How to Use Delegation to Maximize Your Productivity
Photo Credit: Christina Morillo on Pexels.com
Note from Alexis: This week I’m excited to share a guest post with you all! Prialto is a Virtual Assistant service that I personally use, and they have some great tips to share with you about delegation, whether you have anyone you can delegate to at the moment or not!
Guest Post by Emily Lundberg of Prialto.com
Delegating tasks is one of the most effective ways to boost your productivity. If you do it effectively, you can save several hours a week and spend more time focusing on the activities that matter most.
To maximize your productivity, you have to be very intentional about how you delegate tasks and who you delegate them to so that don’t waste time dealing with miscommunications or redoing work.
If you want to start delegating but don’t know where to begin, these steps will help you get started.
Brainstorm What Tasks You Can Delegate
Often people don’t realize all of the small, admin-related tasks they do to keep their core projects running smoothly. To maximize your productivity, delegate tasks that are critical and don’t require your authority or expertise.
Here are some examples:
Data entry & maintenance
Invoicing/bookkeeping
Research
Workflow management/task coordination
Document formatting
These kinds of tasks are perfect for delegating since they’re process-oriented and pull your attention away from strategic projects. To start using delegation as a productivity tool, brainstorm all of the tedious tasks you do regularly. Once you have your list, prioritize the tasks based on which are the most time consuming and/or distracting and decide who you can delegate them too.
Identify Who You Can Delegate To
The easiest way to start delegating is to offload more tasks to your current subordinates. Since your team is already prepared to support you, you can quickly delegate a wide range of projects.
However, if you don’t have junior employees, you can still use delegation to boost your productivity. Here’s how:
Swap skills with your network. Everyone’s definition of tedious tasks varies based on their skill set. Find people who enjoy the tasks you want to offload and vice versa. This allows you to swap skills and negotiate better rates for services.
Hire an intern. They’re cheaper than an entry-level associate and are eager to learn how to do a variety of tasks. To make their experience valuable, show them how their responsibilities contribute to your higher-level projects so they can use the skills to further their careers.
Use a virtual assistant service. They’re able to tackle all of your tedious tasks so you can focus on the activities that drive your success. If you hire through a managed service that provides back-up assistance, you’ll never go a day without support.
Depending on the amount and type of work you want to delegate, you may need to leverage two or three of these options.
Provide Clear, Easy-to-Follow Instructions
The people you delegate to aren’t mindreaders. If you give them vague instructions, they’re going to make mistakes and/or distract you with lots of questions.
To prevent confusion, your instructions need to include:
What you want them to do
How you want to them to do it (if applicable)
When you need them to complete the task by
Any other details you want them to pay attention to
Here’s an example:
Go to my March campaign in Salesforce and verify that every contact is still at the company listed and update contacts that are at different companies. Please remove any contacts who are no longer working in fintech. Once all of the contacts are updated, set up a mass email using the template attached and schedule it to be sent this Thursday at noon.
These instructions are effective since they include all the information that someone needs to complete the task and has very little ambiguity.
If you fully understand the task, you’re delegating, providing these kinds of instructions should require minimal effort and will save you a ton of time since you won’t have to go back and redo their work.
Create Processes for On-Going Projects
One of the main reasons that people struggle to delegate tasks is that they don’t have time to constantly pause and give instructions. Creating processes for repetitive tasks resolves this issue since you offload a project to someone once, and they’ll complete it indefinitely with no further instructions.
Here are the types of tasks you should create processes for:
Expenses
Data entry
Scheduling
Workflow management
Other repetitive, process-driven tasks
When you’re creating your processes, be careful not to miss any steps to prevent errors and unnecessary questions. The clearer your instructions, the greater the productivity boost you’ll get since it limits how involved you have to be.
Show Your Appreciation
Studies show that there is a strong correlation between employee performance and how frequently their managers express their gratitude. When people feel appreciated, they’re motivated to work harder since their effort is being acknowledged.
Even if the people you’re delegating to are obligated to help you, they’re still making you dramatically more productive. To motivate them to do their best work, show your appreciation through simple gestures such as:
Thank them when they complete tasks. It’s simple, but a lot of managers don’t do it.
Recognize their efforts at team meetings.
Provide positive feedback when they go above and beyond.
Investing effort in maintaining a positive working relationship ensures that people are excited to work together and are more likely to identify better ways that they can support you.
Keep in mind that delegation is just like any other leadership activity. You need to figure out what you’re trying to achieve, communicate it effectively, and keep the team that’s helping you engaged with the work. If you do that, you’ll see lasting productivity improvements.