Do you often feel stressed when piled with a mountain of tasks? Are you worried that the task will not be handled well by others? What is the best way to delegate a task without sacrificing on the quality you expect?
Delegation is more than just handing over particular tasks to someone else, such that you can free up time to focus on other productive functions. As a leader, especially at the senior level, delegation is a critical leadership skill for success.
Such as to not waste time, you should be able to sort out your to-do lists and consider the jobs that are urgent and those which should be finished by yourself, and delegate other important functions to the capable taskforce. How do you wade out stress from your everyday life?
Delegation provides several benefits such as expanding your reach, enabling you to do more, taking more control of your time, as well as helping you achieve the work-life balance you desire.
Delegation also improves employee’s performance as well. By handing responsibility and authority to the employee to achieve certain goals, you give them an opportunity to learn how to manage an issue that will develop their performance, productivity and efficiency in the long run. However, not many leaders are able to distinguish the difference between delegating and directing.
In directing, you should provide clear guidance about the task, such as specific goals, deadlines, schedule plan, as well as the methods to follow. This way, employees should run everything based on the instructions you give.
Meanwhile, when delegating, you only need to explain the key points and expected goals of a particular project. Thus, employees will have more freedom to decide on the methods to execute the task, as long as the goal is successfully achieved.
See: What Do Executive Professionals Expect in a Hiring Process and Job Demands?
To prevent the risk of wrong delegation, here are several things you need to consider before effectively passing on:
First of all, you have to determine the tasks you want to delegate to others. For difficult and serious topics, you should ask experienced employees who have worked long enough to work on them.
As for smaller and easier ones, you can ask help from new staffs to foster their experience and build more confidence in handling a job. Consider both the risks and benefits that you will get from delegation to decide whether the tasks can be done by people other than you or not.
Make sure that you assign the job to someone who owns required abilities to finish them. Do not split up one job into smaller parts and delegate several people to do it. Rather, it would be better to delegate the entire job to one person alone. Not only does it make easier for you to provide guidance and assistance, it will make the person in charge of the job to be more motivated to do their best. The higher the value of the jobs, they will be more competent.
State clearly the outcomes and standards you expect the employee to achieve. Provide detailed briefing such that, they have a clear picture of where they should move and what they must do to get there, as well as why they have to take the job seriously. Entrust them with all the authority, and allow them to finish the job using their own method to encourage commitment.
Once you pass on the task to the employee, do not disconnect the communication. On the way, they might find problems and need help. Ask how the project is going on, open questions, and provide non-intrusive suggestions periodically so that you can monitor the progress.
However, avoid asking too often or even intervening the job because it would make them feel doubted and will lose confidence. During delegation, you must learn to let go of the task and entrust others.
When the deadline is reached and the task is completed, evaluate the outcome and share your thoughts on them. If you are not satisfied with the results, do not redo the job by yourself.
Continue to work with the person as they need to know the shortcomings to improve. Conversely, if you are satisfied with their work, you have to provide positive feedback as well as rewards and credit accordingly.
Read also: Gift Your Employees Work-Life Balance this Year
