Career Advice

 As women move up the career or business ladder, they must begin to shed some of the details of their business and focus on gaining visibility and creating alliances. Don’t let yourself be either burdened or distracted by continuing to do work which you’ve long ago outgrown. To regain perspective, get more accomplished and make the best use of your time and talents, learn to delegate.

Many women are reluctant to delegate. There are a number of reasons for this which must be confronted squarely:

• Most of us succeed because we are good at mastering certain types of details.
• It’s human nature to like to do what we’re good at doing.
• Successful women are often perfectionists.
• If we do it ourselves, we know it will be perfect, or, at least, as perfect as we can make it.

Although all these reasons, and more, are understandable, they also form a self-created barrier which holds us back. As women move up the career or business ladder, they must begin to shed some of the details of their business and focus on gaining visibility and creating alliances. That’s hard to do, if you still cling to accomplishing even the smallest tasks yourself. Eventually you get drained, overwhelmed and lose focus. Don’t let yourself be either burdened or distracted by continuing to do work which you’ve long ago outgrown To regain perspective, get more accomplished and make the best use of your time and talents, learn to delegate.

Delegating - which means giving up some control - is extraordinarily difficult for some of us. But the ability to delegate has many facets to it. It allows you to focus on the big picture and on your most important tasks. It helps you to be a team player and to develop other workers. It gives you a support system which will facilitate your success:

First - decide what to delegate

The point of delegating is to free yourself, first, from routine, low level or mechanical tasks which someone else can do, perhaps better and more efficiently than you. Such tasks could include writing routine letters. An assistant, selecting from an array form letters covering many circumstances, is an effective way to handle routine correspondence. Voice mail can screen most phone calls. Many excellent services can handle addressing and envelope stuffing, packaging and mailing and large copying or printing jobs.

If you develop a system for handling all your paperwork, then someone else can take it over and keep your desk organized and your files where you can find them.

If you’re the creative voice in a design team, make sure someone else does the technical work. Try to use you’re #1 skills, not your #1- #5 skills. Even if you started out that way, as an entrepreneur, juggling a dozen different types of tasks, you ultimately must learn to focus on what you do best and leave the rest to someone else.

Delegate anything low priority or which doesn’t require your personal attention to achieve your primary goals.

Select the most capable person for the task

We all have certain aptitudes. If you want to organize your files, select someone who thrives on organization, actually enjoys this kind of work, and who understands your business well enough to file items appropriately. The better you know someone’s work, the easier it will be to delegate to them with confidence because you will know, from experience, what he does well.

Give clear direction and reach an agreement on expected results

You should be willing to take the time, up front, to review your expectations and reach an agreement on what the end result should be. Communication is a key component of this process. Even if you agree that you want a list of all the contracts your company is fulfilling at this moment, your assistant should know, in advance, which key parameters are most important to you. Is your primary concern the expiration date of the contract, the terms, or the payment dates? There are many ways to make a list, and knowing precisely how you plan to use the list will help your assistant design it so it will be most effective for you. Be clear about what you want, then step back and let your assistant do it her own way. Resist the temptation to micromanage. You are developing new skills and an increased support system in the form of your assistant. Give her trust and support.

Eventually, you will want to develop your assistant or support staff to the point where you can delegate not just a task, but an entire area of responsibility. For example, you may start by asking someone to develop a list of current contracts, but, after some work together, you may ask that same person to organize the entire document flow and storage for your office. You will both have taken a giant leap forward in efficiency and effectiveness, not to mention mutual trust and support.

Be available for questions and mid course decisions

Just because you’re delegating an assignment doesn’t mean you’ve left for the moon or lost all interest in your own business. Stop by and give your assistant the opportunity to ask questions or clarify issues. Since it is likely neither you or she will think of every conceivable possibility in advance, there will be items which will have to be addressed as the project moves along.

Set a clear deadline with accomplishment milestones along the way

If you’re in a small office or one where you can pop in periodically and observe the progress, milestones may not be as crucial. However, if you work at a distance, or "virtually", or only see each other every few weeks, or don’t really know each other’s work that well, it is vital to have a means of "checking the pulse" of your delegated project. It is amazing how many very intelligent people, who may even be peers in a company, find that they are simply "not on the same page" when it comes to a particular effort. Other differences may arise from different skills level, industriousness or viewpoint. Communication must be ongoing and formalizing it by creating milestones or "mini-deadlines" is the most certain way of assuring it and protecting the integrity of your project.

Finally, give credit to your assistant, volunteer or support staff

The only way to develop a support system for yourself is to let the people you delegate to have the responsibility to do what you’ve asked of them; let them do it their own way; let them make their own mistakes and learn from them. Praise them when they complete their assignment. Point out that the completed task contributes to the success of the company as a whole. Give them credit within the company. This will foster loyalty and assure that you will get their help and support in the future.

Is it hard to delegate? It can be, but the rewards so far outweigh the minimal discomfort of learning to "let go", that it is absolutely recommended as one of the best levers for success.