I got an email about wanting to get into a “Delegation Mindset”. Mind you, this is the first I’ve heard of it and while it stumped me for a second, I understood what the person was trying to convey. He wanted to learn how to get into this mindset of being able to delegate.
Seems pretty simple, right? No.
While some people are quick to delegate tasks and consciously having this Delegation Mindset isn’t really an issue for them, there are some that do have this problem. I was that person before and it’s not just entrepreneurs who experience this. Sometimes, even when you’re an employee, you find yourself defaulting to doing things on your own and not delegating or seeking help from others.
As for entrepreneurs, this is what usually holds them back from hiring their first team member. When we start a business, most often than not, we start it on our own and we do everything on our own. However, there comes a point where we can only do so much and things just pile up and in the end, things never get done. Or if they do, we are exhausted.
So this made me think. A few months ago, this was Alla and I. Boy, did I have a hard time delegating tasks to our team. There we were with extremely great team members and we were having a hard time letting go. I had a lot of excuses. Tell me, do these sound familiar?
“It’s hard to explain the task.” “I want to make sure it gets done, so I’ll just do it.” “They might screw it up.” “I want it done MY way.” “It just takes a few minutes. I’ll do it.”
THESE are excuses.
So what did I do?
I started with seemingly “small” recurring things. Things that take minutes to finish. (Remember, these few minutes pile up and they become hours and days.)
I started with one task. Just one. It takes one task to delegate to open this wonderful door of Delegation Mindset.
I made a screencast video and explained everything as I did the task myself. I sent this to our team and had them do it.
From there, I checked it and made corrections right away.
Once it’s good, I did the same for the other recurring tasks I have.
I trusted my team. While you may want them to follow instructions to the dot, you must be open to them breaking some things and giving you better ways to do something.
What happened? Once I felt the extra time, even just 30 minutes, it felt great. I was able to use that time to do something else. It opened this whole new door, so I made another video and another and delegated more.
I still get those excuses in my head sometimes but I just remember that feeling of having that extra minutes or hours to do something bigger. See, if I didn’t do that, we won’t be able to do our second launch right now. We won’t be able to scale.
Having a Delegation Mindset isn’t just about giving tasks away, it also allows you to learn how to teach people, how to trust people, how to be open with suggestions and how to focus on the bigger picture.
