One of my favorite Olympic sports to watch is runway relay. The runners make blindly reaching for a baton at 20 mph while staying in their lanes look incredibly easy. Simply in truth, what they're doing is extremely difficult. And it'due south a lot like delegating finer.

WOCinTech - how to delegate effectively - delegate tasks to teams

Delegating sounds piece of cake—and others who can do it well make it await piece of cake—only passing the baton effectively requires a lot of trust, advice, and coordination. Still, if you learn how to delegate—and you practice information technology well—everyone on your squad wins.

Table of Contents:

  • Why Is It Important to Delegate?
  • Why Managers Fail to Delegate
  • How to Determine When Delegating is Appropriate
  • How to Delegate Tasks Effectively

Why Is It Important to Delegate?

Every bit a leader, delegating is important considering you can't—and shouldn't—do everything yourself. Delegating empowers your squad, builds trust, and assists with professional evolution. And for leaders, it helps y'all larn how to place who is best suited to tackle tasks or projects.

Of grade, delegating tasks tin lighten your workload, but according to Dr. Scott Williams, professor of management at Wright State University, delegating does much more than than only go stuff off your plate.

For one, the people who piece of work for you will be able to develop new skills and gain cognition, which prepares them for more than responsibility in the time to come.

"Delegation can also be a clear sign that you respect your subordinates' abilities and that you lot trust their discretion," Williams writes. "Employees who feel that they are trusted and respected tend to take a higher level of commitment to their work, their organization, and, especially, their managers."

Why Managers Fail to Delegate

While the benefits of delegating are obvious and plentiful, many managers still fail to delegate effectively. The reality is that there are several myths and misconceptions about delegating that tin can make some leaders wary of handing off piece of work to others.

They call back delegating is but passing off work to someone else

"Managers ofttimes fault delegation for passing off work," writes Harvey Mackay, founder of MackayMitchell Envelope Co. "So they don't practise information technology, and they current of air up wasting their time as well as the company's time and resource."

Delegation can exist a chance to make workloads more manageable, but more than than that, it can provide really valuable education opportunities for your employees, Mackay notes.

Delegation is not a sign of weakness; it's a sign of a strong leader.

They recall they tin do information technology ameliorate

I report found that ii psychological processes brand people more than reluctant to delegate work:

  • the self-enhancement effect, which is a manager's tendency to evaluate a work product more than highly the more involved he/she is in its product
  • the faith in supervision issue, which is when people have a trend to think work performed under the command of a supervisor is improve than work performed without as much supervision

Lookout for those biases in your piece of work. They could be a sign that you demand to focus on building more trust within your squad.

They're nervous well-nigh letting go

Letting go tin can be challenging, just accepting that y'all tin can't do everything yourself is of import.

"Giving upward beingness 'the get-to expert' takes tremendous conviction and perspective fifty-fifty in the healthiest environments," says Ballad Walker, president of Prepared to Atomic number 82—a consulting firm that focuses on developing young leaders.

Remind yourself that your team wants to benefit work and be successful just like you do. If your employees succeed, y'all succeed.

"I've learned that people will seldom let you lot downwardly if they understand that your destiny is in their hands—and vice versa," says Mackay.

They're worried delegating will take longer than just doing the work

Some other mutual bulwark to delegation is that it can take longer to teach someone else how to practice a task than to just practice it yourself.

And while that might be truthful the first fourth dimension you delegate the task, over time, the amount of time you lot have to dedicate to that task decreases because yous won't have to be involved with it at all.

Imagine that information technology will take y'all eight hours to walk someone through a task yous have to complete every week. Typically, it takes you an hour to complete the job.

In one case eight weeks take passed after y'all've trained someone else to practise the task for you, you'll accept recouped the fourth dimension you spent on training and now have an extra 60 minutes each week.

With that actress hour, yous can focus on more of import work, such every bit strategy, coaching, or development—the things leaders are supposed to do.

How to Determine When Delegating is Appropriate

Another common barrier to delegation is that leaders aren't sure which tasks they should and shouldn't exist delegating. In every director's workload—particularly new managers—there are likely tasks that you should practice and tasks that you should delegate.

Career and business strategist Jenny Blake recommends conducting an inspect of your tasks using the rules beneath to discover out which of your tasks should exist delegated:

  • Tiny: Tiny tasks are petty things that but take a small amount of fourth dimension to consummate merely add together up over time. These might be things an assistant could exercise: scheduling meetings, booking flights for business trips, or deleting spam/marketing emails from your inbox.
  • Tedious: Tedious tasks are mindless tasks, such as copying and pasting lead information from your marketing automation tool to your CRM. Ho-hum tasks require little skill and can exist hands delegated.
  • Time-consuming: Fourth dimension-consuming tasks are opportunities to intermission piece of work into smaller chunks and delegate portions of the work to others. If yous perform a job regularly that takes a lot of fourth dimension, wait for opportunities to paw off segments of that task to others.
  • Teachable: Do you accept tasks on your plate that yous could easily teach someone else to complete? If a job is entirely teachable—if it does not require expertise that merely you can provide—it's a worthwhile candidate for delegation.
  • Terrible at: Maybe you accept no pattern skills, then it takes you six times as long to create graphics for your blog posts equally it would a professional designer. It'southward better to delegate that task to someone who's more equipped to do the work rapidly and well.
  • Fourth dimension-sensitive: Maybe it would exist meliorate if you handled all of the tasks belonging to a time-sensitive project, but if you won't accept time to complete information technology doing it all on your own, it's fourth dimension to find ways to delegate parts of that task to other members of your team.

Additionally, you may need to consider delegating tasks you dear doing just are no longer function of your job.

If you lot recently moved into a leadership part, you may accept pet projects from your days as an individual correspondent, but if it's at present someone else's chore to complete those tasks, it's time to consul and teach that person how to practice it for you.

How to Consul Tasks Effectively

Here are a few tips to aid you delegate finer then that your squad shares the workload and makes progress that benefits everyone.

1. Choose the correct person for the job

Part of being a good leader is understanding your employees' strengths, weaknesses, and preferences. If you demand to delegate a task that is going to require a lot of collaboration to complete, don't delegate information technology to someone who very strongly prefers working alone. Delegate it to someone who prefers collaborating.

If y'all conducted the inspect recommended in the department above, you may accept a list of tasks you're looking to delegate. You may want to consider sitting down with your team, going through the listing, and letting people cocky-select the tasks they're most interested in taking over.

Letting people cull the tasks they're delegated is another way to build trust with and inspire engagement among your team.

2. Explain why yous're delegating

If yous're delegating a task to someone out of the blue, it actually helps when yous provide context for why y'all're giving them that responsibility.

"When you select people to consul to, tell them why you lot chose them specifically and how you hope to run into this aid them grow," says Alex Cavoulacos, founder of The Muse. "Aid them see each delegated task equally an opportunity to take on more than responsibilities or abound new skills."

3. Provide the correct instructions

Every adept delegator provides basic and important information without micromanaging. Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Constructive People, suggests that you delegate results rather than methods:

"For case, say, 'Here'due south what we are doing. Here's what nosotros're after. I want you lot to go the sale,' instead of 'Follow up on those leads," Covey says.

Tell employees your goals or the milestones yous promise to hit and permit them tackle the problem in their ain way. Don't await for perfection or micromanage; someone else might complete a chore differently than you would. Equally long every bit yous go the upshot you're looking for, that's okay.

four. Provide resource and grooming

You have to brand sure the person tasked with a job or project has the tools and resources they need to exist successful.

"A good training rule of thumb is 'I do, we do, y'all do' (i.e. lookout me do this, then let's do information technology together, now you attempt)," says Cavoulacos.

Make certain that when you delegate a task, the person has the tools and skills they demand to complete the task—or provide a mode for them to work on those skills.

For example, if you inquire someone to use a specific tool they've never used before to complete a task, make certain there's a plan for them to become familiar with the tool offset.

5. Delegate responsibility *and* authority

You've probably been in a situation where you were tasked with something but didn't experience fully empowered to make decisions. As a result, the work stalls, yous end upwards having to ask for help, and the task takes more time from both the employee and the manager.

"Managers who fail to delegate responsibleness in addition to specific tasks eventually find themselves reporting to their subordinates and doing some of the piece of work, rather than vice versa," writes Martin Zwilling, founder and CEO of Startup Professionals.

Foster an environment and culture where people feel they're able to make decisions, ask questions, and accept the necessary steps to complete the work.

6. Check the work and provide feedback

In that location's nil worse than a manager who delegates something to an employee and so blames the employee when something goes wrong. Don't be that manager.

Check the piece of work you delegated to your employees when it'southward complete, brand sure they did it correctly, and give them any feedback needed to improve when treatment the job going forward.

seven. Say cheers

When someone completes a chore or projection y'all delegated, show 18-carat appreciation and point out specific things they did right or well.

When y'all make a note of those specifics, you're giving people a roadmap for what they should continue to do to be successful.

"This is the simplest step but one of the hardest for many people to larn," Zwilling says. "It will inspire loyalty, provide real satisfaction for work done, and get the basis for mentoring and performance reviews."

The Benefits of Learning to Delegate

If you delegate well, you tin increase trust and commitment with your employees, improve productivity, and brand sure the right people are performing the tasks that best accommodate them.

So don't be afraid to laissez passer the billy. It might take some exercise to become a great delegator, but if you work at it, you'll all become further.

Originally published in March 2017, this post has been updated to provide more data about how to determine which tasks should exist delegated and to add a few more delegating tips.

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