Delegation - a Key to Success in Work and Life

As much as you might want to, you can’t do all the work in your company by yourself. You will work in teams, rely on others, and share responsibility and accountability for a project's outcomes - whether that is a success or a failure. It is a blessing to not have to do things alone! Delegation allows everyone on your team to focus on tasks best suited for them and not get overwhelmed. However, it can be tricky delegate well and determine what tasks are best for everyone. While we can all agree that delegation is a good idea - it can feel complex and overwhelming which is why many default back to "I will just do it myself." Don't do it. Learn to delegate, and you will unlock a vital Key to success in work and life!

In this article, we want to demystify delegation and help you leverage proper delegation in your own work regardless of your experience in leadership. Let’s get started with some introductory basics:

Mapping Roles and Responsibilities

One of the first things to determine the strengths for you and the rest of your team. What are you good at? What is your team good at and what are they still learning? This will likely be evident to you after working with them for some time, but it’s helpful to lay it out anyway. 

Of course, you’ll also want to get your team’s perspective as well. You can gain a lot of good insight from them that might not have been obvious to you. Maybe someone feels stunted in their current role and wishes they could try something new. Maybe they have skills from a previous position that they haven’t had the chance to use yet. Talking to your team gives you the full picture. 

Alongside this, you’ll need to find the biggest obstacles to your work. What tasks make you feel bogged down? What’s keeping you from being able to fully focus on the work you’re best at? 

Communicating Delegation

You might already have some great ideas on how to delegate and who you want to delegate tasks to. However, you want to be mindful of how you go about doing it. Consider it from your teammates perspective. Would you be happy if someone just handed off a massive project to you without context or without details? 

It’s best to have open dialogue with the people you’re delegating to. Make sure they understand what work you’re assigning to them, why they are the best to take it on, and how they can best complete it. 

You’ll likely want to check up on them after some time or give space for feedback as well. It’s helpful for them to know that they can voice concerns. You may not get it right the first time, so being receptive to feedback can help maintain trust and let the others know that their input is valued.

Understanding Responsibilities and Timelines

Ideally, the delegation process should go efficiently and quickly. The point of delegation is to open up your schedule and energy to attend to other tasks. Delegation shouldn’t take up more energy than it’s saving. 

Therefore, It’s important to keep the ball moving with delegation. While it will take some initial work to understand your team, it should be easy for you to get into a system that’s almost automatic. 

Once everyone understands their responsibilities, they can continue to work on the tasks they’ve been given. Make adjustments as new tasks come up, and listen to feedback. You will need to change your system, but a lot of the time these changes won’t be too massive. 

Improve Your Leadership Skills with Our Coaching Program

Want to learn more about delegation in work and life? At Mindset City we can help you navigate working in teams, taking responsibility and ownership, and ultimately leverage this skill in remarkable ways. See what we have to offer on the services page!