Why You Should Delegate for Personal Development

​Do you constantly ask yourself:
How can I free up more time?
How can I ease my workload?
How can I work more efficiently?
​How can I spend my time interacting with others rather than being tied to my desk all day? 

​If you can relate, then continue reading to discover the secrets of delegation to improve productivity and empower your teammates whilst curating your own dream job.

​Why Do I need to Delegate?

​At some point in your career you will be asked: “What is your dream job?”

It is hoped that your answer will be “I am on the path to successfully achieving it!”
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But then ask yourself: Why haven’t I achieved it yet?
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There could be several reasons for the delay:

​- You feel like you have hit a few roadblocks on your journey, or you find yourself in a bottleneck situation where everything starts and ends within your own capabilities.

- You can only dream of having more time to concentrate on the areas that hold the most value for you, but you are already stretched beyond your limits.

- Your skills lean towards more creative or strategic roles as you progress in your career, but you still find yourself deferred by the mundane routine of the everyday tasks you have always had to do. ​
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The answer to your problems is quite simple: Being a good leader requires successful delegation!
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​What Is Delegation and Why Should I Delegate?
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​Delegation is the act of entrusting a task to another individual for which your accountability remains.​

Delegation works by a process of task, person, plan, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

Delegation maximises productivity whilst empowering others through competent leadership.

Delegation improves efficiency meaning tight deadlines are met and large workloads are diminished.
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Delegation is a skill which once learned can, and should, be constantly improved upon. 
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​The Four Steps That Put Delegation into Practice
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​Here are the four steps that you can work through to better understand why you may have previously resisted implementing delegation. Learn how delegation will strengthen your workforce and open opportunities for your own successful career once your delegation plans are firmly in place.
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Delegation Step One – Questioning
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“You can do anything, but you can’t do everything”
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​This is your opportunity to ask yourself why you want or need to delegate work to other people, and why you have previously found delegation difficult.

You must learn to let go of the mentality that no one can do your work better than yourself.

Slowly start putting your trust in other people and have faith that they will do the work in the specified time and to the expected standard.

Only by letting go of the routine tasks can you truly begin to put your focus into the work that you find the most enriching.

Take a step back and analyse the people around you who you would like to emulate. Use these people for your inspiration.

Study people who make their job look easy and question why is this so?

Do they make their job look easy? Or is it the workforce they have created around them who make them look as good as they can be?

Put Delegation into practice:
​​Take responsibility for the success of your team by making use of their greatest strengths. Often it is the people who work around us who make us look the most polished and in control.
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Delegation Step Two – Preparing
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“Delegate, automate, eliminate”
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This is your opportunity to separate the work you want to delegate from the work you wish to dedicate more of your own time to.
 
Focus on what your role in the business should entail and ask yourself: What is the best way for me to spend my time? What parts of the business do I want to focus my efforts towards? What aspects of my current job do I find the most tedious?

Pinpoint the tasks which are consuming too much time, these are quite literally your ‘time-wasters’. Group together as many time-wasting processes as possible and plan to streamline the processes, or ideally delegate the streamlining task to someone else!
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Put Delegation into practice:
Create a hierarchy of delegation by focusing on the tasks you wish to do yourself and deciding which tasks you want to delegate to others. 

​To start, group together and organise the routine tasks which must be done daily, weekly or monthly and delegate the responsibility for getting these tasks completed. 

Delegation Step Three – Developing
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“Together everyone achieves more”
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This is your opportunity to cultivate the successful alignment of your team’s co-operation in your delegating needs whilst consequently feeding their own drive and ambition. The achievement of your team’s personal and business success will also lead to your own success in leadership.

Get to know your team and find out what their strengths and weaknesses are. For their personal development, also discover where their passion lies. This is your best opportunity to uncover their true potential as employees.

Don’t be afraid to provide training to employees who show aptitude, passion or a general interest in specified areas they have no prior knowledge in. Invest in your workforce when training will increase productivity and build on their skillsets.

Instead of delegating work to the person who has the least to do (rather than to the person who would do the best job) look to expand your knowledge of what everyone is capable of. Likewise, avoid delegating too much work to the one person you trust the most, meaning they feel overwhelmed and resentful, often comparing their workloads to those of others.

Put Delegation into practice:
In the beginning the development of delegation is very much like a juggling act. You will undoubtably make mistakes or abandon ideas that simply don’t work, but it is the consistency of getting the daily routines in place that will build the solid foundations where all your plans will come to fruition.

Constantly ask questions when deciding which employees you should delegate work to. All tasks will require different skillsets so lots of factors should be taken into consideration.
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Some of these questions you could ask are: Who can I trust to get this job done? Who will follow through? Who is the most passionate for this type of work? Who is the most qualified or experienced? Who works best with the least guidance? For example.
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Delegation Step Four – Actioning
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“Do less. Lead more”
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This is your opportunity to put your plans into place. This is the moment where you flick the switch and hopefully everything runs smoothly and doesn’t break down! In the beginning you may need to provide some maintenance, but with a little time and experience your team should become your greatest success story!
 
This is the time to trust your team. Allow them the opportunity to execute the work themselves but contact them well in advance of the deadline to make sure that they are on schedule to complete on time.

Although you need to delegate the work, you do not want to take your eye off the ball completely, be pro-active and avoid any gaps in communication which can lead to mistakes or misunderstandings.

Put Delegation into practice:
Make it apparent from the outset what the purpose of the task is, how you want them to go about completing the task and give clear timescales for when you want the work to be completed.

You must be clear when relaying this information as this is key to successful delegation.

Give feedback after tasks have been completed. Publicly thank and praise your team if they succeed, and offer constructive criticism if the fail, consistency is key!
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Also ask your team for feedback on the way you delegate. Remember that great delegation is about consistency in learning in order to improve, and experience will allow you the opportunity to adjust the way you put delegation into practice.
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​Millennial Procurement providers of professional business training. Visit our website now for more great 'how to' blogs and top tips from www.millennialprocurement.com