If you aren’t comfortable passing work off to members of your team, now is the time to start getting used to the idea. Many leaders are exhausted by all the work on their plate, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by a mountainous to-do list. A dangerous trend I saw with many leaders coming out of COVID was holding on to more work because they were stressed!
Delegating isn’t just an important skill for leaders; it’s absolutely necessary. That’s one of the reasons why EOS offers the Delegate & Elevate tool to help you and your team master time management and time ownership. Using this tool is one of the simplest things you can do to take your workflow from “surviving” to “thriving,” and you, your team, and your business will absolutely benefit from it.
Here are a few reasons why you should use the Delegate & Elevate tool to help your team establish better time management and workflows.
Delegating allows you to use energy & time more wisely.
Every individual has their own unique strengths and weaknesses, including leaders. Delegating allows you to focus on the tasks you’re good at, the ones that give you energy. You know which ones I’m talking about! By passing off tasks to others who are (or could be) more effective at completing them, you’ll use your own energy more efficiently.
You’ll also stop wasting time procrastinating while you avoid the tasks you dread. There’s no shame, we’ve all been there! With your extra time and energy, you’ll have room to grow as a leader. Handing off tedious tasks can free up capacity for you to focus your energy in other areas that matter more to you and your business.
It allows you to grow members of your team.
Delegating gives your team members room to learn new skills to complete tasks they maybe haven’t done before. It also grants them what nearly any ambitious person wants: additional responsibilities. Trusting a team member with a new task you previously handled shows that you believe in them while showing that you’re interested in their professional growth.
Many team members, when given a new responsibility, gain a newfound sense of purpose and excitement over the prospect of growing their skills. It also gives them the opportunity to find new areas of the business that interest them they may not have discovered otherwise.
It supports stronger team relationships.
When you’re given a task that you love doing, you probably tear into it with excitement, and the members of your team are likely the same. Delegating tasks that bring your team members joy increases their enthusiasm and makes them feel more accountable for their work. Over time, feeling more accountable for their tasks will increase their team’s trust that they’ll get the job done and do it right.
That gradual building of trust between team members can greatly strengthen their professional relationships, which creates a more cohesive team. It also increases their trust in you and your trust in them, which may lead to additional delegated tasks in the future. And so the cycle begins again!
The biggest leadership myth: “I can handle a lot of stress.”
The biggest myth of leaders I work with is that they can handle significant amounts of stress. The reality I see is that all the things your team needs from you as part of LMA — communication, prioritization, coaching, empathy, love — doesn’t happen. Under extreme stress, leaders get tunnel vision, and that “survival mode” robs them of most of the list of things I just mentioned (see Chapter 2, p. 33 in my book, People Centered Performance).
The first step to overcoming extreme stress is admitting you have a problem and asking your team for help. Delegating — and the time management help that comes with it — is the second step. The good news is that you can use the Delegate & Elevate tool to help your team not just take on new work from you, but find ways to optimize their own work and delegating tasks.
Your team will “walk your talk.”
Think of how you feel when you are overwhelmed with work. Your mind is racing, going from one task or meeting to another, and never accomplishing the work you planned each day. Your mind is in a constant state of focusing on what you still need to do. You never feel the one thing we all need to feel at the end of a day or week: progress. It seems all your energy is going into work, so your life outside of work (in whatever time is left) is not what it should be, which adds to your list of things you are concerned about.
Your team will follow you, so don’t lead them off a stress cliff. In finding your own version of balance they will see an opportunity to find their own. The hidden secret? By helping them you will likely see more effort when you really need it. It ties back to my core belief: Fear motivates in the short term, love motivates in the long term.
By delegating your tasks, you can elevate your whole team’s happiness, productivity and job satisfaction, and that’s where the Delegate & Elevate tool from EOS comes in.
If you need help on how to use this tool effectively, or want to learn how to coach your own team through using it, reach out to me. I’d be happy to help! You can email me any time at [email protected]
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