One of the biggest questions first-time managers often face is how to delegate work. As the most reliable person on the team, one of the best ways to prepare your staff for future assignments is to perform tasks effectively. Sadly, this is the part where people newly moved into a leadership role need a considerable amount of expert advice.
Tips To Perform Tasks Effectively
1. Set Expectations before performing the tasks
Roughly 50% of the American workforce strongly feels that they don’t understand work expectations. This means that only 5 out of 10 employees at your organization know how to do their job effectively.
Step one as a part of mastering the art of delegation is to set clear expectations. Every employee needs clarification of performance goals. Providing your team with the context for expectations will increase the likelihood of employees’ accountability for meeting those expectations.
Lack of misunderstood performance expectations is often the source of workplace conflicts, and the beginning of poor shared sense of purpose. As a manager, it is your duty to relay the importance of each employee’s role and how their responsibilities impact the organization.
2. Consider their skills
Delegating tasks to employees shows how much they are trusted and how competed they are considered to be by the manager. When you’re entrusting responsibility to an employee, here are a few things to consider: Does this employee have experience and skills? Which employee needs to learn how to handle this responsibility? Which employee has the time to accept this responsibility?
You must be careful to not overload your employees with responsibilities they cannot handle alone.
3. Supervise for effective task performance
Perhaps the hardest part about delegating tasks to employees is trusting that they will do it diligently. A lot of managers are reluctant to turn over their responsibilities to an employee who requires more training and experience in that area. Managers should let go of this mentality.
When you assign an employee a task for the first time, the chances of their succeeding are meagre. There is also the additional risk of damaging employee morale. Your employees might also feel that they are not capable of handling tasks.
4. Review the task performance
Review the ongoing task so your employees are able to improve in real-time if it’s a challenging task. Allow them to shadow you while you explain some of the key things.
5. Provide Feedback about task performance
Managers are still responsible for the success or failure of their employees. Provide continuous feedback to help achieve the desired results. Identify key lessons learn during the exercise: What did the employee learn? How can they improve to do a better job next time? What needs to be done to move to a bigger task?
Whether you want to stay up-to-date on HR news, read in-depth insights on HR trends or find new ideas on strategy, innovation, and leadership, The HR Digest Magazine is here to suit your needs and help you stay more informed.