In the early stages of building your business, you probably handled most major and minor tasks yourself. But as your company grows, it becomes necessary to delegate most of this work to your employees. The following eight steps will help you determine which tasks to delegate.
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Clarify your priorities
The first step is to look at your current workload and clarify your priorities. The easiest way to do this is by using the Eisenhower Matrix to assign your tasks to four quadrants — urgent and important, urgent and unimportant, nonurgent and important, and nonurgent and unimportant.
This tool helps you determine which tasks you need to do yourself and what items you can delegate. It’ll also help you identify time-wasters that should be eliminated altogether.
Look for tasks you aren’t good at
Next, consider which tasks can only be done by you — chances are, this list is smaller than you might initially believe. Most business tasks can probably be completed by someone else who may do a better job than you would.
For example, hiring may not be a task you’re ready to delegate. But someone else can probably handle bookkeeping, marketing, or data entry.
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Track your time
Try tracking your time for a week to get a better sense of your workflow. Odds are, you’ll identify certain tasks that you do repeatedly that aren’t the best use of your time. Document the exact steps you take to complete these tasks so you can easily hand it off to one of your team members.
Evaluate your employees’ strengths and weaknesses
Delegating business tasks is only helpful if you find the right person for the job, so take the time to evaluate your employees’ strengths, weaknesses, and areas of interest. This will help you assign tasks to the right team member.
Delegating isn’t just about taking things off your plate — you’re also giving your employees an opportunity to grow their skills and contribute to the company in a bigger way. This helps you create greater employee loyalty and retention.
Delegating isn’t just about taking things off your plate — you’re also giving your employees an opportunity to grow their skills and contribute to the company in a bigger way.
Provide the necessary resources
The worst thing you can do is assign someone a task they don’t have the skills or resources to complete on their own. So when you delegate work to one of your employees, think about any additional resources they may need. For example, you may need to provide them additional training materials or spend time training them one on one yourself.
As you’re training your employees, allow them space to make mistakes and learn how to do the work themselves. If they hit a roadblock during training, give them a chance to problem-solve on their own instead of immediately offering them a solution.
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Provide constructive feedback
Delegating work to your employees is a great opportunity to improve workplace communication. Your employees can reach out to you about any problems they’re having, and you can provide them with constructive feedback on ways they can improve.
Focus on the results
When you outsource work to your employees, they may use strategies that you believe aren’t optimal or efficient. However, try to focus on the work they’re producing, not the process they use to get it done. Doing so gives them the freedom to discover what works for them and come up with their own process for completing their work.
Be patient
Delegating work to your employees will be messy in the beginning, and you may feel like it’s easier for you to complete it yourself. But outsourcing work is a process, and it takes time for your employees to get it right.
To make the transition easier for yourself, avoid outsourcing too much work at once. Start with one or two small tasks, and once your employees have mastered those, you can slowly move on to more and bigger projects.
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