If you’re a business owner, you can’t possibly handle all of your company's work directly. That’s why effective delegating is one of
most vital skills you can possess. In fact, it’s absolutely crucial to your success.
Consider these words by steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie: "The secret of success is not in doing your own work, but in recognizing right man to do it."
So what exactly is delegating? It’s simply act of entrusting an activity to another person. More specifically, delegation is downward transfer of formal authority from superior to subordinate. You empower an employee or subcontractor to act for you, while you remain accountable for outcome.
Effective delegation involves following process: working with an employee or subcontractor to establish goals, granting them sufficient authority and responsibility to accomplish goals, often giving them freedom to decide how goals will be achieved, being available as a resource to help them with assignment, and evaluating and rewarding their performance.
Benefits of Delegating If you’re a new business owner, delegation can be a major challenge because you might be apprehensive about giving up control or lack confidence in others’ abilities. But effective delegating offers a variety of benefits. It will free up some of your time, enhance your leadership skills, plus help employees and subcontractors expand their capabilities — all of which will benefit your company overall.
Nine Steps to Effective Delegating To help you delegate more effectively, here are some suggestions from Thomas R. Horton, author of Delegation and Team Building: No Solo Acts Please, and other experts:
1. Decide what tasks need to be delegated. Delegate any task — from administrative to technical — that someone else can perform better. Hand off jobs you dislike most, that are least critical to performance of your job or that will provide valuable experience for subcontractors. But never delegate any task that would violate someone else’s privacy. 2. Choose right person for job. Assess skills and capabilities of subcontractors and assign task to most appropriate person. Be sure to delegate entire task because this gives subcontractor added responsibility and increases their motivation.
3. Define scope of work and set expectations. Give detailed explanations for what job involves; including all key points. Provide information on what, why, when, who, where and how and clearly specify your preferred results. Write this information down.
