How to delegate: the best procedures, and difficulties

One of the fundamental abilities of a strong leader is delegation. Delegate and give time to strategic planning, personnel development, and personal improvement, or suffer from overwork and routine?

We frequently do everything we did in the prior position while transferring to a new level, getting a new grade, and being given new duties and obligations. However, it is now up to our subordinates to handle these duties. Many people must learn how to delegate; the process can be difficult, but we will show you how to do it quickly and painlessly.

When is it necessary to delegate?

Here's a quick checklist to get you started. You can focus on the fact that it's time to consider task delegation if at least a few of the points resonate with you.

• You are constantly being bombarded with duties, yet none of the earlier ones have been delegated to others;
• You miss deadlines;
• You have to postpone important strategic tasks for later;
• You put in more than eight hours a day at work and still have no free time;
• Many of your issues are pretty easy, yet time constraints prevent you from solving issues;
• You perform a lot of routine things;
• Your team does not develop by solving the same type of tasks from month to month;
• You are exhausted.

Lack of delegation is not only a path to burnout but also a lack of development. After all, in a routine, you won't have time to strategize or scale your team.

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.

How to understand which tasks to delegate

Here you can use the Eisenhower matrix. It helps to prioritize tasks using the concepts of importance and urgency. First, you need to write out all the tasks in a separate list and then break them into categories.

• Important and urgent tasks - we perform in the first place;
• Important and non-urgent - put in a plan with a specific date;
• Unimportant and non-urgent - we postpone or even throw it out of the plan if they are insignificant; 
• Unimportant, but urgent - tasks for delegation.

You can delegate those tasks that need to be solved in the near future, but there is no longer a place for them in your plan, and they do not require your direct participation. Generally, you can delegate almost any task. The only question here is finding a suitable specialist within your budget.

This category can contain both professional tasks (such as calling, sending emails, and booking event tickets) and household duties, like cleaning, cooking, and making small repairs. Yes, you will spend money on it, but the biggest benefit is that you will save time. Or you might think about giving your family members some of these responsibilities.

The delegation of work activities will be the article's main focus, but the same principles may be applied to delegating housework and other tasks as well.

How to prepare a task for delegation

The first skill to acquire is task creation. Setting a task and asking someone to accomplish something are two distinct actions. The task should be clear, and both you and the employee who will complete it should be in agreement regarding the expected outcome, the due date, and the specifics of the work.

We advise implementing the SMART method. It enables you to define clear, precise tasks with fixed due dates. Any objective after it should be:

Specific. It is important to be as specific as you can about what you want to achieve in the end, such as "find a company that will make the design project and all the work to repair the conference room" rather than just "put the meeting room in order."

Measurable. Each task's outcome needs to be reflected in measurable, quantitative indications. If discussing promotion, we presume conversion; when discussing improvements in the negotiation, we presume the duration of the project; etc.

Achievable. When setting a task, it is necessary to make sure that the available resources for its implementation will be sufficient or that the performer will have the opportunity to increase them. For example, if you have a large meeting room and need a decent design, not just to paint the walls, then to complete the task you will need not one universal master builder, but a designer and a repair team. It’s easier to hire a contractor company. We need an appropriate budget.

Relevant. The benefits of doing the task must far outweigh the costs. It sounds obvious, but very often this point is neglected.

Time-bound: limited in time. Deadlines, deadlines, and more deadlines

Tasks can be assigned in any business manager. The main thing is that there should be an opportunity to set deadlines, assign priorities, and mark employees. You can even get out with the help of Google calendars.