The D word – love or hate it

D                      Develop others

E                      Encourage your staff

L                       Learn from this

E                      Explain the task and hand it over to someone else

G                       Give authority to someone else to deliver a task

A                      Ask one of your team for help

T                      Train someone up

I                        Invest in your staff

O                     Open new doors for your employees and give them something new

N                      Never make any more excuses

The usual reasons why we do not delegate (really poor excuses) –

I am too busy,I  don’t have the time, it’s easier to do it myself, explaining what to do takes too much time ,I haven’t got time to train them, I have no time to delegate, I don’t want to pile extra work on my employees, they might do it wrong, they won’t be able to do it, there is only me that can do this…..and the list goes on.

This will all sound familiar and the fact is you do not want to delegate. You want to do it yourself. As Head of a busy Accounts Team it would be impossible for me to do it all myself.  I am going to show you the benefits of how successful delegation works for me.

I am a manager with too much work to do and have to meet set deadlines. I find that I can spend a lot of my time on tasks that could and should be delegated. I also find that on occasions I will take work from someone if they have problems or issues with it. I can tend to take errors made off others. I also find that my bosses (the owners) need to delegate to me and don’t! This can often cause me frustration. Does this sound familiar to you?

S          Select the right person

U          Utilise your time now you have delegated for more important work

C          Communicate and provide direction

C          Challenge your staff, it will develop their skills, gives them a sense of achievement, and boosts morale.

E              Explain the delegated task and your expectations and have a follow up system

S          Set deadlines and make sure the employee knows what they are responsible for and what the desired outcome should be.

S          Someone else can do it better
Be a great leader and trust someone else. There is an extra added bonus when you have delegated successfully, the employee you delegated to can then train someone else.

Finally, never under estimate your staff, delegate and reap the rewards of successful delegation AND be less stressed!

Carolyn Allcroft

Head of Accounts