Business Sphere

     You cannot manage alone. Even if you can do it, your business will not grow and expand. Though you and many other entrepreneurs find it hard to delegate responsibilities to  subordinates because trust and confidence are needed, yet it is a fact that you cannot do everything by yourself.

     Delegation does not involve giving away simple and easy jobs. It is about assigning hard and challenging tasks to your subordinates. This way, as manager or entrepreneur, you can do what you need to do, and perform the tasks of management by planning, organizing, leading and controlling to ensure the survival, growth and profitability of your business.

     So, to maximize your effectiveness, do many things simultaneously, develop your employees and increase your organization’s performance– delegate!

     Below are the five easy steps to delegate effectively.

     1. Plan and decide the tasks to delegate. Since your time as manager is limited and valuable to the business, make a list of the things that you do everyday and decide what things you can assign to your subordinates. This is necessary to free you from not-so-important responsibilities that your people can do also. This way, you can multiply yourself through your employees and the business can continue to operate even if you are not around.

     2. Decide whom to delegate the tasks. Running the organization is always a team effort. So, make a list of your staff’s strengths, weaknesses, capabilities and competence and give them responsibilities on the basis of their skills. To delegate is to train and develop your team for bigger responsibilities. It will also enrich themselves and enlarge their job description in the organization, optimizing their value and contribution.

     3. Communicate the responsibility. Make known to the staff your expectations and  your target outputs and results. Since with responsibility comes authority and accountability, explain to them the extent of their authority, and the resources needed to achieve their assigned tasks. It is necessary to inform other people in the organization that you have made someone in charge of a particular task, unit, or assignment, and that their support and cooperation are enjoined as a matter of policy.

     4. Set performance standards. To ensure that your employees are performing their responsibilities, you agree on a standard or yardstick to measure their performance. This way, they will have the feedback mechanism to know whether or not what they are doing are consistent with the agreed goals and standards. To give incentives to encourage sustained performance, a scheme may be devised to reward employees who performed according to standards and to warn and re-train those who don’t.

     5. Review results regularly. Set regular time, like monthly, to meet and review results of the employees’ performance, do corrective action, problem solving, and constructive feedbacking. Thereafter, plan for the next cycle of delegation.

     Delegation is not an easy task. It is sometimes risky as well as challenging. However, to achieve business growth and enhance performance, you must know how to maximize your organization’s key asset – the human resource. Delegation is one way to develop your people to build their competence and increase their contribution, thereby enhancing your business performance.