How to Effectively Delegate - Part 1

Delegation is an effective time management tool that is an important skill for managers and entrepreneurs to learn. Unfortunately, it is also a skill that many managers and entrepreneurs are hesitant to use. This may be from an experience or a reluctance to give work to another employee. Others honestly believe the old adage, “if you want something done right, do it yourself.”

However, successful entrepreneurs and effective managers are not successful or effective unless they learn how to delegate to others in the organization. We will never be able to do all of the things necessary to finalize projects and tasks unless we allow them to drag on for weeks, months and sometimes even years.

Delegating tasks is the assignment of authority to another person to carry out a specific job-related activity. It allows them the relief of time sucking tasks in order to make decisions or participate in other project related activities.

The active delegation should not be confused with abdicating participation or poor decision-making in a particular project. Effective delegation pushes authority vertically through the organization and allows for more productivity and a better bottom line.

The benefits of delegating tasks to another person is to give others the satisfaction of learning new tasks, rewarding others with responsibility and to empower others to achieve more. A good manager is able to lead others but a great manager is able to allow their employees to outshine them.

Resources:

Wright State University: Delegating

http://www.wright.edu/~scott.williams/LeaderLetter/delegating.htm#top

Michael Hyatt: How to Better Track the Tasks you Delegate to Others

http://michaelhyatt.com/how-to-better-track-the-tasks-you-delegate-to-others.html

Houston Chronicle: How to Delegate the tasks for New Employee Orientations

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/delegate-tasks-new-employee-orientations-14150.html

Small Business Trends: How to Let Go and Delegate a task

http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/08/how-to-delegate-task.html