Delegating Made Easy: Laura's Five Tips for Success in Less Than Five Minutes

TRANSCRIPT

Today I'm going to share with you five tips for delegating effectively in less than five minutes. Here we go.

To start with, you want to identify the task that you want to delegate. I caution you: stay away from responsibilities that are too broad, a little too vague. Get super specific with the task that you want someone else to take care of for you. Start with that biggest thorn in your side, the thing that's always on the to-do list and you just never seem to get to. Start there. Even if that seems too big, keep breaking it down into smaller and smaller chunks till it's something you're comfortable letting go of.

Once you've identified those tasks, then you want to move on to the levels of delegation. Level one is, "Do exactly what I said, how I said to do it when I said to do it." Level five is, "Here, fix this. I trust you completely." For each task, think through and decide which level of delegation you're comfortable with. They can vary by task. The one thing we caution you about, though, is when you think, "I want to start at a lower level till I trust them," that's totally fine. Don't expect them to grow beyond more than two levels because now you're getting into skills and experience limitations. Stick with them within two levels as far as growing trust and letting go of more things.

Once you've identified those levels of delegation, then think about your communication expectations. How do you want them to communicate with you? Primarily text, email, Slack. Do you want to have a regularly scheduled meeting, which we recommend? Then what do you want to cover during those meetings? What's your default turnaround time? If you have a default turnaround time of something like a week, do you want them to at least acknowledge that they received your request? What is that turnaround time? Whatever you expect is totally fine. It's absolutely okay. You just got to communicate that expectation to them so they know what you want and they can agree to meet you there.

Once you have those communication expectations, then you want to set the groundwork for feedback. Feedback is always easier if you set it up ahead of time, like, "Hey, these are my expectations. I'd also like us to have a monthly check-in where we're going to talk about this could be improved or what could be improved and what went well on each side." That's key, too, around feedback. You got to be willing to hear it as well as give it. Schedule those feedback sessions, set them ahead of time, and also set your expectations upfront so that they know what they are, and then you guys can openly discuss it without too much stress and awkwardness when it comes to feedback.

Finally, create set it and forget it systems. We call them “set it and forget it” systems. There are three components to it; triggers, tools, and actions. Using a voicemail, monitoring, and returning calls as a case study. The trigger might be every morning at 10:00 AM, log into my voicemail and listen to every voicemail. Now, what do you want them to do with that afterward? You might want them to send you an email summary of all the voicemails. Or there are certain ones that you might feel comfortable having them call the person back. Let's say it's to make an appointment. Then you have the action for them to call back, so then they're going to need a script. They're going to need to know your calendar rules for booking appointments, things like that. Then that comes in the tools area. They need access to your voicemail, and they need access to everything else they need to complete that task, and however you defined it.

Those are the three components of a set it, forget it system; triggers, tools, and actions. You have all five of those, and then from there, you can get started. The key thing that we talked about here is around identifying what you need, identifying the type of person who can do what you need, and then having a successful relationship with the communication, expectations and feedback, and effective systems. There we did it in less than five minutes! We also have a task audit. If you want to explore different tasks that you can delegate, be sure to check out that QR code or connect with us on our website. Thank you!