Let them drive: The 5 powers of delegation
If you want to do something right – do it yourself. A famous phrase, which hasn't aged a day in terms of its idiocy.
The truth is, you should delegate if you want to build a successful business or career. So, let me share some tricks on how to start delegating and how to maximize your benefits from it. Whether you're an experienced executive of a big division or an aspiring manager of a small team, you may find something useful here.
Before we start, let's determine what kind of delegation we're talking about here. It's not about dumping coffee runs or boring admin tasks on your employees; that's just being a lazy a*hole.
True delegation is the kind that benefits both you and your employees, and your business as a result. That's the one we're talking about here.
Now, to the Powers of Delegation.
Power of Delegation No. 1: Free Up Your Time for Strategy
You can't be an effective general if you're stuck in the weeds. There are people who will do way better than you on the frontline.
Your time is best applied by giving your team the vision, strategy, and direction to move the whole thing forward. Your duty is making the bigger decisions and accepting responsibility for their consequences.
In fact, people often start micromanaging because they lack confidence in their own decisions and skills. Micromanagement creates an illusion of control and power; it is actually a form of procrastination.
If you don’t believe that you’re capable of creating a vision and an efficient business process and coaching people to nurture it, then you will put it off by spending your time micromanaging.
And that creates a vicious loop where neither you nor your employees achieve top potential. So, stop that.
Power of Delegation No. 2: Boost Ownership
Ask yourself, who is more invested in the success of your project:
An employee who is just robotically doing the legwork on your very precise instructions and under your very close supervision?
Or an employee who was given an opportunity to contribute their vision into the project, influence its direction and process?
It's pretty much always the second one. A sense of accomplishment from having that kind of ownership of the project and seeing it from inception to completion is very rewarding and good for morale. It gives a sense of value and can do wonders for people’s initiative.
And that is why a very important part of delegation is not just sharing the work, but also sharing authority. Employees should have the authority to be able to move things along for the most part. You can still serve as the gatekeeper at specific points in the process.
Power of Delegation No. 3: Supercharge Skills
You may think that you're the best at everything, but it's most likely that you're not. I doubt that you're an all-guru in creative writing, Excel, coding, modelling, client calls, and social media engagement.
If you are, congratulations for being a superhuman, but you still may need to delegate.
Give tasks to people according to their strengths. Coach them and direct them from time to time, but let them fly with it. Employees will improve their skills, become much more valuable assets, and the long-term output you get over time will exceed your own.
That is the whole point. As a manager or business owner, it is no longer about your individual performance. It's about the overall performance of the team and the company. So this should add to your ego, not detract from it.
Power of Delegation No. 4: Hidden Gems
Until you give people the responsibility for something and take them out of their comfort zones, neither you nor they will know their true potential.
That quiet guy, plugging away at spreadsheets, may be awesome in client presentations. The lady you got for writing product blurbs may be amazing at running social media accounts too.
Try to find out, and if found, nourish it to full potential. Trust them with more ownership. You could have a massive jump in performance in your group or business in areas that have previously stagnated.
Power of Delegation No. 5: Succession
Succession planning is a very important process for any healthy organization. What if a piano falls on you tomorrow, or you retire, or you get a bigger job, or sell your business, or find zen and become a full-time yoga instructor?
Would you prefer for your team to just fall into pieces as it cannot function without your divine presence? Or would it feel better if you created enough capable people who could step up and fill your shoes, maybe even better than you?
If you are a true leader, the answer is obvious.
Also, if you do stay in the business or the industry, those are the people who will support you and collaborate with you in the future, repaying the trust and the opportunities that you've given them.
HOW TO DELEGATE
Now that we've covered the reasons why you should delegate, here are 3 quick steps on how to start delegating and benefit from it quicker:
Step 1: Identify Waste
Look at your working day/week/month and identify those tasks that tend to take up a lot of your time but do not contribute directly to your main objectives.
Targets for delegation may vary depending on your industry, your role, team composition, etc.
It is not necessarily something you hate doing or are bad at; it can be something you like doing and are great at. There are just more critical things that require your time. So, the principle is simple: If the task can be done by someone else, while benefiting the business, then it's a waste, and you should delegate.
Some quick examples of tasks that can be wasteful if not delegated:
Smaller projects
Niche research
Customer calls and queries
Social media
Data entry, modelling, coding
Low-impact internal meetings
Step 2: Find Your Avatar
To find the right person to delegate tasks to, use the following parameters:
Affinity: Does the person have interests, traits, or skills aligned with the task?
Growth: Is this something that could enhance the person’s career development?
Capacity: Does the person have bandwidth? If they meet affinity and growth criteria but don’t have bandwidth, maybe they should be delegating some of their current tasks.
Step 3: Empower
Once you've identified your avatars, it's time to empower them to actually do it. Use this simple framework for that:
Explain the task with clarity
Coach and show best practices
Set expectations
Share partial authority
Have a shadowing period
Review and give feedback
Share prime authority
Drive autonomy
So, use these steps and spend some time and effort to set up delegation.
You will very soon find out that you will be rewarded with loads of extra time you can spend on your crucial tasks, a more skilful and empowered team, and quicker growth in your department, division, or company.