THE IMPORTANCE OF TIME MANAGEMENT AND DELEGATION  

I come across so many people who are new to the role of team leader or supervisor who feel a natural aversion or discomfort delegating tasks to team members.  

There is a natural sense when delegating some of your work to your direct reports where you feel like you are ‘dumping’ tasks on them that you could or should be doing. If the sole reason for failing to delegate tasks (that should be delegated) is due to a feeling of discomfort, then you are failing to use your time as a leader effectively.  

When I’m delivering leadership training, I ask course participants to make two lists. The first is “why we don’t delegate?” and in 90%+ of the examples given, the reasons for not delegating tasks lack validity. Reasons like:  

• I feel like I’m shirking my responsibility

• The team will feel under-valued doing my ‘cast off’ work

• I feel lazy when I delegate

• The team will never do the task to my standard

• I’m not sure how they’ll react to me delegating work to them

• I feel like I lose control of the task

• I just don’t trust them

One of the most common reasons that first-time leaders fail to delegate is that ‘the team may not like me as much’, which is a completely invalid reason to avoid delegation.  

Remember that we are specifically talking about tasks that you know that you ought to delegate. Tasks that could or should be fulfilled by your team members that are lower in priority on your “to do” list and are therefore robbing you of valuable time that you could be spending on more important tasks.  

Conversely, when I ask participants for reasons why we should delegate certain tasks I get a very powerful list of answers, such as:  

• It’s motivating for team members

• It’s an opportunity to develop knowledge and skills through the delegated task

• It’s a more efficient and effective use of the team leader’s time

Many of the reasons for not delegating relate to how the team leader feels, whereas many of the reasons why they should delegate relate to positive benefits for the delegatee (the team member being delegated to).  

Even some of the more valid reasons for not delegating such as “staff not being competent to effectively perform the delegated task” may seem valid in the short term. But delegating the said task may in fact be a means of identifying training opportunities (which also may be achieved through the process of the task delegation in this case).  

Not delegating the task might be a short-term gain, but continuing to do the task yourself is a long-term pain. Whereas, taking the time to train the person and up-skill them to be able to perform the task is certainly a short-term pain, but it’s a long-term game in terms of the return on the investment.

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