You’re a leader – so delegate!

Many business owners find the transition from doing everything, to delegating others to do specific jobs, quite difficult. Check out this article for four top tips on how to avoid the most common delegating pitfalls.

Some leaders are resistant to the concept of delegating to their staff, believing that they add value to the business only if they’re actually working directly on client business.

This shouldn’t be the case. As a director, you must be ‘big picture’, concerning yourself not so much with day-to-day operations, but with where the company is going and where the next big opportunities are coming from. Only by allowing your staff to do their jobs can you find the time and space to do this.

In making the often difficult move from doing things themselves to delegating work to their staff, business owners receive little guidance on how to do it. It’s a tricky transition and there are often a few problems along the way.

We’ve put together some useful guidelines to avoid making the most common mistakes:

1. Take on the right people

When hiring people to support you, make sure they have strengths that will fill gaps, and don’t have weaknesses that you can’t compensate for. One of your biggest challenges as a business leader will be avoiding immersing yourself in old, safe activities, and employing weak staff will only reinforce the habit! These activities are no longer your responsibility – you have a new role to fill.

2. Make sure they’re good

The key to being a successful director is having good people to direct. Hire people with strengths you need for the business to move ahead. If you ‘inherit’ staff, spend time examining their skills, and provide additional training to fill in critical gaps.

A common problem for new leaders is ‘protective hiring’: not being willing to risk hiring a ‘hot shot’ who might show you up. This is dangerous – if your employees don’t look good, you don’t look good. Always hire the best people; there is no such thing as an overqualified candidate, if they really want the position.

3. Be a delegator

If you don’t delegate, you can’t direct. It’s as simple as that. Effective delegation is critical to being a successful director. It frees up your time to do the things you should be doing and allows your company and your employees to grow.

Delegating is difficult for two reasons: you’re afraid either that the job won’t be done as quickly as you could do it, or the job won’t be done as well as you could do it. You’re right on both counts! But if you don’t allow your staff the opportunity, they will never develop the skills to be effective, and you’ll continue to spend your time in activities that keep you – and your company – stagnant.

4. Trust in your people

Trust is critical when you’re pulling people together to do a job, and it goes beyond ‘lip service’. Telling your employees that you trust them, and demonstrating that you do, are two different things. Trust means that you give employees responsibility and the accountability that goes with it, and that you allow – even expect – them to make mistakes.

Trust is crucial to your development as a business owner. And it’s your mental block, not the fault of your staff, if you cannot bring yourself to trust them. You need to understand that; your job is to give them the support, and space, they need to do it.

Being able to delegate effectively is a key leadership skill. Discover more about how we can help you develop these attributes with our Leadership Skills programmes.