As an entrepreneur who has successfully built a business, you have probably done a lot of the work yourself. You may still be doing much more than necessary, which may leave you with less time to focus on the continued growth of your business, innovation or other things that energize you. That's why it's time to learn to delegate so you can let go of more work. We discuss some strategies in this article.
6 tips for learning to delegate
There are all kinds of ways to learn to delegate. WIjve listed 6 tips for you.
1. Delegate by size
The method of delegation you use must be a good fit for the person to whom you are delegating something. Therefore, make sure you have more than one technique for delegating tasks. One person may have enough with an outline description, while another needs more guidance. To delegate in a tailored way, you need to know your employees well and tailor your way of delegating accordingly.
2. Delegate at the right level
You can delegate practically any work, provided you put it in the hands of the right person. Therefore, it is important to know the specific qualities of your employees well. That way, you can see who has the most relevant qualities for each task. This seems very logical, but it often happens that the person with the most time is assigned a job. If this person then does not have the right skills, the job will take longer to complete and the quality may also leave something to be desired.
At the same time, it is important that the jobs you delegate also fit well with the level of your employees. For example, don't have your managers overclone data from an Excel sheet and don't ask your production employee to draft a strategic document.
3. Prioritize work.
By prioritizing work, you gain insight into what needs to be done and which tasks are best delegated. Although it varies from company to company, you can roughly divide work into four categories, based on the qualities needed and the amount of work. Complex tasks you may prefer to keep doing yourself, while a relatively simple task that takes a lot of time is fine to outsource. This prioritization also helps you in choosing the right person for the task.
4. Sketch the ideal picture
Some entrepreneurs are fine with doing as much as they can themselves. But sometimes that gets in the way of the continued growth of your business. If you want to start delegating things to free up more time for yourself, it is important that you draw an ideal picture. In this picture, you determine what you can and want to continue to do yourself, so you also know what you need others to do. For example, do you want to conduct research into new product-market combinations, but don't like doing this yourself? Then you can specifically look for employees who are willing to do this.
5. Always give instructions
No matter how obvious a task seems to you: if you want to learn to delegate, you should always add instructions to a task. For example, state it if you have specific ideas about how a task should be done, or if there is a strict deadline. This proactive approach avoids communication problems and benefits quality.
6. Trust your employees
One of the hardest things when it comes to delegating is trusting your employees. Because if you are used to doing everything yourself, you will tend to constantly check that everything is going well. But that is not the way to delegate successfully, because you will still spend a lot of time doing it. Therefore, give your employees the confidence, although there is nothing wrong with checking in from time to time.
Learning to delegate as an entrepreneur means letting go
The most important quality you need to master if you want to learn to delegate is to let go. And that's not easy for many entrepreneurs. Because you are so dedicated or because you are not convinced that others can do the job just as well. So start small, by delegating small, simple jobs. From there, you can delegate more and more.
Letting go is also an important trait when you start working with investors. Want to know how investors impact your business? Then read our white paper!
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