When you become a leader, it’s tempting to continue doing all the work necessary for your company to succeed, even with the change in position. While people (such as your peers and bosses) may admire your willingness to work on the assignments yourself, you can’t deny that a new leadership position gives you new responsibilities that make it harder to continue working on your old tasks.
Eventually, your stamina to get the job done will wear down, and you’ll have to start delegating assignments to make sure jobs get done quickly and effectively—in other words, as you become more essential to the company, the less you need to become involved. If delegation is difficult for you to do, look over these strategies to use delegation as an extension of yourself.
Reasons
A crucial part of delegation is to get people to care about what you’re assigning them to do. If they see where they fit in the plan, you’ll increase their relevance in the big picture and the odds they’ll follow through with their task. Going around and telling your peers to do something just because you said so isn’t the way to motivate people into caring about an assignment, after all. Be specific with what you expect from the project as well so that there’s no confusion on what needs to be accomplished.
Commitment
Like with explaining your reasonings, you need to inspire commitment from your peers in order for them to not only commit to the task, but to do it well. Define the work, clarify what they’re meant to be doing, and align it within their capacity through clear communication and expectations. Defining your expectations is crucial because your peers can’t read your mind—if you want a specific outcome, you need to let the people you delegate assignments to know. Ensure with your peer afterward that they understand your instructions to avoid conflict down the line.
Engage
It’s important to engage with your work and peers, but a line has to be drawn when you take up a leadership position. Any engagement you involve yourself in should be enough to deliver an agreed-upon mix of support and accountability; too much involvement can lead to micromanagement, while too little involvement can lead to missed moments of support and advice.