How do I Effectively Delegate to My Team?

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“The first rule of management is delegation. Don’t try to do everything yourself because you can’t.” -Anthea Turner

How do I effectively delegate to my team?

Being able to effectively delegate is one of the most important skills for entrepreneurs who want to grow

their business and get their time back.

It can also be extremely challenging, especially when you are used to taking care of everything yourself.

If you want to get things done, do them yourself! … if you like working 80 hours a week.

First of all, it’s completely understandable for you to have this mindset.

As the business owner, you are an expert at your craft. You have put in the hours, the blood, sweat, and tears and this business is near and dear to you.

No one can possibly be as good or care as much as you do, right?

This is not an irrational mindset to have, but it is one that will hinder your growth and limit the ability of your organization to grow and to help your employees to grow within it.

You will be surprised what your employees are capable of, especially if you are hiring people that are passionate about your business

The truth is that with great systems and your guidance, you can elevate your employees to take over parts of your business (and eventually all of it!) and run them as effectively as if you had cloned yourself to work every position in your company.

Don’t worry, we’re here to help.

Have a CEO Mindset

As the CEO, you need to be spending your time being the “rain-maker”, which means that the tasks that take away from your ability to look at the big picture and work ON your business need to be delegated.

So many business owners try to “save” the company money by taking on things themselves.

Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should do it.

Let it go! (Cue the music from Frozen)

Just because you know how to fix the boiler, doesn’t mean that you should be spending your time doing it…

THAT IS NOT YOUR JOB!! YOUR JOB AS CEO IS TO HELP BUILD THE BUSINESS.

LET IT GO!!! LET IT GOOOO!!

How do I choose what to delegate?

This process starts by looking back at your time log.

Hopefully by now you have started to analyze your time and put it into buckets.

Now it’s time to decide what to offload or outsource.

“How much is my time worth?”

This is where you need to draw a hard line in the sand. How much is your time worth? What is your hourly rate?

*Hint: If you find yourself setting your hourly rate at $20, you may want to challenge yourself on what your value is because you are most likely self-sabotaging*

Now, take a look at all of the tasks in your “C” bucket. Anything that could be done by someone for less than your hourly rate goes on your delegation list.

This doesn’t mean if you make this list tonight that tomorrow you can just dump all of these tasks onto your team, but it will give you a starting point to understand what needs to be offloaded.

Make sure your team is ready

Give your team everything they need to be successful taking over this task.

Give them all the training and assistance that they need.

Create systems, checklists, videos, and assist your team when delegating a task.

The better your systems are, the more hands off this will be, but make sure that you are consistently checking in with them and giving them clear KPI’s so that you can all measure their performance objectively.

Delegation vs. Abdication

It is important to make this distinction, because so often business owners come up against a task that they don’t have skill/knowledge in, and they just give it to someone inside or outside of their organization to handle so they don’t have to deal with it.

The problem here is that if you don’t have an understanding of what is supposed to happen with that task, how are you supposed to hold someone else accountable for doing it well?

Think of things you might outsource/delegate:

Financials – Your accountant gives you the numbers, but do you know what they mean? Are you aware of what your P & L indicators are or how they are showing strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for your company?

Digital Marketing – Are you paying someone to work on your website and/or social media? Do they give you regular analytics on how it is performing with traffic, conversions and local SEO?

Know it well and choose to let it go.

The point here is that if you don’t understand what proficiency is for that part of your business, how can you possibly measure the performance of the people you are paying to do these tasks for you.

This means that you need to get up the learning curve. If you are hiring a professional to handle, take some of these “C” tasks off of your plate, have them walk you through it.

If you want to truly get control of your time, understanding what and how to delegate is imperative.

So start by understanding what you need to delegate, then what you are able and willing to delegate in the short term, and LET IT GO!

HOMEFUN

Determine what your time is worth ($/hr). Anything that can be do for less than that goes on your delegation list.

Look at your “C” tasks from your time study and make a list of tasks that can be delegated

Choose 1 task that can be delegated now, and give that task to someone else.

Test and measure performance, and make adjustments to improve the system.

Then move to the next one!