Delegating sounds wonderful in theory but can be challenging in practice.
Have you ever delegated a task to someone on your team and been disappointed or confused with the results of that task?
You have probably been on the other side of that problem as well. Have you felt frustrated that you had to own the results of a task without a clear understanding of what was required?
I have 3 boys at home and we often run into this issue when it comes to chores. I ask them to clean the bathroom. They clean the bathroom to their standard. I inspect the bathroom and I am not happy with how it looks because I am concerned with the long-term effects of not properly taking care of our home. The kids are exasperated that I did not appreciate their hard work.
While it can be challenging, don’t give up on delegation. Business is not a solo sport. You need a strong team around you and delegating to that team will:
- Develop your skills as a manager
- Create collective success
- Grow your team’s confidence
- Allow you to focus on income-producing activities
The problem with delegating to your team is similar to my experience delegating to my kids for chores. Delegating is ineffective when there is a lack of definition around how to do a process or what success looks like.
The key to successful delegation is:
DEFINE BEFORE YOU DELEGATE
There are 2 things that you need to DEFINE & DELEGATE for every task:
- The process or task itself
- The responsibility for that process or task
The degree of definition of the task and the degree of responsibility are related to one another.
I’m sharing more about what effective delegation looks like here:
Once you have defined the process and defined the responsibility of that process, you need your team to be able to access those definitions. You will need to create a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for your team to refer back to. This SOP will become both the instruction manual and the benchmark of success for your employees.
If you have delegated the creation of new processes with defined results, empower your team to record the process as it is created and add it to the SOP. A Standard Operating Procedure should be a working document that is evolving as the business evolves. When you have delegated a process, questions may initially arise. Take those questions as an opportunity to show your team how much you value your SOP by having them update that process.
Not sure what a modern SOP looks like? We have a course for that! Preview the course here.