How to Know What to Delegate and When To Do It

Time is one of the most important resources we have and something of which there is never enough. Whether you’re a small business owner, entrepreneur, or larger company, managing your time is a crucial skill, which allows you to prioritize the most important tasks at hand and helps to move your business forward.

Successful leaders and business owners will achieve maximum productivity by delegating to free up their time. Knowing what to delegate and when to delegate it is an important skill and creates efficiency within a team, small business, or organization.

Where should we start?

• Understand your own strengths and weaknesses: Before delegating tasks, it's important to understand what you do well and what you don’t. This will help you identify which tasks you are best suited to handle and which ones you should delegate to others.

• Assess your workload: Start by making a list of all of the tasks you are responsible for, and then rank them in order of importance and urgency. Identify the tasks that require your unique skills and expertise and those that can be performed by others. Allow yourself to give up control. Decide whether someone else with more expertise could potentially do these tasks more quickly and efficiently that you can and let go.

• Consider the workload and priorities: When deciding what to delegate and when, it's important to consider the workload and priorities for yourself, your assistant or a team. If you have a lot of urgent tasks that need to be completed quickly, you may need to delegate some of those tasks to ensure that everything gets done on time.

• Provide clear instructions and expectations: When delegating tasks, it's important to provide clear instructions and expectations to the person you are delegating to. This will help ensure that the task is completed correctly and on time.

• Check in and provide feedback: It's important to monitor the progress of the task and provide feedback to the person to whom you delegated. This will help ensure that the task is completed to the desired expectations and that any issues or challenges are addressed in a timely manner.

Delegation requires the courage to give up control. Trust that your assistant or team member can do the tasks, as well as, or even better than you. Then, let those tasks go. Focus on freeing up your time to work on the higher level tasks that deserve your attention, so that you can continue to grow your business.

Need help with delegating? Let’s talk!

“No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit." - Andrew Carnegie