When I bring up the subject of delegation in a training, there is inevitably at least one person in the room who raises their hand and says “I tried that once. It didn’t work, so I am out”. I find the resistance to delegation fascinating. I have had many conversations with people and find that the four most common objections are:
- It’s just faster if I do it myself
- If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself
- I don’t have employees, so I don’t have anyone to delegate to
- I feel guilty having them do things I don’t want to do
Let’s explore each of these.
It’s just faster if I do it myself
This is absolutely true….in the beginning. Taking the time to teach someone and then track their progress to make sure it gets done correctly can be time consuming. If you don’t put enough time into it, the chances of them doing it wrong go up dramatically.
Remember, this is time invested, not just time spent. Focus on tasks that you have to do repeatedly on a regular basis. Let’s say a task takes you one hour per week to complete. The first week of delegating, the teaching and tracking may take you two hours. The second week perhaps one hour. The third and fourth weeks it just takes 30 minutes to check in on them. After that, the person just runs with it. You spent a total of four hours in the first four weeks…. just like you would have without delegating. Over the next 11 months, you are going to save 48 hours! How is that for a return on the investment of your time! Oh, and when you go on vacation, that task will still get done.
If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself
Were you born knowing how to do that task? Are you so gifted that you are the only one in the world who can do it? Of course not. In fact, odds are good that someone else showed you how to do it. Even if you “taught yourself”, you probably did some research on how others did it through books, web pages or YouTube.
Most people who use this excuse with me are the ones who tried delegating once, and it didn’t work. One common reason is that they just handed off the task without the proper level of instruction. The other is that they micromanaged the process, frustrating themselves and their employee until they just took the task back themselves.
Show, watch, review
If it is a physical task show the person how you do it (the right way). I recently realized that I should not always be the one stacking firewood at my house. But I must admit to being particular about how it should be stacked. So, I decided to practice what I preach and delegate this to the next generation.
Show – first I showed him how I do it, explaining as I went what the process was, why it was important and how best to transition from one row to the next.
Watch – Then I had him stack the wood while I was watching. If he was unsure, I would just let him try. If he made a mistake I could provide guidance right on the spot. Once he was comfortable with this, I walked away for a bit.
In business, it might be writing a weekly report. In that case, you might not want to “watch” them sit down and write the report. But you can read the report as soon as they are done and before it gets sent out.
Review – I did not walk away for too long! This is often where things break down. The person fully understands how to do a task when you are there, but once you are gone, if they have questions they will usually guess the answer. That is when things can take a bad turn.
I told him that I would be back in five minutes because there was something else that I needed to do. I told him this so that he wouldn’t be annoyed by me coming back to “check up on him” (aka – micromanage). It was long enough to see where he might go astray, but not so long that it would require major work to fix.
In business, if you tell people when you are going to be checking in with them to answer any questions, they accept it. If you constantly ask how they are doing on that report… well, they might get annoyed.
I don’t have employees, so there is no one I can delegate to
Delegation is just giving ownership of completing a series of tasks to another person. It does not need to be someone who currently reports to you. When I hire a bookkeeper, I consider that to be ‘delegating’ the bookkeeping role to another person. If I have a peer who is much better suited to do a task, I might ask him to take it over and take on one of his tasks that better suits me in return.
I feel guilty having them do something that I don’t want to do
As a manager, assigning tasks to people is your job! If you don’t assign tasks, they will have nothing to do!
Rather than assuming they will be mad at having to do the task, realize that you are giving them an opportunity. When an employee is given the responsibility of being in charge of a task that had been yours, that is a compliment! You will be providing guidance in the beginning, but soon you will be handing it off and now they are in charge of it. You are teaching them and trusting them with the things that have been the role of their manager. That is empowerment.
Delegation is one of the cornerstones of being a good manager. When done right, it is a great way to train your employees to take on more responsibility. Not to mention the amount of time it frees up for you to focus on higher level tasks, which others probably can’t do. So start thinking about tasks you currently do on a regular basis, and plan on empowering someone else to do them!