The Art of Delegating

As leaders, it’s impossible to do it all. Delegating well is a key leadership skill that can transform our teams and keep us on track to reaching our organizational goals.

How do you know you need to delegate more? You may be feeling overwhelmed and stressed. Perhaps you can’t unplug, or you’re feeling unfocused and unengaged.

In the spirit of Stress Awareness Month, consider these strategies to start delegating better and keep stress at bay:

• Get to know your team and their values. Before asking somebody to take over a task, take the time to get to know them. Understand their values and how they work. When people make choices that are driven by their values, they will have a higher success rate because of the connection to their core values.
• Share feedback. As a leader, you must consistently nurture your team so they can become greater contributors. By doing this, you are constantly challenging and testing team members and providing feedback along the way to evaluate which tasks they can handle, and which ones they cannot. Remember to share developmental feedback to foster their continued growth and development, and let them know where they are doing a great job and how they can improve.
• Motivate and inspire your team. When team members feel inspired, they will want to “own” that task. Collaboration builds trust and creates a team that is motivated to achieve organizational goals. A result of success is team members working towards a greater buy in and more responsibilities. It’s a chain reaction that can impact performance and lead to greater success!
• Show yourself some grace and remember that this takes time. Don’t be fearful of failure. Becoming better at delegating will not happen overnight. Stay on task and communicate with your team and through regular discussion, you can listen and gage which tasks can be delegated. With this communication will come the flexibility of knowing when and how to adjust and shift tasks.

As a leader, you have an exciting opportunity to inspire others to lead and do better each day! Good luck and let me know how these strategies work for you. Comment below or send me an email at thomas.epperson@innerwill.org.

Learn more about InnerWill Leadership Institute at www.InnerWill.org.