3 Ways to Become a Master Delegator

Guest Post Contributed by Emily Lundberg @ Prialto, a virtual assistant company

​To successfully lead groups of people, you must be skilled at delegating. A Gallup study discovered that leaders who delegate effectively achieved 112% higher growth rates than those who never delegate or who do so poorly.
 
Delegation is so important because, as much you may want to, it’s impossible for you to do everything yourself and maintain your sanity. There are so many small, tedious tasks that pile up and distract you from the projects that drive your team forward.
 
Assigning those tasks to others frees up several hours a week, so you have more time and energy to invest in activities that propel your success.
 
Here are three simple steps to become a master delegator:

1. Focus on Tasks that Only You Can Do
   
   A mistake a lot of professionals make is thinking that they are the only ones who are competent enough to do all of their work. This leaves them constantly struggling with a heavy workload.
   
   In actuality, only a small portion of your responsibilities are strategic, value-driving activities that only you can do. These include tasks that:
   

• Are dependent upon your relationships
• You are an expert in
• Require your authority
• Are highly confidential
• Or otherwise extremely challenging for others to do.

You should delegate any task that does not meet those qualifications. At first, it will be difficult to let go but, the extra time you gain will allow you to invest more energy in the strategic activities.

For example, if you’re a Head of Talent, you likely have tons of paperwork, scheduling, and other admin tasks that can easily be assigned to a subordinate or assistant. You can then use your extra time to invest more energy in forecasting your company’s hiring needs, refining job qualifications and engaging in other projects that better utilize your knowledge and skills.

2) Surround Yourself with the Right Team

Once you know what tasks you should delegate, you need to surround yourself with people who can do them. For some projects, this will be easy because there are already people on your team who can immediately take over.

For the rest, write out your process for completing them, identify who on your team has the best knowledge and availability to take over, and teach them how to do it. Don’t make this decision lightly. Research shows delegating tasks to people who have the right abilities has a massive impact on the benefits you gain from delegation. If you give assignments to the right people, they will complete them with ease but, if you give them to someone who lacks the skills, and you may lose time answering questions and fixing their mistakes.

Strive to surround yourself with subordinates who have a wide range of skills so that it’s easier to assign more specialized tasks. If your team lacks the experience to take on your small projects, you can use delegation to create professional development opportunities. You will have to invest time training them but, in the long-run, it will make your employees much more versatile and productive.
 
Alternatively, if everyone on your team is too busy, consider hiring an in-house or virtual assistant who you can delegate the bulk of your work to. 

3) Ensure You’re Delegating Effectively

Just asking people to do tasks for you is not enough to reap the full benefits of delegation. If you work with the wrong person and/or give vague instructions, you risk wasting more time fixing their mistakes than you would if you completed the task yourself.

To delegate effectively, you need to:

• Check that the person you delegate to has time to complete your tasks.
• Make sure the other person understands what you expect from them.
• Give them access to any tools they need to complete your tasks.
• Invite them to speak with you if they have any questions.
• Show your gratitude and return the favor through small gestures of appreciation, mentoring, making strategic connections, etc.
  
  

The upfront time investment ensures that you can switch your focus to other responsibilities knowing that the work you delegated will be completed correctly. As you continue to delegate tasks to the same people, they’ll learn your preferences and be able to proactively lessen your workload without your direction.

About the Author: Emily leads Prialto's content production and distribution team with a special passion for helping people realize success. Her work and collaborations have appeared in Entrepreneur, Inc. and the Observer, among others.