16 Dec It Takes A Village: Embracing Trust in Order to Delegate
There are only 24 hours in each day, despite the constant wish for more. If hours in the day were ideally endless, YOU would accomplish all tasks well and correctly (I mean is that even a question?) However, as a growing organization, your client demands and requests begin to creep onto the second page and 24 hours in one day is not even enough to scrape the surface. Your inbox is full, your promised deliverables are piling up, and your calendar is overflowing with meetings.
As a leader, delegating tasks to the appropriate team member is one of the most important skills you can develop and is crucial to business advancement. It is critical to remember that trusting your team with your idea is a sign of strength, not weakness. While often necessary to meet deadlines, it can also be the most trickiest of things to navigate. If you are unable to trust your team with your vision, advancing to the next stage of the project or next tier of clients is stunted. However, if you entrust someone with a task that they do not have the skills to properly complete then you are back at square one.
Delegation & Empowerment
Delegation empowers your team by forcing members to learn from experience. This promotes advancement, allowing them to become experts themselves. Inviting your team to take interest in their personal development and the entire team’s success makes you a stronger leader. When entrusted with a project or a client deliverable, the stakes can be high. But what if this serves as an opportunity for a fresh perspective or a path you hadn’t considered before that potentially brings a new viewpoint to advancing to the next level? We have all hit the wall before… our creative juices stop flowing and our sharp attention to detail begins to dull. Trusting another team member with completing or contributing to a project not only gives you time to regroup, but also allows them to showcase their ability. Encouraging teamwork and collaboration while working together toward a final end goal is constructive and valuable.
Delegation & Efficiency
When done appropriately and properly, delegation improves efficiency by allowing you to transfer work to people whose skill sets better match the task. As a leader, you are in charge of strategizing the next steps. When your team is able to carry out most of the routine activities, it provides the time and energy you need to plan for your team’s next move. Delegating routine work will relieve some of your daily stressors (that other’s may find enjoyable) and allow more time for you to tackle other tasks. You earn the respect and loyalty of your team members by holding them accountable and responsible for important business initiatives. The key to delegating (and not worrying the whole time as the deadline steadily approaches) is to identify and highlight strengths of your core team, hone in on these skills while setting your team members up for success.
Delegation & Personal Development
As a leader, you possess important skills and abilities. Transferring and sharing these skills to your team while delegating tasks is a great way to encourage them to develop their personal brand. This also serves as a platform for you to further develop coaching and mentoring skills. Finding out what each team member enjoys doing most and delegating associated tasks increases the chance that they will put more thought and effort into completing the task because they actually enjoy it. As they begin to develop and enhance their skill sets, the team as a whole becomes stronger.
As a project manager or boss of a company, it is invaluable knowing that you can rely on your staff to pull together client ready deliverables and get things accomplished on time (or even before the deadline!) with the effort and quality that you would put into it. Like many things in life, running and operating a successful business takes a village. Balancing this can be tricky but a great approach is to start with smaller projects, which enables you to give intermittent feedback. Giving feedback throughout a project rather than all at the end saves time and increases productivity by providing your team members with consistent direction and a vision of exactly what the end result should be. Clearly and succinctly describing what is important ensures you are working toward the same goal. Working together, having a unified mission, and delving into projects with mutual passion will catapult your business ventures onto the next level.
Delegating can be a great thing. It has the potential to empower employees and team members, increase efficiency, and even develop your leadership and coaching skills while sharing knowledge. However, when delegating, you run the risk of not having the job done properly and that is a concern which cannot be ignored. I am sure as you skimmed this post countless instances of attempts of delegating came flooding in. You handed the files over with clear and concise directions and a note on the bottom that said “If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask”. When no questions are asked, you assume that everyone is on the same page with the end goal of the final result. The deadline is approaching. You check in and the deliverable is nowhere close to the quality or level of detail needed. Back on your plate it falls, another all-nighter. Yes, it is critical for leaders to trust their employees, but even more important is the desire for employees to want to EARN that trust. Delegating in some instances can be an issue of giving up power. However, in many cases it is really the issue of “Is this person qualified to complete the task?” Some ideally would do it all themselves and others would gladly pass along as much as possible. It requires a fine balance and as a leader, navigating these waters can be intricate, especially when trying to maintain the quality of the final result.
How well do you delegate?