How to Delegate Work
Delegation skills to help manage your workload effectively
Is your workload unmanageable? Is time management a problem? Learn to delegate and create more time for your important tasks and empower your team to new levels!
Delegation is a skill worth building. It has many positive spin offs. Your workload will become more manageable, your staff will work with you to accomplish departmental objectives and, in some cases, you’ll give a professional development opportunity to junior staff by relinquishing tasks that will challenge them.
Some leaders find it very difficult to relinquish control especially if it is something that directly affects customer relations or the bottom line. If you find though that you consistently work longer hours than your support staff and can’t keep on top of your prime responsibilities it is time to look at how much (or how little) you are delegating.
To determine if a task can be delegated, consider the following questions:
- Is this a task that I know one of my team members excels at?
- Is this task something that I can easily hand off without much direction?
- Do I need someone else on staff to be capable of this task (succession planning)?
- Is this something that I can delegate without having to micromanage or control the process?
Remember that you may have to spend some time training and coaching the person so it is a matter of short term pain (time and energy) for long term gain. Set aside a day a week for coaching or at least a chunk of time weekly for coaching if delegation is an issue for you. You’ll be happy you did in a couple of months when your workload is more manageable and you are on top of projects.
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