As a business owner, you have literally watched your initial business idea grow into a successful, fully fledged recognised company within the marketplace. You have watched your business every step of the way and have been hands on in its conception right up until success. You will have grown in skill along the way and may have become a bit of a “Jack of all trades” in the day to day running tasks.
However, what next? Once your business reaches a certain level of success you will most likely want to move up to the next level in some way. Perhaps you would like to move premises, invest in new equipment or hire staff. This is excellent news, as you know that your business is viable within the marketplace.
If you have been single handedly running your business up until this point, this will not be able to continue indefinitely. You simply cannot do all the tasks necessary for running a business on your own when expanding. This is where the art of delegation comes into play and business owners are notoriously bad at doing it! Without you delegating certain tasks you won’t find the time to generate more sales. Your Accountant will not be happy with your profit margins. No sales, equal no profit and therefore your business will start to fail or stagnate.
Here are some tips for delegating certain tasks to staff or freelancers.
Realise the need to delegate
You will find it extremely difficult to delegate if your heart isn’t really in it. If you half heartedly pass on tasks to others, you will make more work for yourself if you continuously check and recheck how your co workers are managing the tasks. Identify skills within your team or look at tasks that you complete which are time consuming, could you outsource these? Imagine how much extra time you’ll have to concentrate on generating sales leads.
Letting go
Try to develop the mindset that delegating tasks is of actual benefit to the future success of your business. It is actually a safety net for unforeseen circumstances or absence due to illness etc. If you never taken the opportunity to delegate, who will have the skills to take over? You need to develop your trust in your staff team and try not to “hover” in the background whilst they work things out.
Team building
Delegating tasks to your team is fantastic for boosting morale. Most staff members wish to progress in their career and completing the same tasks day in and day out doesn’t inspire and creates a boring non productive environment. Delegating tasks to competent individuals gives confidence and satisfaction in their role. A happy team which is valued and motivated is the best environment for work to be completed.
Staff training
Training staff doesn’t necessarily mean enrolling them on an expensive training course. “On the job” training can be just as effective if not more so. Delegating tasks and taking a little time training staff on how to complete them will allow more time for you to concentrate elsewhere in the long run. If you have an appraisal system for your staff, identify business tasks that you could train them up to complete competently.
Communicate effectively
It is very important to give clear instruction on how to complete the task you are delegating. If it isn’t understood the person completing the task will fail. Give verbal instruction and written instruction if necessary and ask the person to relay back to you what is expected of them.
Review success
Give your staff deadlines by which time you wish to either see the task completed, or at least a certain level of progress reached. Don’t leave too long a gap between delegating the task and reviewing it. Remember to give plenty of praise when due.
Don’t be a micromanager
Yes, delegating isn’t easy, but if you decide to do it, don’t micromanage every task you have delegated. This just means more work for yourself and your staff will struggle to develop their skills and creativity in an oppressive environment. Learn to let go. Trust the people you delegate to and back off, until they ask for help.
It’s important to recognise the best person within your team to delegate particular tasks to. Everyone has a different skill set and recognising what those are are key for delegation success. There’s no point delegating social media tasks to someone who hasn’t got a Facebook account, likewise there’s no point in delegating admin tasks to someone who’s skills lie in information technology.
