Delegation 101

It’s not easy to ask someone else to do your work, especially if you feel an obligation to do it all by yourself. But as an executive, you’re going to have to learn the art of delegation eventually. When you fail to delegate, projects begin to go unfinished. Task lists become unmanageable. And time management gets thrown out the window. Consider these five tips on how to effectively delegate to your employees, and learn why it matters so much: #1 – Assign Tasks You Don’t Have Time To Complete. Your employees are there to see the company succeed. Its success benefits them just as much as it benefits you. Assign tasks to them that are small enough to be completed quickly by someone who doesn’t have a hundred tasks already on their plate. Doing this will make them feel that they are contributing to the overall good of the company. This might also free up some time for you to do other things, and it might also help you create a positive work/life balance. #2 – Reduce Stress of Yourself And Your Team Your failures are their failures. There’s no way around that. If you’re constantly turning in subpar work, your team will get the blame just as much as you will. Give your team some of your tasks. This will help reduce some of their stress in wondering whether you’ve completed the project or not. By maintaining an open line of communication where projects are concerned, no one will have to worry about their stress levels of the job getting done. #3 – Make Sure You’re Maintaining an Appropriate Employee Workload While you don’t want to undertask your employees, you certainly don’t want to overtask them, either. Consider checking in with employees to see exactly how many projects or tasks they think they can handle and how long it will take them to complete it. Again, keeping that open line of communication is very key. If you can check in with your employees without micromanaging them, you’ll have found the nice balance between boss and coworker that must exist in a team setting. #4 – Delegating Can Lead to Better Organization Skills If you don’t let papers pile up on your desk and instead assign them to others to handle, you’ll develop better organization skills. By doing this, you will also be improving emotional health. You can leave knowing that more has been accomplished. But if papers have piled up, you’ll get a sense of panic knowing how much there is left to do. #5 – Rewarding Your Team for a Job Well Done Another key piece to delegation is follow-through on rewards and incentives. It’s important that your staff knows that their work is valued, especially since it is really your work to begin with. Consider taking your staff to lunch after the completion of a big project, or maybe offer them half the day off for a job well done. The possibilities are endless and they don’t have to involve money. When developing your new habit of delegating tasks, be sure you stick with the system you create. There’s nothing worse than putting a new policy in place and then reversing it only to put yet another policy in place later. Consistency is key in creating a productive environment and your staff will thank you for making sure they’re not overloaded or overworked. Delegation has to start now. Don’t wait until things are so unmanageable that you can’t get back on track. There’s always going to be another set of tasks to do, so letting them pile up can be a huge mistake.