Delegation is one of the most difficult skills business owners will learn. In fact, there are a lot of owners who have turned away from it due to their poor experiences in the past. It’s possible you once delegated off tasks only to later find out the person didn’t do the tasks as well as you or maybe they didn’t do the tasks at all. It can certainly create a frustrated owner when you experience the excitement of taking a few things on your plate so you can take on more tasks only to find out those things are now back on your plate (in addition to your new responsibilities). Effective delegation has three components, and that’s why we place it in the “systems” portion of our curriculum. Of course it’s important to find the right people to delegate tasks to, so as we discuss delegation in this article, we’ll assume you’ve got someone who has the following three qualities:
Hungry: The person is eager and excited to take on more. They’re ambitious and have been longing for additional responsibilities or leadership opportunities.
Humble: The person isn’t looking for the added responsibility for the purpose of taking over your job, but he/she is happy to help. They’re able to maintain a good grounding and treat everyone the same regardless of status or hierarchy.
Smart: The person has basic common sense and reasonable social skills. If you were to purse your lips as they were talking, they could see you have some reservations or obvious concern. This doesn’t mean the person is highly academic, but it refers more to their social cues and ability to have good judgment.
These three traits are further discussed in The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni.
Assuming you’re delegating to the right person, there are three main elements to effective delegation.
- Systemization. You absolutely have to have written systems in place. In 5 years, we also may be recommending video systems. In fact, one Next Gen Academy Member has taken to Tik Toking her systems so she captivates her staff’s attention! Remember people have a variety of learning styles, so capturing a system might be helpful both verbally and in writing. The basic form is writing and is a must, though, as it’s the easiest form to refer back to. The system should be written so clearly that a 10-year-old could accomplish the task. In fact, when I first started creating systems, I handed them to my kids to see if they could understand and implement them. If a child or tween can implement, then a college-age-or-older reasonable person could do the same. The idea here is that no previous knowledge or background knowledge should be required in order to follow basic systems.
- Training. Despite the clarity of the systems, training is vital. You’ll need to walk through the system with the staff member(s). A large number of people are kinesthetic learners, meaning they need to do something in order to remember how to do it in the future. Have you ever watched stunting grips at a conference only to go home and have trouble recreating that stunt sequence? At the same time, when you get to dive in yourself, you tend to remember the grips and how it felt so you can troubleshoot the stunt. When it comes to training your staff, you’ll need to sit alongside them with the system and walk through each step as you do it. Once you’ve done this, don’t expect them to remember 100%. You’ll need to check back in from time to time to see how they’re doing and on more complicated tasks, they may need retraining. When I was training Melanie to run our website, she had no background knowledge of websites. I wrote the systems, but then I also sat down with her each week for 30-45 minutes over the course of nine weeks. You may be thinking that’s extensive and isn’t worth the time. If you’re thinking that, you’re definitely not doing the math. I used to spend 30 minutes to an hour making basic changes on our website to reflect new dates of events and registration options on our gym calendar. When I was busy, it got out of date (I have like 7 jobs!) Even at a minimum, you’re talking two hours per month I spent just keeping our website up to date. By spending 6-7 hours over the course of nine weeks teaching Melanie, I spend less than 10 minutes per month on our website. That systemization and training has been one of the most effective things I have ever delegated. I’m now trading 24 hours per year for two or less.
- Accountability. This is the one I think the most owners find challenging. Holding someone accountable for completing tasks can feel micromanaging at times. At the same time, no one wants to let you down or disappoint you. So, if someone is doing something wrong, deep down, they want to know that. This means we need to check in frequently. When I was first delegating over the website management to Melanie, I checked in every Thursday. I asked if she needed help or further training on anything. This helped her see that the door was open to ask for help any time. I also had it on my to-do list every Thursday to scan my website and make sure it was all up to date each week (this was included in the 10 minutes as I knew the pages that needed updates most often). If I saw something wasn’t up to date, I was able to say, “Hey, I noticed this needed an update. Do you need me to do that or do you have a plan for it?” Does that sound a little micromanaging? Maybe, but it allowed Melanie to be honest if she had too much going on that week to do it. If she had told me three weeks in a row that she couldn’t do it and needed help, that now allowed me to either A) Take some additional things off her plate, or B) Spend more time training her as it was taking longer to complete the task than it should.
Of the three steps to delegation, there is no doubt that accountability is the most challenging. Once you pass something off, the last thing you want to do is have to micromanage someone else doing it. At the same time, it might take you two minutes to check and see if that task is done when it would have taken you twenty minutes to do it in the first place. Did you save time? Yes. Can you check once a week for 6-8 weeks and once you feel confident cut that back to monthly? Yep! That’s what I did!
For more on delegation and my #1 tip on what tasks should be delegated first, read, “Effective Delegation without Micromanagement” here.
