We recently held an event free for our clients to level up their leadership game.  The event was centred around the need for delegation and practical tips on how to do it well.  It was a very informative and interactive session hosted by Kate with lots of questions from the audience which was great.

What is clear to us how much people struggle with effective delegation.  Being at the event is so valuable as it gives that live feedback and ability to ask questions, but we wanted to share some of the learnings from that session here.

There are so many good reasons why being able to effectively delegate is so valuable:

·        You can only do so much yourself – many hands make light work.

·        There are some things that only you can do – soyour time should be focussed on those high-value tasks rather than you justdoing everything.

·        It is horribly stressful when everything relieson you.

·        Equally if everything relies on you then it isgoing to bottleneck until you can get to it.

·        The more you give to and teach people the morevaluable they become to you.

Despite how many good reasons there are to delegate thereare so many reasons that cause people not to delegate:

·        Feel like it is quicker and easier to do ityourself.

·        Lack of trust in the result you will get.

·        Feeling guilty about adding more work to anoverworked staff member.

·        The joy of doing the work yourself.

·        Worry about losing control.

·        Team member refuses to listen or do the work.

·        It takes time and mentoring.

Just on those (particularly that last one) we always use theold adage – ‘What if I train them and they leave?  But what if I don’t train them and theystay’.  

Give yourself the best opportunity for success and thinkabout how you can get the responsibilities and the associated skills into thepeople as soon as you can to take pressure off of yourself.  Note the responsibility there – you have todelegate ownership and responsibility so that they take the appropriate carefor the outcome.

The whole idea here is to take the focus off of yourself and doing everything.  To help give you the free time and focus on the high-value tasks requires help with time management.  So here is a tip called the4 D's of Time Management:

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The idea is whenever something comes to you figure out which D applies and treat it accordingly.  

A great example is emails. Rather than opening and email, reading it and then putting it back inyour inbox with no action.  Instead youwill open an email and figure out which D it is an do the action of thatD.  Bonus points if most of those emailsare Delegate rather than Do It!

Get your team doing the 4 D’s of Time Management too thatway their time is being best spent giving you more availability to delegate tothem!

Alone we can do so little but together we can do so much.

Our next event coming up in July is Melinda and guest speaker, Adrienne Rourke of Stellar Consulting, presenting on grant opportunities and preparedness.  We will see you there!

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