Thinking of delegation might make you nervous, especially if you’re used to doing things on your own, but you can’t be a team of one forever. 

By delegating some of your responsibilities to someone else who you trust, you’ll be able to spend more time on the things that require your expertise and build a more sustainable process – for yourself, your team, and your business.

Of course, delegation can come at a cost, especially if you don’t have a big team to rely on. But affordable delegation is a real thing.

Here are 10 ideas how to make delegation work for you:

1. Review Your Task List

Review all your tasks and answer some questions about them. What do you: Love doing? Hate doing? Love doing but could use a little help with? Hate doing but can’t delegate to someone else? Categorize your list to figure out what you should keep doing (the things you love and don’t need help with) and what you should delegate (the things you hate and can delegate).

2. Find the Right Candidate

Think of the responsibilities and consider your candidate’s strengths, weaknesses and preferences (e.g. don’t ask your marketing person to take over financial bookkeeping, don’t delegate a task that requires a lot of collaboration to someone who prefers working alone).

3. Start Small

Begin with a small project (or a small step in a project) that isn’t as critical but is necessary for your business. Give the person enough time to complete the task. If they make mistakes, don’t give up on them, instead mentor them and teach them how you want things done.

4. Clarify Your Desired Outcome

Clearly articulate to whoever you delegate to – what needs to get done and what is the desired outcome. Also make sure they understand why the task is important, which will increase engagement and creativity.

5. Set Clear Expectations

Make sure your team member can answer the following three questions about each task.

1. What do I need to do?
2. How should I do it?
3. Why should I feel motivated to accomplish it?

6. Engage, Don’t Micromanage

Throughout the training process, be available to consult, help and motivate as your team member learns. However, remember there’s a fine line between checking in and micromanaging.

7. Clearly Communicate
Clarifying your desired outcome and expectations (above) is the first phase of communication. Engaging (instead of micromanaging) will take care of the communication throughout the project. But keep the channels of communications open so both you and your team members can share progress and challenges, ask questions, and brainstorm solutions together.

8. Carefully Measure Success
Vague goals or expectations will result in confusion, frustration, time wasting, guessing and poor (or at least unpredictable) results… Setting clear goals will help measure success and solve the issues above.

9. Document Processes
Before you ask someone to do something you normally do, make sure you’ve documented your process for that task. If your instructions are clear, it’ll be like you did it. Of course, that doesn’t mean the person you delegate to should do it exactly how you do it forever – ideally, they will improve your process. But they need a starting point, and starting with a documented process is the most effective way to be sure they’re completing the task you had in mind.

10. Use Automation Software

To simplify delegation, you can automate some of the processes (e.g. create an email sequence that only needs to be triggered by your team member) or try using a task or project management software (e.g. Asana or Trello).

Now It’s YOUR Turn

For five minutes… come up with as many ideas as you can… what do YOU need to do to delegate better? Give it a try and post it below…