She's Got This: A Journey to Success

The Art of Delegation


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Are you afraid to delegate tasks in your business? If so, you're not alone! Yet, overcoming your resistance to delegating will save you both time and money, plus increase productivity in your company. In this episode, Shelby shares tips on how to overcome your resistance to delegation with a clear process and advice for changing your mindset. If you're at a place in your business where you're overloaded with tasks and know you could share the workload with others who have the skills, this episode is for you. 

Delegation is fundamental for business growth because you just can't do it all. If the thought plagues you, "No one can do it like me." or you feel paralyzed by the fear of mistakes and failures, Shelby has strategies to help you release that resistance. She shares the importance of giving clear instructions, setting expectations, and implementing consistent communication to help ensure delegation is smooth. By the end of this episode, you'll feel an increased confidence in your delegation skills. From knowing what to delegate to whom and when you'll learn the strategies you need to be an effective delegator and leader in your business. 

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Contact Shelby Joines | Joines Administration: 

  • Website: JoinesAdministration.ca
  • LinkedIn: Joines Administration
  • Instagram: @JoinesAdministration
  • Facebook: @JoinesAdministration

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Transcript

Shelby  00:07

Hello everyone, and welcome to another exciting episode on She's Got This: A Journey to Success. I'm your host Shelby Joines founder and CEO of Joines Administration and today we are going to dive into the art of delegation. This is an indispensable skill that CEOs and business owners like myself, looking to propel their companies to new heights. Effective delegation can be a game changer, which leads to increased productivity, effectiveness, and ultimately, more business growth. So stay tuned, we're gonna get into all the dirty nitty gritty details in this podcast episode today.

 

Shelby  00:51

Understanding delegation. To start this podcast, we're going to start with the understanding and what the meaning of delegation truly is. Now, delegation is the act of entrusting tasks and responsibilities to others while maintaining accountability for the outcome. Many leaders struggle with their delegation fearing that loss of control or the possibility of tasks not being completed to their standards. However, effective delegation can unlock the true potential of a business by leveraging the strengths of the team and promoting overall growth. This is such a big one. Huge. And being in the virtual world and doing freelance administration and running my own company. Delegation is one of those tasks that in the early stages of business, I was letting slide I was saying, nah, these tasks are things that I can absolutely do myself. I have an administrative background, I'm basically administering my own business. But you don't realize the amount of work that may get put into areas where your expertise may not lie. I had such an exciting time really diving into new areas of business and administration. That being such things as social media management and creating designs and updating websites, things that in the corporate world I was not always exposed to. When you're in the corporate world, it is Microsoft Office Suite, pretty standard, basic day to day things. While it's an entirely new universe of programs and applications that can be used in the virtual sphere. But recently, I came to the conclusion where I knew that in order for me to scale my business and to grow as an entrepreneur and business owner that I needed to find the right people to really pass off these mundane tasks or these things that I was struggling with completing in a reasonable amount of time, because I did not have the expertise. I was still learning along the way watching YouTube videos, things like that. But, delegating these tasks out, which I have done in the last several weeks, and I cannot recommend it to business owners and entrepreneurs enough, because it has been a complete game changer. I feel that as entrepreneurs and business owners, we get caught in the dilemma of balancing our own personal back-end work and handling and managing client work. One pays the bills and one just eats up your time. So being able to delegate those tasks where you may not have the expertise or the true knowledge to effectively and efficiently complete the tasks. Having that sent out to somebody who specializes in that will buy you back your time, which is another big factor in business nowadays, we all need the time. And outside of that, there are so many benefits to delegating those tasks. First, it frees up your lead.. your time, allowing you to focus on strategic decision-making at higher-level tasks. Secondly, it empowers employees or subcontractors or whoever your team may consist of, in fostering a sense of ownership and responsibility, which then increases job satisfaction and motivation. Furthermore, when your delegation is done correctly, it promotes skill development. As team members gain experience and expertise by taking on new challenges. Which has been amazing for me to watch. I have been fortunate enough to finally be in a place where I can start bringing subcontractors on to support me support my client work and it has been wonderfully, amazingly beautiful to watch them truly flourish in these areas that they have expertise in, and being able to allow them to take on new challenges on tasks that are not super important or urgent to be completed now in relation to my business work, watching them, take that on tackle it, do the research and really come up with an amazing final product has been amazing.

 

Shelby  05:36

Now overcoming delegation challenges is another thing that we're going to talk about. And although delegation offers significant advantages, it's not without its challenges, as with anything in life, as with anything that we go through as entrepreneurs and business owners in this grand journey. And I call it a journey because it never really ends, you may think that you get one thing squared away, and it's good to go and something else pops up. But one common hurdle is the fear of delegation leading to mistakes or failures. Now, I'm sure you have heard the phrase where the best way to do things is just do it myself, because nobody can do it like me. That's what they're expecting. And that is so far from the truth. That is a complete mindset. And that is a shift that you need to take and take it from that negative to that positive mistakes and failures shouldn't be seen as something that is detrimental to your business. Mistakes and failures are truly the moments in our journey that allow us to grow and develop and learn and avoid making those mistakes again in the future. So, to overcome this, it's essential to provide clear instructions and set expectations, ensuring that the person taking on this task understands their responsibilities to their fullest capacity. Now, with this, you obviously want to have some sort of layout. Now to or what—I guess I'll backtrack a bit there, you want to have this great layout, you want to have your expectations set, you want to have clear instructions. And you want to provide them in an effective way that works for your staff, or your employees or your subcontractors. It could be anybody. But having those clearly stated that anybody can pick it up, anybody could come in and see what the expectations are, these are your goals. This is what how you want to be done. But also have that room for flexibility if your assistant or somebody who is coming to help you out with these extra tasks. And delegations really knows the full picture of what you want laid out clearly, whether that is through lists, whether that is making step by step manual documents, or doing loom videos, where you're walking them through in a video aspect, there are so many different types of learners out there. And from what I have experienced, being able to address those different types of learners will not only give you a bigger net that you can catch with. But it also just shows that you care. Now, regular communication and support are also vital to address any concerns and provide guidance when needed. Obviously, I am not here saying just provide these clear instructions and these expectations and just let them go, no. What has been beneficial for me when delegating tasks out is that for the first one to three months of them working with me, it would be weekly updates. Now whether that would be on a Friday, to go over what has gone on the week before or on a Monday to discuss what was happening the previous week and then discussing a path forward on the following week, whatever it may be, but having those clear set times where you can actually communicate openly through either phone calls zoom or you actually set a messaging time aside where you're going back and forth with things. Whatever it is, you have to constantly be in communication. Now I'm not saying you have to keep up that schedule for the entirety of this task or this delegation process. You can obviously after those one to three months whatever fits for you decide to cut back a little bit. Maybe it ends up moving to bi-weekly meetings or monthly meetings or every second Friday. Whatever suits your business the best is definitely where you want to have that but really having that communication set in place so that they are, are the opportunities for either party to really go over any questions, any concerns, any things they may need clarification on.

 

Shelby  10:14

Another challenge is also identifying the right tasks to delegate. Now to do this, what I suggest is you take a moment or some time, put it in your calendar and really analyze your own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to your business. As well as those of your team members, if you have any currently working with you. Delegate the tasks that play to their strengths, fostering a positive environment for growth and development. Now, take your time with this, this is no rush, this should not be something that you consider to take you five minutes and everything is good, and everything is done, really sit down and put the pen to paper, in a really philosophical, honest with yourself way. Don't try to sugarcoat anything with yourself and say, Oh, I'm not that good at this. But I guess there's some areas where I am good. No, obviously, that first off is a red flag. And that's a task or an item that you should be delegating. You want to play to not only your strengths and weaknesses but also your teams. So by analyzing where their strengths have been either in past work through what has been mentioned on the resume conversations that you may have had with them, really take those tasks that you do not want to do, and match them and align them up with the task where your team members can really shine. Really put the positivity out there, put the vibe out that this is a place of growth and development, this is a place of learning, being able to be in a more educational mindset of leadership within your business will truly be another factor that will take you to the next level. That's just an extra little tidbit I'm gonna throw into this podcast. So you listeners are pretty lucky today.

 

Shelby  12:11

So the delegation process, the delegation process involves several key steps. The first is task selection, where you're gonna go in and identify the appropriate tasks to delegate based on your team skills, and the importance of each task. Now, all of your tasks that you may have come up with in your analysis may not be urgent, high priority needs to do it now should have been done six weeks ago type tasks, you will obviously come up with tasks that are ideas that just start flowing through your mind as you're writing down, and are nice to have little things that could break up the time and space between other tasks, things like that. So really take the time to select those tasks. And be sure that you are delegating them based on your team skills and the importance of those tasks. Next, you're going to want to choose the right team member for the task, consider their expertise, their workload that they currently have, and their interest in the assignment. Now, analyzing their workload, or bringing that into consideration is huge. Because if you start delegating these tasks out to members of your team who have, are already at their limit, they cannot take on another task, that's not going to benefit you in the long run and just create more of a hassle for you later on in the future. One because they won't have the time. Obviously, they are overworked with what they've got going on right now. Or it's a really big crunch time for them and their client workload. And the second reason is, if you push them too hard with too much work, you are going to cause burnout for them. And that just ends up snowballing and making it extremely difficult on your business as this could lead to them taking time off which any client work that they were dealing with would need to be reassigned to somebody else but are you then going to overload them with work, and the list just goes on and on and in turn, you may or may not have to rehire for that position. So really weigh it out when it comes to your team members workload. Out of all of these little tips, they're also their interest in the work. That would be one of the hugest ones to put into consideration. Now the third step, again, providing clear instructions and expectations. You want to be specific about what the needs are that need to be accomplished, any deadlines that may be involved and the desired outcomes. Be sure that you're always open with the communication, offer support and resources and make sure that the team member you are assigning these tasks to is confident in their abilities to truly complete the task successfully. Don't just drop the workload and run, be that person who has that true open-door policy. Be that warm, welcoming person that you can really have confidence that your team will come and approach you if they have any problems or need concerns addressed. Anything like that making sure that your team is comfortable and excited and positive, is truly the first stepping stone to even beginning this delegation process. And the final step with this is to establish a feedback loop, have a regular check in process in place, be sure that you're offering guidance in areas where they may not be competent or sure of what they are doing, and provide constructive feedback. Now recognize and celebrate their success. This is a huge point in making this delegation be successful for any and every business who puts into place, reinforcing your positive delegations will create a happy environment and culture within your business. Be sure to appreciate people for the work that they are doing for you. Now, I'm not saying to go and buy cakes and spend wild money and do all of these things. Because truly having a genuine conversation and really saying you know what, I appreciate you. Yes, it may be late, but you're still working on this work. And I cannot thank you enough because you have saved me X amount of time. And in that time, I've been able to do this with my family, I've been able to spend more time doing this, focusing on bigger tasks, whatever it is, that little bit of positive reinforcement will really go a long way with your team and allow them to have that spark in what they do. Again, sometimes all it takes is a little bit of positive reinforcement.

 

Shelby  17:07

And in conclusion to mastering the art of delegation, it is a fundamental skill for business growth. It cannot be said enough, the delegation will save you not only time, but money, think of all the amounts of time on a project that you may have been working on and you got stuck in one area. And instead of spending like half an hour, 20 minutes on it, you get frustrated and you're spinning your tires, and that 20 minutes turns into three hours. And you've really got nowhere, and you've got nothing to show for it by delegating that out to somebody who is specialized in it, even though you may be paying them for their services, obviously, unless it's a barter agreement, you are saving yourself time and money in the long haul. And what we have to remember too, is that in business, we plant the seeds, not for immediate growth, but for in the following 3, 6, 9 Maybe even 12 months later, we're then reaping in the benefits of planting that seed. By empowering your team members, you're creating them more efficient and productive work environment. Delegation not only allows leaders to focus on strategic decisions, but it promotes skill development amongst team members and fosters a culture of trust and accountability. And who doesn't want trust and accountability in their business? I know I do trust and accountability and transparency are the top three things that we strive for in Joines Administration. And I truly believe that every business not only needs to say those words, but to actually walk the walk with those words. Now remember, effective delegation also requires a clear communication, task selection and ongoing support. Be sure that you are embracing this delegation as a means to unlock your team's full potential and take your business to new heights.

 

Shelby  19:25

Thank you so much for joining me today. On this episode of She's Got This: A Journey to Success where we dive into the power of delegation. Now, if you found this information valuable, please make sure to subscribe to us on whichever platform suits your needs. We are on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google podcasts and Apple podcasts. And you will be ready to go when we've got new insightful content releasing. Until next time, happy delegating and the best wishes in your business growth.

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She's Got This: A Journey to SuccessBy Shelby Joines