So I have a question for you. What are you not delegating? We all know that we should be delegating tasks to our staff, unfortunately we often hang onto tasks for too long.
So why don’t we delegate? What is it that keeps us hanging onto tasks that we should be assigning to others? When I was researching my latest book, Leadership Hacks, I found that there were 3 common reasons why leaders don’t delegate:
- I Can Do It Faster Myself. While doing a single task once, this may be true, the challenge is that when we do not delegate to one of our staff, we deprive them of the opportunity to learn this task. More importantly when you don’t delegate and do this task yourself this means that you have less time to do the important tasks of your role.
- I Don’t Trust My People. The other reason why we don’t delegate is sometimes we don’t trust our staff’s abilities. If our people do not have the skills to complete something to the standard that we want, this also keeps us from delegating to them. Very few leaders want to risk their reputation on their staff’s inability to get things done.
- I Don’t Know How To. The final reason why many leaders do not delegate is that they just don’t know how to. They may have tried to delegate in the past, but it did not work. This often leads to blaming their staff, rather than them realising that they don’t have the skills or a process to effectively delegate.
So what should you be delegating? What tasks are you going to provide to your people? Remember to work with your people to train them in the skills that they need. If you would like to learn how to delegate please feel free to download my free white paper on Delegation Hacks.
If you would like to get a copy of my book Leadership Hacks: Clever shortcuts to boost your impact and results that goes into detail on Delegation, please go to amazon.com or any bookstore.
