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Ninetales team includes great proactive employees who love their job so much that they take on more tasks than they need. And yes, it’s a problem. In this article, we help ourselves and you stop being afraid to delegate.
“I’m afraid that without me there won’t be high-quality results, it’s difficult for me to trust junior employees, that’s why I try to do everything myself”. Sounds familiar? It does to us. But you can allocate time much more efficiently and achieve higher results.
Why is it important to delegate?
As a minimum, not to burn out. Being exhausted in an emergency, when the success of completing essential tasks depends on you, isn’t great. But when you take on more tasks than you can handle, burnout is inevitable.
As a maximum, it’s worth delegating to achieve better results with less effort. When there are more tasks than can be completed without sacrificing rest and sleep, it’s time to think about delegation. Otherwise, you’ll put yourself at risk of working long hours and getting almost no return.
What if I'm afraid to delegate?
The fear that without your participation, employees may not be able to handle tasks is understandable. However, you have to remember that when your colleagues receive a task, they learn. Yes, probably you won’t be satisfied with their performance at first, but it’ll get better and better. In turn, it’ll become easier for you as a manager to trust your employees and give them more complicated tasks without worrying that things will go wrong.
For example, you have two interns with no experience under your supervision and a list of tasks regarding setting up contextual advertising. One person can set up 10 (15 top) advertising campaigns per month. The problem is that sooner or later he or she will run out of energy, but the amount of work won’t change. When you teach your employee, you can set up 20 advertising campaigns together without sacrificing your free time and effort.
Interfering prejudices
Most likely, you have to break some principles to start delegating successfully.
Misconception: if you want a thing done well, do it yourself!
Reality: effective delegation allows you to increase the quantity and quality of tasks performed and discover your employees’ true potential.
Misconception: if I delegate, I lose control.
Reality: there is more control, as at least two people are responsible for the task: the one who performs it and you. Together, it’s easier to find mistakes and correct them, if there are any at all.
Misconception: all my employees are already busy, so I won’t give them an additional task.
Reality: delegation allows you to review and balance team workload. Both your colleagues and you will have the optimal number of tasks.
How to delegate effectively?
There are a few simple rules that will help you avoid embarrassing mistakes and learn the difference between “I’ll do everything myself” and “I’m the one who’ll make the only right decision for this problem”.
- Don’t break down a task when assigning it. Let your colleague perform a task from beginning to end. This way, he or she will look at the task as a whole and have more responsibility. If it’s not possible, make sure that all participants of the process communicate effectively and solve the problem together.
- Don’t assign the same task to several employees. A safety net is a good thing for mountaineering, but not for the daily office routine. You risk getting demotivated employees and wasting resources.
- Clear task setting is everything. If you’re worried about the end result, especially at first, explain to your subordinates as accurately as possible what needs to be done and how, and most importantly, what result you expect.
- Control, don’t do. Nobody says that delegation is about lack of control, quite the contrary. It’s essential to set up checkpoints, provide feedback, but certainly not rush to redo everything.
- Be generous with praise. It’s crucial: if your employees do a good job, thank them. They’ll be more motivated to complete tasks next time.
Nobody said delegation was easy. But if you learn how to do it and, most importantly, stop doing everything yourself, you’ll free up time for top priority tasks, get more return from what you are doing and have more energy for your wildest ideas!
