As the saying goes, compare the pair… A true set of circumstances…

Two successful business people, by any measure.

An example below of Person A vs Person B. 

Person A

Person A started a successful design business in 1982, now employing 30 people. A leader in their specific design field in Australia. The founder (and still Managing Director) has spent decades building the business up from 4 staff. He has worked most of the past few decades for seven days a week, often 12 hours a day. He is a great designer and super hard worker. He has built a comfortable life but with little time to enjoy it. Approaching retirement, he will be lucky to sell his business for much at all as he does everything, despite having staff. Person A is a control freak and can’t let go. He must do everything himself, after all the business is his ‘baby’. Nobody can do anything better than him. He knows best in all areas (or so he thinks). Besides, to not be ‘super busy’ would be laziness! Plus, ‘it takes too long to train someone’.

Person B

Person B started his business in 1990 from his loungeroom. Person B was not particularly good at sales, operations or finance. He disliked cars yet founded a car finance company. Person B did not like to micromanage. From the earliest he wanted experts around him who were ‘champions in their fields’ – sales, operations, finance. He wanted people that were more capable than him in these areas. He delegated to these people and oversaw the big picture. He leveraged the time and growing expertise of others, to free himself up to dream and scheme more – to do what he does best.

Person B sold his business in 2012 for $230 million and has since divested into various extraordinarily successful ventures. Person B is in the top 40 wealthiest people in Australia. Person B learned early the power of delegation and the quantum leaps it can provide.

You may not want to build multi-million-dollar firms to sell, but if you’re a manager you won’t be truly successful unless you learn to delegate often, and well. This is an important thing to remember if you are new to management, and critical if you’re an experienced manager who has ‘hit the wall’ in terms of career progression, productivity and/or on-the-job engagement.

What is Delegation?

It may be simply defined as the assignment of any task or authority to another person to carry out specific activities. However, Discover the person who delegated the work remains accountable for the outcome of the delegated work.

Further, delegation is not merely assigning a task or authority to an employee. That is merely ‘task allocation’. Proper delegation is assigning a part of your own role to an employee, whether as a one-off, occasional or permanent delegation. This is important to remember.

Why You Should Delegate

1. Achieve More

You and your team will achieve more – team and personal productivity is enhanced, often exponentially.

2. Frees up your time

Frees you up to focus on your higher leverage, strategic activities. You know, those nagging, important but not urgent things that never get done.

3. Empowerment and Confidence

It develops, enables and empowers your staff. This improves their own capabilities and skill sets. In turn increasing their confidence……which in turn aids your own succession planning.

4. Building Positive Morale

It builds morale and engagement because staff feel trusted

5. Trust

It helps you learn to trust and let go

6. Peace of Mind

Work will still be done in your absence

7. Seen as a Trusted Leader

Your own reputation will improve – you’ll seen by your managers as being a trusting leader, who invests in team development, meaning……Your own career progression will be enhanced

8. Self Management

If your staff manage staff, the flow on effects on all the above trickle down even further!

If you don’t commit to delegating more often and more effectively, you really are robbing you and your staff of a major opportunity.

Enhance your leadership development skills with courses at Odyssey Training.