You cannot do it alone. These words may seem insulting, nevertheless it’s the truth. Entrepreneurs often make the mistake of keeping the thick of things within themselves. They tend to do at most 90 percent of the job in the hope of realizing their goals without any hint of cacophony usually conceived as an offshoot of working hand in hand with others. It is a bitter pill to swallow but when you understand the context behind such, you will easily find that learning proper delegation will ultimately leverage yourself while doubling your company’s value.
Core of the Matter
Delegation must be regarded as a vital and efficient management skill in entrepreneurship. Business owners who have no ability to delegate effectively are highly recommended to find ways to develop such skills. You need to understand that learning how to delegate the right tasks to the right people maximize your business’ success potential. It helps to maximize your efforts as well as the productivity of your workforce. In its simplest form, delegation is your way of getting the highest return from investing in people.
As a leader, it is your job to develop people to make them trustworthy and efficient in handling jobs deemed critical to business. It is your job to know which task goes to the right staff—and if such task will bring out the best in them and vice-versa. It’s a long shot, one that requires patience and deep thinking. Delegation, however, is a learned skill, one that can be enhanced and developed in everyone who wants to pursue it.
Delegation– A Learned Skill
When thinking of delegating tasks and optimize results, the following aspects must be carefully taken into mind.
1. Decide clearly what needs to be done. It is important to know precisely what results do you wish to achieve. Along this line, you will need to set implementation rules and guidelines as well as performance standards. Of course, setting a schedule or deadline must be carefully determined to ensure that the job’s done at a right time.
2. Consider task-relevant maturity when delegating to your staff. Consider their competence, skills, and dedication vis-à-vis the tasks at hand. Directive delegation style is often effective to new employees who are inexperienced in their job. For more experienced, yet not considered as experts in the job can make do with delegation via “management by objectives”. This means stating what you want to be done and then, allowing them to do it according to their own ways and means. Of all these task-relevant maturity method of delegation, however, those competent and experienced staff will make do with monitoring and interaction.
3. The vital key is to delegate clear and measurable outcomes and expectations. It is easy to measure results when your staff knows precisely what needs to be done, how it should be done, and the underlying rationale for the said tasks. Most importantly, it is essential to encourage participation during the planning stage. Invite everyone to participate and be open for their suggestions. Sometimes, all it takes is “common sense” method to achieve your goals—something that many top leaders failed to see due to overthinking.
In all these, it is important to acknowledge that successful delegation starts with a critical task—picking the right people. Results are often maximized through the hands of the right people, regardless of how simple or complicated a task is. Subsequently, the essence of delegation also forges mutual trust and respect among leaders and those at the bottom of the organizational ladder. Be reminded that the more you assign tasks to the right people will ultimately develop their competency level.
