The art of delegation

How to manage your workload through delegation

It’s tough running your own business. We all know how hard it is to juggle tasks, particularly when you have built your company from the ground up. But, if you are not careful, you might fall into the trappings of micromanagement. This can seriously affect team member’s retention and productivity and sap people’s morale, leaving a feeling of unrest and possibly even damaging your or their health. As a manager, it is your job to provide guidance, and support and create a healthy and happy environment. Not the opposite.

Delegation is proven to signal to your team that you respect them, trust their discretion and honour their desire to succeed. In turn, your team feels trusted, and respected and will automatically show you additional commitment to their work. Quite simply, disregard the myth that you are passing off work. By delegating, you can make workloads more manageable, better manage resources and time and provide educational opportunities for your team. Even if you are a one-man-band, you can learn to delegate and ask for help. There are some incredible resources that you can use, such as the service of a virtual assistant or a virtual bookkeeper.

It’s a psychological process

Do you think that you can do it better?

Two proven psychological processes can make managers reluctant to delegate work:

1. The faith in supervision effect. An assumption is that managers think that work is performed to a better standard if supervised.
   
2. The self-enhancement effect. A team member assumes that their work is performed to a better standard if supervised.

Letting it go

You might, and quite rightly so, feel apprehensive about letting go of your workload. Understanding that you can’t do it all is an enormous step and takes tremendous confidence and perspective. It is important to remember that your team wants to do exceptional work and succeed. In a nutshell, if your team members succeed, so do you. It’s in our human DNA to be successful, and people will rarely let you down if they understand that your destiny is in their hands.

Another common misconception is that it will take you longer to teach someone how to do a task rather than do it yourself. First off, this might be true, but over time, you won’t have to be involved at all. How does that feel? It will take you very little time to recoup the time spent training others. It feels good!

The tasks

We’ve broken down the tasks that you can delegate in order of complexity. Just remember that all of these jobs can be carried out remotely;

1. Small tasks usually take minimal time, but their time value quickly adds up if several duties need completing. These responsibilities could include scheduling meetings, booking travel arrangements, or even managing your email inbox.
   
2. Mindless tasks such as adding marketing details and lead information into your CRM systems. These jobs need little skill other than an eye for detail and time.
   
3. If you have large tasks that invariably take time, you can look for opportunities to split the tasks across a team of virtual people.
   
4. Can you quickly teach a member of your team or virtual assistant a critical task? It might be bookkeeping, information input or payroll, a task that needs immediate delegation!
   
5. Is there something that you are terrible at? It could be writing, so find a copywriter, it could be design, so find a graphic designer. There are professionals that can help you achieve these tasks with ease.
   
6. Time-sensitive projects can be overwhelming, and you’ll struggle to complete the assignment on your own. It’s time to delegate elements of the task to your team or virtual assistant.
   

Hopefully, you can see how vital delegation is, not only to give your team a sense of empowerment, but you’ll have a happier office environment and more time to grow your business. To discuss how the We Group can support your business, please give us a call at 01323 576644 or use our contact form.