Giving Up Control

“As all entrepreneurs know, you live and die by your ability to prioritise. You must focus on the most important, mission-critical tasks each day and night, and then share, delegate, delay or skip the rest.” Jessica Jackley     

Giving up control of those things you yourself have developed and worked so hard to perfect is challenging. Having someone else take on these activities, someone who won’t do it as well or as quickly as you do, challenges the perceived logic of better, faster more economical….. in the short term that is. But for teams & businesses to grow, we need to build something to help us grow…. Capacity.

To build this capacity, most business owners or team leaders, including me at times, choose to work longer hours to meet the demand. This has a limited shelf life, and leaves teams exposed from a long term perspective. Effective delegation, especially where higher value add activities can be taken on, can see teams grow and deliver even greater results. I see this as a win win situation and worth the effort.

So how do we effectively delegate? Here are 3 tips to help you build even more capacity:  

1. Learn to let go – building trust in those around you will provide opportunities to relinquish control (keeping ultimate responsibility) and share the workload. See making time to build this trust as an investment in growth, rather than a pure cost to the business. 

2. Fill the time created – ask yourself “What will I do once I have freed up my time”. Make a plan and have the value adding activities in place to help the transition. This adds an incentive to prioritise the transition.

3. Play to your team’s strengths – identifying areas where your team members have a desire or the skills to take on more work allows you to help their development. If you identify someone is passionate about an activity, build on this and have them take it over. This passion often sees them deliver greater results.

So this week, when you find yourself not having enough time to get things done, look at everything you have on your plate and what you can have others take on. This extra capacity will give you the time to add benefit to your teams.    

Feel empowered to forward on to those in your networks who will also get value from our regular tips. If you want to build your capacity to delegate, send us a note at strategy@ mentorisgroup.com.au and we’d love to chat about how we can help.

Have an awesome week!

Cheers
Paul Farmer
Managing Director
https://www.mentorisgroup.com.au