6 Steps Delegation Process to Increase Your Productivity as a Manager

Delegate to Increase Your Productivity

Do you want to increase your productivity? What does that mean for you as a manager? That’s more work done at the same time. How can you succeed in increasing productivity? Managers need an excellent delegation process in place if they want to succeed.

Higher productivity is more work done in the same period invested in that specific work. One of the strategies you can use to increase your productivity is delegating some of your current tasks.

Why Delegation?

Do you have a chance to see or to work in an organization where everyone delegates to everyone, and everyone works on everything, and in the end, the results are nothing?

Do you have a chance to see how a task is delegated from a general manager to all middle-level managers? In such a situation, no one from middle-level managers starts with the work because they think other managers or departments that have also received the task will begin working on it. I have seen a similar situation many times.

Do you have a chance to see one task to be delegated to the manager or employee even if it is not the real job of that person?

Several ways can help you to increase productivity:

  • First is to improve yourself by getting organized, improving your delegation skills, skills for the job you must do, or using technology to help you do more things simultaneously.
  • The second is to increase your working hours, which can’t be presented as increased productivity. But, if you measure productivity daily, then increasing working hours will increase your daily productivity because you can do more things per day.
  • The third thing is to delegate some of your usual daily tasks. If you can delegate some of your tasks, you can add something more important to your to-do list to improve productivity.

Let’s discuss delegation as a possible way to increase your time to work on the important stuff for you and your business.

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What is Delegation?

What is Delegation

When your business starts growing rapidly, the tasks you need to do become more complex, and different responsibilities among business members become less defined. It would help if you did more and more things.

If you don’t take appropriate measures, this growth, instead of enjoyment for you as an entrepreneur, will lead to chaos and negative consequences as a result of the rapid growth of your company.

Disorganization can become a part of your everyday work.

But, with the proper delegation skills, all organizational members (managerial and non-managerial staff) will benefit. It is key to increasing effectiveness and efficiency in your organization. The delegation will benefit all organizational members (managerial and non-managerial staff).

Delegation is the process when entrepreneurs and managers transfer some of their responsibilities for task accomplishments to other persons or organizational members. So, you assign some of your tasks to other team members.

Delegation is about giving other team members the responsibility to do some of the tasks you have done in the past.

How Managers Benefits of Delegating Effectively?

This process may help managers in achieving many goals, and the most important are the following:

  • Reduce the burden and workload of the manager.
  • Improve productivity.
  • Develop self-confidence in other organizational members.
  • Encouraging people to work more efficiently.
  • Creating a good team spirit.

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How to Implement an Effective Delegation Process?

To implement an effective delegation process, first, you must be aware that you must delegate some of your tasks to lower your current workload. The biggest mistake managers make is when they want to continue to work alone on everything. But you are not a superman. You are a normal human being. And you must start delegating tasks.

✋ Warning

Follow these six steps to increase your business productivity next week.

Let’s start with the steps of the delegation process that will help managers delegate effectively. These are important steps that can help you to start delegating.

Step 1: Sort the tasks that you can delegate.

sorting tasks before delegating

This is the first step in which you must perform analysis to classify tasks that you can and should delegate. Certainly, some tasks will remain entirely under your control, whether you are a manager or entrepreneur. Important in this step is to identify what you can delegate and should delegate.

You need to analyze and classify what you should continue to do and what you can delegate. You will not lose anything because the most critical tasks will stay in your complete control. However, you can delegate the functions that are repeatable, easy to do, and still need to be done on one side, and something that’s not so important for your attention. Also, it is important to start with the right tasks that can be completed successfully by your team members.

This may seem like a simple step, but it can be the difference between success and failure in delegating tasks. I put this before the delegation itself because you can’t delegate all your tasks. Also, you cant delegate tasks to people who aren’t capable of doing the work.

You should identify all the tasks you need to do. The next step is to assess the tasks to prioritize them and check if you can delegate some of them to another employee who can perform them. For instance, if you’re working on a project with three other people, perhaps you can assign one person to handle the email inbox, another to do research and writing, and the third to deal with the day-to-day tasks.

So, when you’ve done prioritization, you must sort out which tasks you can delegate. This is an essential part of the process. Without it, you’ll end up doing everything yourself, and even if you’re super-efficient, you’re still going to run into problems. 

Step 2: Determine who will be in charge of delegated tasks.

who will be in charge for delegated task

In this step, you must simply identify people you will rely on for appropriate tasks specified in the previous step. Before everything else, you must know that some of your team members will not have the required skills for some new tasks. It is because until now, you was in charge of all of them. It was your own job. So, you must give team members a great chance to develop new competencies.

As mentioned earlier, you’ll want to delegate to people who can take action on items that need to be done on your behalf. So, think about specific skills required for the group of tasks you want to delegate. Make groups based on those competences. If some task is something that will require marketing skills, you will delegate the right task to the right team because only they can successfully complete those certain tasks.

When you delegate tasks to someone else, you give them the responsibility to complete a specific task. But you’re not just handing over the responsibility; you’re giving the person the authority to do the job. That means you trust the person to act on your behalf and take the necessary steps to get the job done. 

If you want to delegate some of your tasks, you need people who can work on delegated work. Simply find people who will be responsible for some of your current jobs.

Step 3: Define the task that you will delegate.

define tasks to be delegated

Before you delegate some of your tasks, you need precisely to define that tasks and have clear instructions about what needs to be done. You don’t want to work on unclear or poorly defined tasks. The same is for the person in charge of that task.

It is possible that your team member doesn’t know what he has to do or how much time it will take him to complete that task. This can cause a lot of stress and even lead to an unhappy employee. Therefore, to have a happier employee, you need to communicate clearly with him.

You should not just say, “I want you to do this.” You should clearly specify what you expect from them. For example, if you assign a task to your colleague and you don’t know how much time they have to finish it, you should tell them that you need it completed by the end of the week. 

delegation

Step 4: Delegate tasks.

The successful delegation process is transferring the responsibility for the tasks from you to another person by notifying that person. When you tell the person what he needs to do, you must tell them your precise expectations. This will be helpful for the person in charge, especially if the delegated task, until now, was only your responsibility.

You should always clearly understand what you expect from the other person. If the person does not do his job as you expected, you should tell him that. Do not criticize the person, and be polite. This is the most common mistake people make when delegating. 

Step 5: Monitor and encourage.

Monitor delegated tasks as a part of delegation process

The delegation process doesn’t finish when you transfer the responsibility. You must follow the implementation process and monitoring progress. If there is a need for something, you are responsible for encouraging the person in charge and giving him adequate help.

Delegation doesn’t mean that you will be free from work. The delegator should constantly monitor the progress of the work and if there is a need to encourage and help the team member to do the job.

If your organization has a lot of people and a lot of work to do, you must ensure that the work is done on time. This is why it is important to have a good team manager.

Step 6: Evaluation of delegated tasks.

The last step in a delegation process is your responsibility. You need to check how the delegated task was performed. Should you make some changes to increase productivity in the future?

Will you need to make some adjustments to the workflow? When delegating a task to someone else, document everything done and provide all the information needed to complete the task. This will help you when you return to the task and perform an audit. Check your delegated task every day or week based on the type of task. It’s easy to forget what was done and why.

Frequently Asked Questions

What delegation means?

Delegation means giving responsibility and authority over a task or project to another person so that you do not have to take care of everything by yourself. This can also mean letting someone else take care of your responsibilities and tasks to lower the level of your own workload.

Why is delegation important?

Delegation helps us to avoid overloading our shoulders and prevents burnout. It’s a way of reducing work for yourself. You’re delegating the responsibility to someone else so you can focus on something else, like more important things. Delegation lets you save time, money, and energy, so you can use that time, money, and energy to pursue what you love.

What is effective delegation?

Effective delegation means the team member feels like they are making the decision but, at the same time, has some control over the desired outcome. In a perfect world, the manager will have high confidence in the team member but will monitor progress and encourage and help the team member to do the job correctly.