A Guide to Delegating Effectively

Every business leader knows they need to delegate to achieve better results. The problem comes when leaders try to move from thought to action. Their beliefs about themselves, their team, and the work they are trying to accomplish prevent them from letting go of tasks and trusting others to do work they have traditionally completed. This resistance to delegation slows growth, creates workflow bottlenecks, and negatively impacts company performance.

What should a leader do?

Delegation is a skill. Like all skills, starting small and building up to more difficult tasks is best as you gain mastery. Leaders frequently get frustrated with the delegation process because they start it with the wrong mindset. They are accustomed to performing tasks at a high level and expect perfect results the first time they delegate a task. The reality is that most people do not do tasks perfectly the first time they attempt them. As a leader, you must learn to delegate effectively, and your employee or contractor must learn through practice how to do the task to your expectations. The more you delegate, the better you will get, and the more your employee does the task, the better they will perform, provided that you have a system for delegation.

How do you start?

The Power6 Leader program teaches the ACES system of delegation. ACES stands for Assess, Communication, Empower, and Support. This four-step approach to delegation reduces uncertainty and provides a systematic method for evaluating employees and tasks, setting expectations, building trust, and ensuring that employee competency is built over time.

How to assess tasks to be delegated?

To help you get started, we have developed this worksheet to help you assess the tasks you should be delegating and the people you should be delegating those tasks to.

Download this tool, read the instructions, and email Dorian Cunion if you have any questions about how to use it. dcunion@yourpathexecutivesolution.com

First Step in Delegating_ Assessing.docx

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Accelerate your business growth by delegating tasks.

Every small business owner hits a point where their business stalls. No matter how hard they work, progress slows, and they begin to feel like they are working too hard for the results they are getting. When your progress starts to stall, it is a great opportunity to reassess who is responsible for different tasks within your business.  Shifting tasks off your to-do-list, and giving them to your employees helps everyone grow within your business. Your employees can gain new skills, take on higher-level assignments, and become more invested in the company’s success. You gain more space to think strategically and allocate your energy toward activities that can accelerate business growth. 

Delegating tasks triggers business acceleration.

When I was a Business Consultant working with 7-Eleven, I had a Franchisee who was looking to expand to a second location. For this story, we will call him Tom. Tom had been a single store operator for 10 years. He wanted to expand to a second location but could not pass 7-Eleven’s multiple franchisee requirements. Within the 7-Eleven system, you must consistently operate your store at a specific level for over 6 months to qualify for an additional store and demonstrate that you have the infrastructure to support multiple locations. Tom’s biggest challenge was not trusting his employees to order products or make decisions without him being involved. Tom was intelligent and had high standards, but he did not feel his employees could be trusted to do things as well as he could. 

Get out of the trap.

At the time, Tom did not realize he had built a trap for himself. The trap was that he had to be in the store six days a week for the store to run well. The store's image and customer readiness dropped when Tom took time off of work. The leadership at 7-Eleven believed that Tom was not ready to run more than one location because of the performance inconsistency. He had to learn how to delegate and empower his team to do more. This would reduce business risk because the store performance would not be directly linked to Tom being in the store daily. It would also free up his time and energy to do things outside the store, like network with the community and spend more time with his family. He was spending too much time on low-value tasks that someone else could do. 

Change of mindset

When I first told Tom that he was not approved for a second location, he was emotional. He knew he was one of the top-performing franchisees in Baltimore. His staff was friendly, his store was clean, and he felt he did everything we asked. Tom was 90% correct. The one thing he failed to see was that he did not invest in developing his employees. It was not until he traveled overseas for two weeks and came back to a store that was a complete mess that he understood 7-Eleven’s point of view around business infrastructure. Once he accepted that he needed to build more infrastructure, it became easier for him to devise a plan for delegating more tasks to his employees.

Identify the solution

Shifting tasks to employees was a multi-step process for Tom. First, he had to assess his employees' capabilities and determine which tasks they could take on. Next, he needed to outline what he wanted them to do. Then, he had to provide them with training, communicate his expectations, and guide them on what to do if problems arose. Finally, he needed to identify how he would follow up to ensure tasks were completed. 

Solicit help

Tom and I developed a plan for transferring more tasks to his employees. I encouraged him to start small. We identified low-value tasks that people could do without harming the business. We allowed them to execute those tasks for two or three weeks before we layered in higher-value tasks. This process worked for two reasons.

1. The employees were new to making decisions and executing tasks without direction. They needed a safe learning environment, the opportunity to fail, and coaching to help them build confidence.

2. Delegating tasks was new to Tom. He had to learn how to access employees' capabilities, explain his expectations well, provide learning space, and step in when needed.

Going slow allowed Tom and his employees to become comfortable with change and build momentum towards the ultimate goal of delegating all non-financial tasks to employees. 

Reap the rewards

Delegating tasks to your employees is one of the most beneficial actions you can take as a leader. When you delegate, you have the opportunity to master new skills, free up your time, and expand the capabilities of your organization. Research shows that employees want to be developed. When you teach them something new and trust them to do it, their confidence, self-esteem, and self-efficiency grow. They will make mistakes sometimes. That is part of the learning process. However, even a mistake provides a teachable moment where you can help them grow professionally and develop a trusting relationship with your employees. Tom went on to become a 3-store multiple Franchisee. One of the first employees he developed into a store manager became a 2-store multiple Franchisee. One person can only accomplish so much. When you are willing to share your workload, teach, and inspire others, you unlock their potential and yours. 

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Thank you for reading this blog. If you have any questions about leadership, please email me at dcunion@yourpathexecutivesolutions.com. Becoming a better leader is easier when you have a guide. To learn more about my coaching and consulting programs, schedule a call.

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4 Tips for Moving from Individual Contributor Roles to Being a Leader.

As a people manager, you grew into your role as a leader by excelling at individual contributions. You know you need to be different, but change is not easy. The habits you were once praised for are now behaviors that can get in the way of your team's success. Adjusting your mindset will be essential to your success.

Effective leaders produce results through others.

In every leader's journey, a point comes when they can no longer do everything themselves and must begin to enlist others to fulfill the scope of the work. At that point, a leader's success is based on their ability to attract, retain, and develop talent. Successful leaders surround themselves with great people and effectively bring out the best in the people they work with. As you grow your leadership abilities, you must master the ability to accomplish work through others.

Tip 1: Focus on doing what no one else can do.

As the leader, your goal should be to master delegating. The reason for this is partially economic. As the leader, you likely are the highest-paid individual within your team. When you complete a task that someone else could complete, you raise the cost associated with completing that task. You also eliminate the opportunity for your employee to operate within their wheelhouse. When you delegate, you allow your employees to grow and gain much-needed experience and confidence. Over time, this growth helps produce greater competency among your employees. As employees' confidence and competence grow, they can take on increasingly complex challenges, which creates new potential for the organization.

Tip 2: Leverage individual employee strengths.

Tapping into the energy, knowledge, and strengths of others is another excellent reason to delegate. We all have different strengths, experiences, and perspectives, which influence the ideas we have and the outcomes we produce. You can leverage your team members' individual strengths by empowering them to take on more complex assignments. The key here is providing a vision of what you are asking them to do and then giving them room to do it. When delegating, you want to ensure that the person you select to work on the task has the information and capabilities necessary to execute to your expectations. You also want to be clear about the parameters of the assignment. The better you communicate your expectations upfront, the more likely you will be pleased with the outcome.

Tip 3: Be strategic when delegating.

One benefit of delegating is that it allows you to be more strategic as a leader. A leader's role is to ensure the execution of day-to-day activities, develop talent, and plan for the future. You must be able to oscillate between zooming in on minute details and zooming out to see the big picture. The act of delegating reduces the time you must spend on minute details, freeing you up to focus more holistically on the entire business.

No single project defines the long-term success of an organization. Success is delivered by building positive momentum over time. When leaders can accept imperfect progress, they position their organizations to take risks, learn from mistakes, and establish the knowledge and capabilities necessary for long-term success. The pursuit of perfection often results in inefficiencies that stagnate growth. Leaders determine the minimum acceptable level of execution needed for the organization to achieve their strategic objectives.

Tip 4: Accept things might not be perfect at first.

When you move into a leadership role, you are expected to replicate the success you delivered as an individual contributor across your team. Developing those you work with is the only sustainable way to do this. Leaders who try to be superhuman by executing their strategic roles in addition to their organization's tactical work risk burnout and stagnating their teams' growth.

Employees learn best by doing. It is a hard truth, but failure is the best teacher. Leaders willing to delegate provide employees with the trial and error needed for skill development and mastery. In employee satisfaction surveys, lack of development and career advancement opportunities are the two most cited reasons people leave organizations. When you delegate effectively, you address these concerns by increasing employee learning opportunities. This will help you be a talent magnet to people inside and outside your organization.

Summary

The skills and abilities that helped you to grow into a leadership position are not the ones that will allow you to excel as a leader. Individual contributors must demonstrate technical excellence. They must pursue perfection in everything they do because they are personally accountable for the work they produce.

Leaders maintain personal accountability but have added responsibility for the work completed by others. As a leader, it is vital to shift from micromanaging every detail of how work is completed to creating an environment where

• You focus on the things only you can do.

• Help employees develop their wheelhouse.

• Protect momentum by being strategic.

• Create teachable moments to support employee development.

When leaders can develop delegation skills, they scale their influence and position their organizations for faster and better growth. Employees' ability to reach their full potential is directly linked to your willingness to give them challenging work to master. As you stretch your employees' capabilities through delegation, you also build your ability as an executive. It is a win-win that will help you become the leader you want to be.

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As an Executive Coach and Small Business Consultant, I work with leaders who aspire to take their leadership to the next level.

If you are looking to learn frameworks and skills that make it easier for you to lead, we should talk.

I offer low-risk coaching packages that are customized to each client's needs. Whether you want to build your confidence, improve communication, or gain more comfort in delegating, I am here to help you on your path.

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