As you can't—and shouldn't—do everything alone as a leader, delegation is critical. Delegating gives your team more control, fosters trust, and helps with professional development. It also teaches leaders how to recognize who is most prepared to take on specific jobs or projects. For starters, your employees will be able to learn new skills and gain knowledge, preparing them for greater responsibilities in the future."Delegation may also be a clear statement that you accept your subordinates' talents and trust their judgment."
Why Can't Managers Delegate?
- They're afraid of losing control
It's difficult to let go, but realizing that you can't handle everything alone is crucial."Even in the best situations, giving up being 'the go-to expert' requires incredible confidence and perspective.
- They're concerned that delegation will take longer than completing the task themselves.
One major stumbling block to delegation is that teaching someone else how to do something takes longer than doing it yourself. Consider how long it would take you to walk someone through a task you have to conduct once a week. The work takes around an hour to accomplish on average.
- They believe they can do a better job.
The self-enhancement effect refers to a manager's inclination to rate a work output higher the more involved he or she is in its creation. People have a propensity to believe that work done under the supervision of a supervisor is better than work done without as much monitoring, which is known as the faith in supervision effect.
When Is It Appropriate to Delegate?
A further major stumbling block to delegation is leaders' ambiguity about which jobs they should and shouldn't delegate. There are undoubtedly duties that you should undertake and tasks that you should delegate in any manager's job, especially for novice managers.
- Tiny jobs are minor tasks that require very little time to do but pile up over time.
- Time-consuming activities allow you to break down work into smaller segments and assign parts of it to others. If you have time-consuming work that you do daily, look for ways to delegate parts of it to others.
- Mindless jobs, such as copying and pasting lead information from your marketing automation solution to your CRM, are referred to as tedious tasks. Tasks that are tedious need minimal talent and are readily assigned.
- Perhaps you have no design abilities, so creating visuals for your blog articles takes six times as long as it would for a professional designer. It's preferable to assign the responsibility to someone more qualified to complete the task swiftly and efficiently.
How to Effectively Delegate Tasks
- Choose the best candidate for the position.
Understanding your workers' skills, limitations, and preferences is an important part of being an effective leader. If you need to delegate a task that will take a lot of teamwork to do, don't allocate it to someone who prefers to work alone. Delegate it to someone who enjoys working together. You may have a list of chores you'd want to assign if you did the audit indicated in the previous section.
- Justify your decision to delegate.
If you're delegating work to someone out of the blue, it's a good idea to provide them with some context as to why you're doing so.
- Give the proper directions.
Inform individuals of your objectives or milestones that you aim to achieve, and then let them approach the challenge in their unique way. Don't strive for perfection or micromanage; someone else may approach a task differently than you. It doesn't matter what you receive as long as you get the result you want.
- Make resources and training available.
One must ensure that the individual in charge of a job or project has the necessary tools and resources to do it successfully.
- Delegate authority as well as responsibilities.
You've undoubtedly found yourself in a scenario where you've been given a task but don't feel completely empowered to make decisions. As a consequence, work slows down, you have to ask for assistance, and the process takes longer for both the employee and the management.
- Examine the work and provide suggestions.
Nothing is more frustrating than a boss delegating a task to an employee and then blaming the employee when anything goes wrong. Don't be that boss. When your workers have completed the job you allotted to them, double-check to be sure they did it correctly, and provide them any comments they need to enhance their management of the assignment in the future.
Conclusion
Hence, Delegating will almost certainly result in setbacks. Keep the higher-level objective of your commitment to delegating duties in mind at these times. By letting go of your previous work, you may remind yourself of your career aspirations. As a leader, your abilities are more valuable than as an individual contributor.
You may also get input on how to improve your delegation abilities from team members, bosses, and coworkers. They may be able to spot areas where you may improve your delegating skills.
Finally, try to resist falling into the cognitive trap of assuming that doing the task yourself will take less time. Measure the time saved by delegation throughout time, not just in the near term.
