Why is Delegating Hard?

When you’re an entrepreneur, delegating can be difficult. Your business is your baby, and very often, we feel like we are the best person for every job.

But here’s what I’ve learned: As a founder, your business needs to work for you. You need to take vacations, have downtime, and focus on the big picture without operations being compromised. And that’s where delegating comes into play.

Imagine there are 20 roles in your business that are all played by you. You’re the salesperson, the social media person, the systems person, the person in the front of the house, and many more.

If you give someone one of those jobs to do, now they only wear one hat, and they’re more than likely going to do a better job than you because of it.

While that person wears one hat, you have 19 hats, and you’re going to get your 19 jobs done better as well. (And you’ll continue to do better and better as you wear less and less hats!)

There’s three things I like to do to make delegating easier:

1. Get the delegate to write their own SOP.

This way, they understand what they’re doing in their own language. By allowing them to take ownership of their standard operating procedure, they have a say in how they work while giving me transparency into their process.

2. Give a measuring tool.

Give the individual a metric so they can understand the goal outcome of their role. Allow them to understand how success will be measured.

3. Provide due dates.

Everyone has a different sense of urgency, and “shortly” for you might mean one week for someone else. By being specific with your expectations on due dates, you’re making your expectations crystal clear.

4. Have tough conversations.

If something isn’t being done to your standards, it’s a learning opportunity. But, if you don’t see improvements being made over time, it might not be the right job for them. However, you’ll have an existing SOP in place, which can help make training easier for the next person, who can then adapt the SOP to their own style.

Delegating is not hard. What's hard is letting go. Try it today!