The Common Challenges of Delegation
Why do we need delegation?
Today's entrepreneurs and managers should find the right balance between working hard and working smart if they want to succeed. When it comes to working smart, delegation is the way to go. Delegation promotes an environment that values trust, open communication, and collaboration while empowering employees to cultivate their skills. And on top of it, delegation lessens your workload and improves overall efficiency.
Read further as we elaborate on the reasons why we need to delegate in our business.
1. Promotes Efficiency
Delegation promotes efficiency by streamlining processes, boosting productivity, and utilizing resources. Because of this, developing effective delegation strategies are essential to becoming a great leader. Understanding the delegation process will equip you with the information you need to decide which tasks to delegate. Additionally, delegating some tasks also frees up your time — you can concentrate on other crucial tasks that need more of your attention as a manager.
2. Reduces Workload
As a business owner or manager, you obviously have so much on your plate but do not have enough time to accomplish it. The good thing is that delegation can lessen your workload and prevent fatigue and burnout because it allows you to assign some of your tasks to your trusted members. Sharing even the most mundane tasks with your team members can significantly reduce the things you have to do.
3. Helps Develop Employee Skills
If one of your goals is to scale your business, you shouldn't ignore the very ones that drive your productivity, and that is your employees. Through delegation, you are providing your members a chance to develop and improve their skills. When you delegate tasks and responsibilities to them, you encourage critical thinking, resourcefulness, and commitment. But more than that, delegation ultimately gives your team members the opportunity to grow and learn from the experience.
4. Encourages Trust, Open Communication, and Collaboration
When there is effective delegation, you are fostering trust, open communication, and collaboration. Having employees who are comfortable in their working environment effectively collaborate with one another, and that goes together with mutual trust that a project will succeed because of their cooperation. In line with this, when delegation is effectively implemented, team members wouldn't find it hard to ask questions and propose ideas because it encourages open communication within the team.
Why do managers fail at delegation?
1. They delegate without making sure that everyone’s on the same page
Delegation fails when managers fail to make sure everyone understands the goals and expectations for a task from the get-go, making them not on the same page. As a result, the output of the task is not what they have been expecting.
2. They delegate without truly delegating.
Despite the fact that managers have officially delegated a task to a staff member, there are times when they find it hard to let go of it because they are so anxious or invested in the project. Thus, becoming one of the challenges of delegation. Instead of completely delegating authority, they keep pushing the project forward or, worse, take on some of the work themselves. This then causes confusion regarding who is actually in charge of the project which can lead to the discouragement of the team member from performing well on the project.
3. They delegate to the wrong person.
When delegating tasks, it is important to allow some time to think of who is the best fit for the tasks you will delegate, considering their skills and qualities to accomplish the task. Because sometimes, managers fail at delegation because they don't really give much thought to whom they are delegating the tasks to, just as long as it is delegated. Assigning it to the wrong person also shows that you don't fully know your members as a manager.
Challenges of Delegation
1. Inadequate Task Definition
One of the challenges of delegation is not being able to explain the task definition clearly. This challenge often results in members wasting time trying to comprehend the required specifications for the task. The definition of the task needs to be clarified in the beginning stages of delegation because that is where your team member will take reference when doing the task.
2. Lack of Experience
Lack of experience is totally one of the challenges of delegation. If you're a starting manager who just got into delegation, take your time to learn its process because your team members will really rely on you to manage the team. It is also crucial that you train your members to handle various tasks to sharpen their critical thinking and be ready to be delegated to more complex tasks.
3. Managerial Interference
Due to their inability to let go - partly due to habit - managers are actually one of the challenges of delegation themselves. Most managers worry that if they delegate some tasks, they will be left with fewer tasks or even none. To help quell some of these worries, managers can delegate in different phases, little by little, until they are comfortable enough to delegate more.
How to Overcome Challenges of Delegation
1. Accept the need for delegation
Managers should understand that there is delegation because there is a need for it. More so, they need to realize that not delegating just because they want to do the tasks themselves despite the fact that it can be handled more effectively than others will only do the business worse than good.
A manager's functionality is expanded through delegation. That is why, as long as a task can be delegated, it must be delegated. Through this, a manager can focus on tasks that are solely for managers.
2. Develop confidence in your subordinates
One of the aforementioned challenges of delegation is the lack of experience from the manager and their team. Considering this, a way to overcome this challenge is to develop confidence. Rather than doubting the capabilities of your team, it is better to trust the process and accept that delegation is a way for them to grow and learn. It is your job as the manager to lead and guide them along the way if they ever find it difficult. Mutual trust and confidence are really the keys to effective delegation.
3. Create an effective system of control
Although ideally, the control of a task lies on the person assigned to do the task because of the concept of delegation of authority, it is still the responsibility of a manager to monitor the progress of every delegated project. And it can be done by establishing an effective system of control. This means creating standard operating procedures (SOP) that can work on different projects at all times. The SOPs will serve as the guide for everyone to adhere to when doing their tasks and the reference for every manager on what to evaluate for every project.
4. Be clear on the tasks
The delegated tasks or projects must be properly defined according to the output that is to be expected. Your team will be able to complete the delegated tasks more effectively if they are aware of everything that has to be done and the expectations for the project. Remember, you don't delegate for the sake of delegating. The delegation of tasks has to be properly planned out in order to accomplish the desired goals.
Conclusion
The reality is, several business owners still find it difficult to delegate. As managers, there are times when doing the work yourself seems easier than delegating it to someone who can do it. However, we hope that by reading this article, you start overcoming those challenges and try your best to delegate. After all, delegation is primarily there to help you and make your life simpler, so you can focus more on scaling the business. This being said, if you ever need people to delegate some of your tasks to, our virtual assistants can embrace those tasks for you. Just book a call anytime!