How to Delegate Tasks Effectively Without Adding More to Your Workload

Is Delegating Tasks a Skill?

Believe it or not, assigning tasks to team members may not come naturally to some managers. It often requires multitasking, a bird’s eye perspective, and a lot of trust. Luckily, anyone can learn how to delegate tasks effectively.

If you haven’t quite mastered it yet, you’ll appreciate our delegated zone approach, which we’ll dive into below! 👀

How to Delegate Tasks at Work

Before tagging employees in your project management tool, start with communication. Offer clear explanations and guidelines to ensure the assignee understands their assignment. 

At ProcessDriven, we use the CARS (Context, Attempts, Requests, and Stakes) communication framework, which allows us to convey messages to our team clearly and effectively. No remote barriers in sight! 👋

📝 Note to reader: Don’t want to waste time copying and pasting guidelines into your task management software? Consider using a project brief to begin your projects on the right foot.  

In addition to clear instructions, provide resources for reference. You can create a resource library with SOPs in your digital tool of choice. And if standard operating procedures aren’t your cup of tea, check out this guide to learn how to create them in as little as 15 minutes! 🍵

Once your assignee gets to work, check their progress and provide feedback. Being transparent is one of the best ways to help new hires learn the ropes and gain the skills they need to succeed. 

You’ll also want to skip micromanaging altogether. Instead, focus on supporting your employees and creating a work culture that promotes autonomy. 

What Are Some Benefits of Delegation?

Task delegation is perfect for streamlining your internal systems and giving ownership of intangible things to your employees. In addition, it provides attention to specific sectors of your business that would otherwise be left in the dust. 

When you assign tasks to team members, you can reduce your workload and empower your staff to take action toward your long-term goals. 💪

Delegation in Leadership

As a small business owner, it’s easy to fall into the habit of doing everything yourself. After all, if you have a small team, many responsibilities may fall in your lap, leading to stress and long work hours. 

That’s why delegating tasks can be a powerful skill for all leaders, especially if you want a better work-life balance. 

📢 Blog shoutout: Our CEO, Layla, documented her experience developing a sustainable schedule for her and her team by making small changes with priorities. You can read about her journey here.  

Are you feeling inspired to revolutionize the way you delegate tasks? Let’s get into it! 

That Moment When You Assign Tasks in Teams

Let’s say we have our Marketing Coordinator, Mariah, add timestamps to YouTube descriptions every Wednesday.

Most people start with single-task delegation. It works fine for companies that exclusively hire contractors. If you fall in this category, you may find our free 5-day course, Task Plunger, instrumental in helping you delegate effectively with a proven strategy! 🗺️

As you add employees to your roster, you’ll notice a common problem: Assigning individual tasks only works well when the unexpected doesn’t occur.

But we all know that unpredictable hiccups are inevitable. For example, you may want to fix timestamp errors or add a course link to your YouTube descriptions. There may be a new trend you’d like to incorporate into your latest YouTube copy.

In each scenario, additional actions relate to Mariah’s original task. Only issue? That’s not what you assigned her. Mariah’s main priority remains the same: Add YouTube timestamps. ⏰ 

It becomes your responsibility to communicate these updates to her, which can lead to a bottleneck where you get unnecessarily involved. 

🍾 Tired of bottlenecks in your workflow? If you want to clarify areas inside your business causing barriers to your team’s progress, consider taking our free 10-minute Systemization Snapshot™ audit today!

Now, you could continue with a single-task operation, but we have a feeling you want to implement a better system that saves you time and energy! ⚡ 

The alternative solution is delegating areas of your business!

Create a Delegated Zone

Delegating areas is about assigning ownership to specific sections in your business to your employees. 

What’s the main difference between task delegation and area delegation?

📝 Task delegation focuses on individual tasks.
🌎 Area delegation covers all the potential exceptions and changes related to the ownership.

Rather than requesting Mariah to add timestamps to YouTube descriptions, you can give Mariah full ownership of YouTube descriptions. That way, she will resume responsibility for everything related. 

Result of Implementing Task Ownership in Your Business

A delegated zone approach can empower your team members to be more proactive. As the manager, you don’t have to predict every possible outcome. Instead, your staff will be responsible for thinking ahead and adjusting as they go.

You can also free yourself from getting pulled into the workflow anytime things don’t go according to plan. Imagine how much brain space and energy you could save by not re-delegating. Mind-blowing, right? 🤯 

The best part? All you have to do is rewrite a few words in your employee job descriptions. By revising your roles and descriptions, you can ensure that last-minute tasks don’t end up on your plate. 

How to Delegate Tasks in a New Way

Dear small business owners, it’s time to try delegated zones if the single-task approach has continuously contributed to your workload. Don’t be afraid to designate task owners and create more autonomy in your company. 

💡 Bonus pro tip: Work backward!

Review your overall business and break it down into sections. Once you define these areas, add tasks inside each department.

With this method, you can feel confident knowing that every corner of your business has a title, an area, and a leader. 

If this exercise seems a little advanced, we’re happy to support you in our signature program, ProcessDriven Foundations™. We’ve guided over 1,900+ teams through this exercise and helped them systemize inside their project management software. 

Join our community of operators and enjoy the process!