Delegation Skills: The Importance of Delegating Tasks

Why Delegation Skills are important: Advantages of delegation

As mentioned before, delegation is crucial. Here is why.

The very first moment you start delegating something, you will be:

• Focusing on the right things;
• Focusing on doing the things right;
• Encouraging others to grow and take more responsibility;
• Taking more responsibility and encouraging yourself to grow (probably those new tasks you are tackling, have been delegated by someone else, it is a chain of growing)
• As before, others mentored, or guided, or teach you, you will be the mentor/guide/teacher of others.

None of us do things right the very first time, we try, and try, and fail, and learn until we succeed.

We did not know everything, and we need to understand that when we delegate.

Effective Delegation Skills: How to successfully delegate as a leader

To improve your delegation skills, and the success, you will need to:

1. Understand WHAT are you delegating, and WHAT can be delegated. Not all the tasks or stuff can be delegated, you will need to review your activities and identify which ones can be delegated in the sort term, and probably which ones will require more time and/or preparation to be delegated. Let’s look into this further below.
2. Identify WHO can take that responsibility, or WHO already let you know is interested in grabbing more tasks. Take into consideration the preparation, skills, time others will need to be able to perform those tasks successfully. Probably some members are more than ready, but others will need some mentorship or training until they can do it on their own.
3. Don’t be afraid to set some “rules” or guidelines that will avoid re-work and misaligned expectations on both sides. Providing support on your side will be seen as confidence, trust, and leveraging the experience in both ways.
4. Be transparent on WHAT needs to be done, and WHEN needs to be delivered, probably they can manage the HOW. But everyone is aligned on the final result and delivery if they see WHY that task is important to be achieved.
5. Be present to tackle any doubt, support, or communication others may need. Feedback on the process is key, so others can apply it and improve as well if they are failing (sometimes it’s not a failure, they just do it their own way  ).
6. THANK whoever takes that task, it’s not always easy, and not everyone raises a hand to take more responsibility or share they are willing to grow, so if you trust others to do those tasks, thank them when they finish it, show them and provide feedback on what can be improved for next time.

What can be delegated?

We already covered, the importance of delegation, and some steps on how to delegate, now let’s check in on WHAT can be delegated.

So, we could create a list, or identify easily what can be delegated, but in the end, it will depend on the maturity level of you, your team, the complexity of the tasks, and the impact that will have on the others.

If there is a task, that it’s small, interesting, somehow recurring, probably that’s a task that you can easily delegate.

On the other hand, if there is a task, that you don’t feel passionate about doing, but you can identify others that are motivated and interested in doing it, you can delegate it, it’s almost a WIN-WIN situation.