The Art of Delegation

Do you feel stressed and overloaded? If so, then you may need to brush up your delegation skills! A very productive manager or leader is great at delegating tasks to fellow teammates. Furthermore, it is important for the fellow teammates to see how the task which they are being delegated will help both them and the team.

If you work on your own, there’s only a limited amount that you can do, no matter how hard you work. We have all been there and delegating is something that I would love to improve on. You can only work so many hours in a day and there are only so many tasks you can complete in these hours. If there is only a limited number people on your team who understand the art of delegation, then your success is limited.
However, if you’re good at your job, people will want much more than this from you.
This can lead to a real sense of pressure and work overload: You can’t do everything that everyone wants, and this can leave you stressed, unhappy, and feeling that you’re letting people down.
On the positive side, however, you’re being given a tremendous opportunity if you can find a way around this limitation. If you can realize this opportunity, you can be genuinely successful!
One of the most common ways of overcoming this limitation is to learn how to delegate your work to other people. If you do this well, you can quickly build a strong and successful team of people, well able to meet the demands that others place.
This is why delegation is such an important skill, and is one that you absolutely have to learn.

Why People Don’t Delegate:

To figure out how to delegate properly, it’s important to understand why people avoid it. Quite simply, people don’t delegate because it takes a lot of up-front effort.
After all, which is easier: designing and writing content for a brochure that promotes a new service you helped spearhead, or having other members of your team do it?
You know the content inside and out. You can spew benefit statements in your sleep. It would be relatively straightforward for you to sit down and write it. It would even be fun! The question is, “Would it be a good use of your time?”

When to Delegate:

Delegation is a win-win when done appropriately, however that does not mean that you can delegate just anything. To determine when delegation is most appropriate there are five key questions you need to ask yourself:

1.) Is there someone else who has (or can be given) the necessary information or expertise to complete the task? Essentially is this a task that someone else can do, or is it critical that you do it yourself?
2.) Does the task provide an opportunity to grow and develop another person’s skills?
3.) Is this a task that will recur, in a similar form, in the future?
4.) Do you have enough time to delegate the job effectively? Time must be available for adequate training, for questions and answers, for opportunities to check progress, and for rework if that is necessary.
5.) Is this a task that I should delegate? Tasks critical for long-term success (for example, recruiting the right people for your team) genuinely do need your attention.

If you can answer “yes” to at least some of the above questions, then it could well be worth delegating this job.