Delegation and Your Leadership Style

The basic topic of time management is really a conversation about tasks, not time. What tasks are you involved with? What tasks do you and your business need to get done? Tasks is part of time management as well as the systemic systems that move your business forwards. Time management affects leadership and employee management skills. Your management style needs to be flexible and work for you. Time management is a necessary and important part of your business; it affects your business culture.

Leadership Styles:

The knit picker- are you the manager always looking over the shoulder of your employees, expecting your staff to be mini versions of you, and checking in so many times that you could have just done the project yourself? Do you micro-manage? 

Time management might work well for you but you may have trouble letting things go. The David Allen system says that when you delegate a project, get clear on the performance level of the project. Then get clear on what the vision of the project is and what the story of the project is. Empower the people you trusted enough to hire, to use their skill and background knowledge and apply them to your vision, project, and product. Don't deliver the project with the details, you don't need to give your contractor or employee the 'how', that creates a micro-managing environment. 

Take a receptionist for example, you don't tell a receptionist how to field multiple calls. You hire a receptionist with experience and trust that they'll use their experience and knowledge to field calls, direct calls, and take the necessary messages. You tell them what the intro is when they answer the phone and then take your hands off of their work. Though your nature is to call to the details, you have to empower your employees and team members and give them a sense of accountability. 

Friendly & Open Style- Are you the type of leader that just wants the work done? You're friendly and accepting and give your employees lots of space. You deliver the end vision but you don't provide any details or specifics, your terms are idealistic and lack structure. This style means you provide a generic vision, but you don't provide enough information to set the employee or contractor up for success. 

Are you a small business owner who knows what they're good at and who hands off that which isn't their strength to those who excel in those areas? Marketing isn't my expertise so I hire other people to handle all things social media related because the are people who are good at that.

Are you the overwhelmed business owner who just wishes and hopes the things you hand off get done and done well? Your 'please save me vibe' will be felt by your employee or contractor and after while they'll be resentful because they'll be doing more than they're paid for or angry because they will have never succeeded in having you feel less overwhelmed. As time management and delegation go, you need to slow down and before you delegate, get really clear on what the boundaries of the project are. Be clear on what you're hiring a person for and let your requests end there. Negotiate a second job with them if there's more you need and discuss the pay for the 2nd job. The generic feeling of stress and overwhelm will subside when you are clear on what you need and the people working for you are clear on what you need and what they're being paid to do.