The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Delegation skills are important for any manager or team leader. If you’re asked to manage a team of people, chances are that you’ll need to delegate responsibilities. You might not have the time or capacity to take on every project or task yourself. Even if you do, it is often more effective and efficient to assign tasks to members of your team in a way that optimizes their individual talents and strengths.
If you have difficulty delegating tasks, there may be some challenges that prevent you from doing so effectively. We all have our own unique challenges, but developing delegation skills can be difficult for anyone. Fortunately, with some practice and discipline, it is possible to improve your ability to delegate responsibilities.
Keep A Clear Task Inventory
As a manager, you may be responsible for the completion of a wide variety of tasks. If you have trouble delegating tasks, it is important to first make sure you have an accurate inventory of all the tasks that need to be completed. This will help you to identify which tasks are the best candidates for delegation. To keep a clear inventory of your task list, try the following: – Assign someone to keep track of your task list. You could assign this as a team member responsibility, or you could keep track of it in a virtual system like Evernote. – Take time regularly to go over your task list and identify tasks that can be broken down into smaller, more manageable pieces. – Take time regularly to go over your task list and identify tasks that could be delegated to members of your team. – Take time regularly to go over your task list and identify tasks that can be eliminated. – Take time regularly to go over your task list and identify tasks that have critical deadlines. – Take time regularly to go over your task list and identify tasks that are critical to the success of your organization.
If you are struggling with the idea of delegating tasks, you may want to start by rotating employees through ongoing responsibilities that don’t require as much skill and expertise. Most organizations will have recurring or ongoing tasks that require attention. For example, you may have to regularly send out a company newsletter or marketing materials. You might have to regularly review and select new suppliers. You may have to regularly follow up with clients. Try rotating employees through these ongoing tasks. Doing so will allow you to experiment with delegation and give you time to build up your skills. Having team members take on recurring tasks will also allow you to evaluate their performance at an organizational level. This can help you to identify employees who are particularly efficient and effective at completing particular types of tasks. This can help you to identify employees who would make good candidates to be delegated more difficult and challenging tasks.
Establish Accountability with Check-ins
When you delegate a task to a member of your team, you want to clearly communicate your expectations. You want to be sure that your employees know what you want them to achieve with the task. You also want to be sure they understand the conditions that they need to meet in order to be successful. When you communicate your expectations, be sure to also communicate consequences. Be clear about what will happen if your employee doesn’t meet your expectations. For example, if you are delegating a task to an employee and they know they can earn additional compensation if they finish the task on time, you might want to communicate that to them. Tell the employee that if they meet the conditions you’ve set for the task (i.e. it is completed by a particular date), they will receive a bonus. When you communicate expectations and consequences to employees, be sure to do so in person. Don’t delegate a task and then go radio silent for days or weeks at a time. Instead, meet with the employee after you’ve assigned the task and clearly communicate your expectations, the conditions they need to meet, and the consequences that will occur if they don’t meet those expectations.
When you communicate your expectations and conditions to an employee, you want to be as clear as possible. You want to eliminate any room for interpretation or misunderstanding. To do this, you can use a technique called the CLEAR method. The CLEAR method is a method for clearly and effectively communicating expectations. It involves five steps: – Clarify – What is the task? What is the expectation? – Limit – What does the employee need to do to be successful? What is their goal? What is their end result? – Example – Give an example of how the task is completed successfully. What will the employee’s success look like? – Assign – What is the deadline? When does the employee need to finish the task? What is the priority? – Reinforce – What happens if the employee meets the expectation? What happens if they exceed the expectation?
Wrapping up
If you want to improve your delegation skills, the first thing you need to do is identify the challenges that may be preventing you from doing so. After that, you can use these tips to help you overcome these challenges and improve your delegation skills.
