Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

With the start of the New Year brings the promise of resolutions, great and small. Nearly everyone takes this opportunity to get a fresh start, do away with some old bad habits and replace them with newer, better ones. For business owners, the New Year is a great time to reassess your business and create both short- and long-term goals which may include: expanding your product line or enhancing your services, increasing profits, or achieving a better work-life balance.

Whatever your objectives, there is one simple concept that can help you attain them … delegation. As Andrew Carnegie once said, “No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.”

As a business owner, you are likely a hard-working, ambitious professional, who is driven toward growth and success. Unfortunately this motivation and ambition is often accompanied with an obsession for doing everything yourself to ensure it is done “right”. The problem is that spending too much time working “in” your business leaves little time for working “on” your business. Delegating everyday tasks such as bookkeeping, database management, customer follow-up, managing your social networking profiles, and creating marketing materials can free up precious time for doing the things that truly only you can do, like planning, networking, or managing.

Mastering the art of delegation requires communication, honesty, and trust. You must be able to communicate effectively to everyone involved in order to ensure they understand not only their tasks, but also how those tasks contribute to the bigger picture. It’s critical to be honest with yourself, and to those involved, especially when communicating expectations and providing feedback. But often, the most difficult challenge for any business owner is to entrust others with vital tasks or projects. It’s important to realize that even if something isn’t done precisely the way you would do it, you are successful if the task or project is completed efficiently and with high-quality results.

Here are some keys to delegating with confidence:

· Clearly define goals, as well as time and budget constraints.
· Clearly communicate expectations and requirements
· Fully disclose the information needed to complete a project
· Encourage questions, take comments, and give timely feedback
· Set up and help meet deadlines
· Express constructive criticisms and concerns openly
· Respect and value the expertise of the person you choose for the task
· Actively contribute to all efforts to achieve your goals.

Delegating may sound difficult at first, but in doing so, you will be freeing up your valuable time to focus on the most important aspects of your business and your life. Delegation does not mean you give up full control of your business, it means you are open to attract more clients, have the freedom to work ‘on’ your business instead of ‘in’ it, and so many more possibilities. Consider hiring a Cybertary to allow you to focus on tasks that generate new income for yourself.