6 easy tips on how to effectively delegate work to others

how to effectively delegate work to others

In this article, I provide you with tips on how to effectively delegate work to others in your professional and personal life.

Before we get to the tips, it is essential to understand what motivates you to delegate some of your activities.

The overall goal of delegation is to free up more time for activities that are more important to you.

If you are a manager, delegation can be useful to refocus on activities that enhance the skills that you are hired for.

Coaching for managers is tailor-made support to become more effective at work.

If you are an entrepreneur, the delegation will help you to focus on the activities that help you increase your sales.

Business coaching is customized coaching that will help you grow your business.

In your personal life, delegation helps you free up time for the activities and people that contribute to your well-being.

How to effectively delegate work to others

1 – Define your purpose for delegating

Why do you want to delegate?

Answering this question is the starting point for a truly successful delegation.

If your goal is not clear to you, you will not be able to delegate effectively.

If you want to learn how to properly define your goals, I recommend you read my article on how to set goals, achieve them, and be truly happy.

Most of the time, the use of delegation is the answer to a professional, personal or global crisis situation.

We feel overwhelmed, exhausted and we have the impression that we are constantly running out of time without being able to understand the situation.

An assessment of your needs by a time management coach can help you get out of this psychologically and physically stressful situation.

If you are a manager, you are exposed to the pressure of your directors as well as the expectations of your team.

If you want to take back control of the situation, you need to become aware of your personal motivation to delegate, not just the motivations expressed by your hierarchy.

Put your focus on your own motivations!

Otherwise, your professional difficulties will have an impact on your personal life as well.

2 – Define the activities you need to delegate

By now, you have identified what motivates you to delegate in order to improve the quality of your professional and personal life.

Now it’s time to define the tasks you need to delegate in priority.

Please remember that your goal is to have more time for yourself, but keep in mind that you can’t delegate everything.

You may want to delegate :

  • all the tasks that other people can do as well as you in an appropriate time period
  • all the tasks that take you away from your most important professional objectives
  • all the tasks that other people can do in an acceptable amount of time if you take the time to train them
  • all the repetitive tasks that are easy to do
  • all of the less significant tasks you procrastinate on and that take you away from your most important goals

3 – Define a specific work procedure to follow for the activities you wish to delegate

Now you know why you want to delegate and exactly what to delegate.

Now it’s time to define a procedure that will allow your delegation to be really effective.

Defining a procedure for delegating is about giving sufficiently precise instructions to the persons who will perform a part of your tasks.

The more specific you are in explaining what others should do, the more time and the less stress you will save with delegation.

So please take the necessary time to write a procedure that will facilitate the work of your co-workers.

You can improve this procedure over time according to the feedback you receive from the people you work with.

In this procedure, you will specify the time required to complete the task.

4 – Delegate each task to the best person available

Depending on the complexity level of the task and the procedure, you will decide to which person you want to delegate each task.

At this point, it is essential to take into account other factors in order to successfully delegate.

You should delegate to other people by taking into account their:

  • unique strengths of the person
  • level of competence
  • personality
  • the overall level of motivation
  • level of motivation to perform the task
  • workload
  • ability to handle stress
  • chronotype

You can therefore understand that delegating effectively requires you to invest some time in getting to know the people you work with.

This means that you have to commit some time to become more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of your co-workers.

5 – Plan a delegation follow-up

If you apply the previous tips, you are already on the right track to enjoying all the benefits of delegation both at work and in your personal life.

Now, it is important to schedule follow-up appointments to ensure that everything is proceeding smoothly.

You can improve this monitoring by setting up rules in advance that you can follow if any difficulties arise in completing assigned tasks.

For example, you can schedule time slots in your agenda for your team member to reach you by phone if he/she encounters a problem that prevents him/her from carrying out his/her work.

At each follow-up meeting, your role will be to understand if the person is progressing at the expected pace or if, on the contrary, he/she is encountering difficulties that you did not foresee.

In the latter case, your role will be to find solutions to facilitate their work.

This phase is very sensitive from a communication point of view.

It is extremely important to maintain a good relationship with others by communicating in an empathetic and supportive manner.

Do not criticize or judge!

If you do, you may come to the wrong conclusions.

If doing a given task is easy for you, it is not necessarily easy for others.

We are all different and each individual needs a varying amount of time to complete a given assignment.

Instead of blaming others, make sure you do your best to improve your delegating ability.

6 – Overcome the enemies of delegating

Delegation is an aspect of time management that is affected by different psychological aspects.

Among these factors, the most common one is perfectionism.

If you are a very perfectionist person, you will not be able to delegate or you will be unable to delegate effectively.

Learning to delegate is about learning to accept some imperfections, especially at the beginning.

This is because you need time to learn to delegate well and because the more you know your collaborators, the better you will be able to delegate.

Delegating effectively is therefore a double exercise that requires learning to manage both your own imperfections and those of the people you work with.

To go further on the subject of perfectionism, I advise you to read the article on how to stop being a perfectionist at work and in your personal life.

Learn to delegate in your personal life

The delegation also applies to your personal life.

In the latter case, a life coach is the most suitable person to help you with this process.

But here, I have a few more suggestions for you.

You should automate all tasks that can be executed automatically: payments, backup, etc.

Even if you have doubts, be aware that you can delegate some personal activities in order to have more free time for example to practice some sport or meet friends or develop some new skills.

The easiest approach is to measure the time you spend on repetitive tasks in order to delegate them to have more time for the important activities in your life.

Then, try to reduce or if possible eliminate unimportant or negative activities such as watching TV or staying too long on social networks.

You will find that by applying these simple strategies, you will be able to gain several hours per week.

Conclusion on how to delegate at work and in your private life

In this article, I proposed some tips on how you can learn to delegate effectively in order to improve the quality of your life.

If you are interested in the topic of productivity, I invite you to discover all my articles on productivity.

If you are looking for tools to improve your time management skills, I recommend you read my article on the best time management apps.

If you want to better manage your time please check out our online course on time management.

To take advantage of the expertise of a time management coach to overcome procrastination, write to us now using our contact form, call us at +33 6 69 46 03 79 or contact us on WhatsApp at +33 6 69 46 03 79.

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Read this article in other languages

Français Apprendre à déléguer pour réduire le stress et atteindre les objectifs
Italiano6 semplici consigli su come delegare efficacemente

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