“If you want something done properly, do it yourself!” the old saying goes. If you agree, you’re in the group with the rest of the control freaks who need everything done perfectly (so preferably by themselves).
The other camp belongs to those who like nothing more than someone to whom they can palm off their workload. Far from lazy, this group is strategic. And it’s a winning tactic of the minority of entrepreneurs who can actually count delegating as a skill.
A Gallup study of 1,446 employer entrepreneurs in the U.S. found that three quarters of them had limited-to-low levels of “delegator talent.”
Yet Gallup cites being a delegator among the top 10 talents of successful business ‘builders.’ Another study by the company–which looked at the talent profiles of 143 CEOs included on the Inc 500 list–found that those with high delegator talent generated 33% greater annual revenue than those with low or limited levels.
Interestingly, a 2017 study suggests female leaders find it harder to delegate than male leaders: they may feel greater guilt and carry more negative associations around delegating.
There may be many reasons a person finds delegating difficult, including guilt (should I not be doing this myself?) and a false assumption that passing over work won’t ultimately result in time-saving gains (it really will just be quicker to do it myself).
But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what delegating will actually achieve, which is:
To claw back time in your week (and time is the currency of knowledge work)
To conserve your energy and focus for higher value tasks that will help you to grow your business
Any skill that can help the time-poor become more productive is one to be valued. According to the latest data from the Office of National Statistics, productivity has only now exceeded pre-pandemic levels in the UK for the first time.
Output per worker–which includes both the self-employed and employees–was 0.8% above the 2019 average during the last quarter of 2021.
While this is a move in the right direction, it’s not all rosy: figures released last month show the UK, which has experienced a ‘productivity puzzle’ for more than 10 years now, continues to lag behind other countries like the U.S. and France when it comes to output.
Debunking some of the myths around delegation can help show why it’s such an indispensable tool for getting more done.
For starters, successful delegators aren’t looking for a job to be done perfectly: it’s enough for it simply to be done well.
Furthermore, they don’t expect to never have to deal with the task at hand ever again. They know they might have to answer further questions and maybe even tidy up the work once it’s completed. But they know they are still saving time by not trying to do a task from scratch.
There’s also the question of what to delegate. Successful delegators are incredibly selective over what they do and don’t do themselves.
The tasks that are ripe to be given to others to tackle (if indeed they cannot be automated using software) are those low-value, non-critical ones that do not require their particular expertise. The more of these tasks that can be identified and delegated, the more time is saved.
It’s best to look at time savings over the course of a month to understand the returns. If you delegate just three tasks per day that would normally take you 15 minutes each to complete, that’s 15 hours saved every month, or two whole working days back in the bank.
That way, leaders can direct more of their energy to the big tasks that call for their vision and creativity; those that are focused on growing their business.
Successful delegators are also self-aware enough to realise that they might not possess the expertise or experience required to do a particular task well. Identifying their own weak spots helps them save time and energy on jobs that are better left to someone else.
One common misconception is that being able to delegate is something of a luxury. Many entrepreneurs think they need to tackle everything alone until they meet a certain standard of success.
The irony is, of course, that those who are willing to delegate from an earlier stage are more likely to meet their goals faster.
So don’t let misplaced guilt or misunderstandings stop you from mastering this game-changing skill.SOURCE: ForbesIMAGE SOURCE: Pixabay
