delegated or reassign them back to yourself.
- Alternatively, explore other ways to delegate more effectively.
- Ask if training and mentorship programs may be useful.
- Training does not need to be expensive.
- LinkedIn have bite-size training on many topics including delegating effectively.
- If your team members are not meeting your expectations, then fix those problems quickly! Do not sit back and wait… I guarantee you’ll get frustrated, and so will they if they have a sense of self-awareness.
- You don’t want your team or any individual to feel lost or confused. Overall productivity levels will plummet and your frustration will increase if issues are left unchecked for too long.
Make sure everyone agrees on what success looks like
To delegate effectively, you need to be able to communicate clearly with your employees. This means ensuring you all have a shared understanding of what success looks like.
One way to do this is by creating a success plan that outlines exactly what needs to happen for your project/s to be considered a success. While this may all seem obvious, make sure the plan is:
- clear
- concise and
- measurable
It should also include a time frame and budget, so everyone knows what’s expected from them and when it needs to be completed.
Use delegation as a training opportunity
Delegating tasks to your employees should be a way to help them grow.
You can train employees to be better at their jobs, to be more efficient, or even more creative and motivated. The point is that delegating helps you manage your time better by giving some of it away. And as a business owner, your priority should always be on the growth of your business and how your employees contribute to that growth.
Know when to let go
As a business owner, it is so easy to ” sweat the small stuff.”
This can be especially true when you’re working on your own or with a few employees who report directly to you.
You might feel like you need to personally oversee every project and client interaction because that’s how things were done in the past. Not anymore!
As your company grows and your team expands, it’s imperative for you as their leader to recognise when it’s time for them (and yourself) to delegate tasks so they can focus on what really matters: producing quality work that helps grow the company.
It’s also important to know when it’s time for an employee exit interview.
If someone is struggling at work or just not meshing well with other employees or clients, maybe it’s time for them to move on from the company altogether.
An effective exit interview will help determine whether there are any issues within their skill set, personality traits, communication styles—anything that may have contributed negatively towards their performance during employment with your organisation (or lack thereof).
These insights can help guide future hiring decisions based on those specific criteria rather than relying solely on outside referrals and interviews alone, which often results in candidates being chosen exclusively based on personal relationships rather than actual talent.
If you delegate effectively, you can have a more productive business with happier employees
If you’re a business owner, then delegation is essential!
You can’t do it all yourself.
If you try to do everything yourself, your business will suffer. You won’t be as productive or efficient as you could be. Delegating effectively is one of the most important skills that we need to learn as business owners. To operate an effective – and more successful – company, effective delegation is the key as we grow our respective businesses.
Delegation doesn’t mean farming out work or tasks to other people so that they can do all of your work for you. Instead, it involves giving employees greater autonomy within their job descriptions. Give them more ownership over their accountabilities; they usually will take more pride and pleasure in performing well on behalf of your company.
When employees feel empowered to make decisions on their initiative, this leads directly towards happier workers who are more engaged in what they do every day at work.
There’s no doubt about it. Delegation is an essential part of running a successful business.
It can be challenging at first. I get it.
It takes plenty of practice to learn and continually enhance your delegation skills.
If you follow these tips and work on your skills over time, you’ll soon find that it becomes second nature. In addition to making your employees happier and more productive, the delegation will free up your time. Voila! You can focus on what matters most; growing your business!
Do you know another business owner who needs some advice regarding delegating to their team? Why not share this post with them?
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