The Art of Delegating Effectively

When you're stressed or feeling like you can't keep your head above water, taking a little something off your plate is the best feeling.

A good way to achieve this is through delegation, but so many of us get it wrong or have fears surrounding it.

Myself included. 

In order to focus more on growing my business, I hired a virtual assistant about a year ago. Her responsibilities included engaging my followers on Instagram. After a few months, I realized that the $$ I was sinking into that was a waste. It wasn't because she wasn't doing her job, but because I hadn't grown my brand voice and account to the point that it was ready to take over.

Lesson #1 delegate the right stuff. Check to see if the task you are passing off can be done better by whoever is getting it, or if it is one you are running smoothly and can be passed on with a detailed workflow. Where do you find "the right stuff"?

• Make a list of your tasks
• Identify your most leverage work (your strengths)
• These are the tasks you will keep for yourself
• Everything else is fair game for a delegation

Lesson #2 address your own barriers. The reason many of us screw up delegation is we have a lot of fears around it. Here are some common ones:

• Need for control-if we want to grow our influence we have to become more essential and less involved.  To reach more people you have to spend more time influencing and less time actually doing the work inside of our business.
• Fear of failure-read more about this here.
• Lack of faith. This shows up for me with my kids. Fearing that the job won’t get done up to your expectations.

Lesson #3 when you’ve identified what to delegate, start with why. When someone can understand why they are doing what they’re doing, they are more likely to buy in

Lesson #4 confirm understanding. You've given the reason why and now you're starting to teach.

• Support with workflows (for example Trello boards and/or loom videos)
• Observe as they complete the task one time through

Lesson #5 don’t re-do something done wrong. It might seem easier, but not if you take the big-picture approach.

• Teach them to correct their mistake 
• Effective communication will strengthen the relationship 

I'd love to see if there's anything that you have done to make the art of delegating more effective for you. Please comment down below.