Author: anne

Delegation is the act of assigning tasks and responsibilities, together with the necessary authority (Leadership) to carry them out, to your employees. Effective delegation can save you time and motivate your team by demonstrating that you trust them and value their abilities.

Common mistakes managers make when delegating

• Don’t give enough freedom
• Don’t communicate clearly
• Aren’t open to new ideas

How to Delegate
First concentrate on the most important matters yourself. You should be doing activities that only you can do (that involve a high level of skill and, ideally, that you enjoy doing. When delegating, set broad controls and allow your team to make mistakes.

Communicate Clearly
Take the time to make your requirements know n to your team member. Give a clear picture of the results you expect, the time limits involved and the authority being transferred to that team member. Also make sure other people in the organisation know about the delegation so they can support it.

Encourage Participation
Employees are least satisfied and least motivated when they can’t inject their own ideas into the project. They need to be able to display their own talents .

Examine results not methods
An effective delegator needs to accept differing approaches to achieve results. Since no two people approach a solution in exactly the same way, you need to concentrate on whether the desired results are being achieved or not  or whether they are being achieved your way. A poor delegator says, “This is what we want to achieve and this is how we will proceed“. An effective delegator says, “Here is the result we have agreed we want to accomplish“  and give me your best recommendations as to how w e can get those results.

Show trust
Allow your team members to get the job done without micro managing. Excessive checking will convince the employee that they are not really responsible for the job.

Delegate credit only
You cannot delegate blame. Remember that you bear the final responsibility for the actions of your team

Know your team
You need to know what and how much you can delegate to a person. You should gradually increase the level of responsibility and importance of the tasks as results are successfully achieved.

Things to avoid
Don’t let the chain of command get too long. If there are too many levels of responsibility some information will never trickle all the way to the bottom .
Don’t ask one subordinate to report to two people. It will be impossible for the subordinate to decide whose work comes first.
Don’t make fuzzy job assignments. Grey areas between positions simply invite overlap, conflict and duplication of effort.
Don’t be too rigid. Try to maintain flexibility to provide for situations that inevitably crop up and need nonstandard solutions.

Exercise
Make a list of three things you are doing today that you should be delegating. Identify who you will delegate them to and write down how you will go about doing so. Then delegate.

“Success doesn’t come to you…..you go to it”
By Marva Collins

We’ve all had them. Those days when discouragement threatens to defeat purpose and conviction and start us down the steep, slippery slope of self-doubt.

The early days of entrepreneurship are filled with activity, busy-ness, a whirlwind of activity. Once that initial phase passes and things settle down to a more or less predictable routine, when our fantasies of fantastic wealth have not materialized after six months of endeavor, when someone is critical, when those orders just aren’t coming in, no matter what we do or how many hours we work … we get discouraged and begin to question whether we really do have the right stuff for this business, after all!

So, how do you get through those times of self-doubt and back into the saddle? The first thing is to prepare for it. KNOW there are going to be “days like this”. If you expect them then you
will be better able to recognise them for what they are and not give them greater prominence than they deserve. Nine times out of ten, things really DO look better in the morning!

Next, get right back to basics. What motivates you and keeps you focused? What is your motivation and purpose in starting your own business? The strength of your purpose will ultimately determine your level of motivation and hence determination. Is your purpose clear in your mind? If not, maybe you need to remind yourself of the reasons why you want to work for yourself. You may find your reasons aren’t strong enough motivators. If not, find some that are.

Remind yourself of your purpose when you need to motivate yourself. If you’re a mom, perhaps your purpose in starting your home business was so you could be home with your children rather than in the paid workforce. So, when you’re feeling discouraged because you didn’t land that account you wanted or didn’t make that sale, remind yourself why you’re doing this in the first place. Picture your children. Visualise your purpose as vividly as you can. Then harness that motivation and turn it into energy you can direct back into your business. Use that energy to examine why you didn’t land the account or make the sale and then change whatever needs to be changed. By making changes in response to such stimuli, you are increasing the odds of being successful next time around.

Your response to setbacks will also be determined by your personal confidence level. A confident individual is more resilient in the face of setbacks whereas a less confident person is more likely to react to a setback as an indication that he or she is not really capable of being successful. Your response to setbacks is critical to the future success or failure of your business. If you’re someone whose self-talk is positive, you will tell yourself, “well, that approach didn’t achieve what I wanted. I’ll have to try something different”. If, on the other hand, your self-talk is pretty negative, you are much more likely to tell yourself “well, that obviously didn’t work. I just don’t have what
it takes to be a success at this”.

*The difference between the two is, the positive self-talker, refuses to internalise a setback as a personal failure. The negative self-talker, on the other hand, doesn’t view the setback as just part of external environment in which the business operates but rather, internalises the setback as a personal failure.*

So, watch your self-talk. The language you use in your thoughts makes an enormous impression on your subconscious. If you impress upon your subconscious that you are not deserving of success, your subconscious will busily go about proving the truth of that statement. Similarly, if you impress upon your subconscious that you are a successful, confident person, it will work just as hard to validate that presumption. The important point is this: your subconscious DOESN’T CARE where it takes you. It will literally take you WHEREVER you program it to go.

One highly effective technique to help remove the negative self-talk that can be so harmful to long-term success is self-hypnosis. There are many good induction tapes available that will guide you into a state of deep mental relaxation and then provide you with positive suggestions. If you are in a state of deep relaxation when you receive a positive suggestion, it will be absorbed much more readily by your subconscious, where those nagging self-doubts emanate from in the first place. Choose a tape that deals with issues such as self-confidence or positive thinking. By programming your subconscious with positive messages of confidence and success, it will actively go to work integrating those qualities.

Do not underestimate the value of positive programming and the danger of negative programming in determining the ultimate success of your business. It may very well mean the difference between stunning success and whimpering failure.

Do you feel stressed and overloaded?
If so, then you may need to brush up your delegation skills!

This is reality..you can’t do everything that everyone wants, and this can leave you stressed, unhappy, and overloaded.

To delegate effectively, choose the right tasks to delegate, identify the right people to delegate to, and delegate in the right way. There’s a lot to this, but you’ll achieve so much more once you’re delegating effectively!

This is why delegation is such an important skill, and is one that you absolutely have to learn!

Would you rather be focusing on all of the things you have to do, or do you want to use that time to get results that really matter to you?- by Tony Robbins

The power of delegation

As an entrepreneur, your time is your most valuable asset, that is why Delegation is so important, because as a leader, your job is to concentrate on those things that only you, as the leader can do. This is where the effectiveness of an organization increases exponentially Effective delegation is the secret to successful leadership. The purpose is two-fold: to accomplish the task at hand and to develop the employee charged with its completion. If applied properly, it’s a technique that saves time, money, and morale, while increasing the capabilities of your human resources. Mishandled, delegation can be a catastrophic failure resulting in poor performance, resentment and inefficiency.

Keeping Control

Take time to explain why they were chosen for the job, what’s expected from them during the project, the goals you have for the project, all timelines and deadlines and the resources on which they can draw. And agree a schedule for checking-in with progress updates.

Make sure that the team member knows that you want to know if any problems occur, and that you are available for any questions or guidance needed as the work progresses.

We all know that as managers, we shouldn’t micro-manage. However, this doesn’t mean we must abdicate control altogether: In delegating effectively, we have to find the sometimes-difficult balance between giving enough space for people to use their abilities to best effect, while still monitoring and supporting closely enough to ensure that the job is done correctly and effectively.

The Importance of Full Acceptance

When delegated work is delivered back to you, set aside enough time to review it thoroughly. If possible, only accept good quality, fully-complete work. If you accept work you are not satisfied with, your team member does not learn to do the job properly. Worse than this, you accept a whole new tranche of work that you will probably need to complete yourself. Not only does this overload you, it means that you don’t have the time to do your own job properly. Of course, when good work is returned to you, make sure to both recognize and reward the effort. As a leader, you should get in the practice of complimenting members of your team every time you are impressed by what they have done. This effort on your part will go a long way toward building team member’s self-confidence and efficiency, both of which will be improved on the next delegated task; hence, you both win.

Key Points

By delegating effectively, you can hugely expand the amount of work that you can deliver.

When you arrange the workload, and you are working on the tasks that have the highest priority for you, and other people are working on meaningful and challenging assignments, you have a recipe for success

Take it from Siimon Reynolds, expert and entrepreneur/co-founded two large enterprises, Photon Group and OMG. SIICOACH:

How your self image determines your wealth. You’re visualising how things will go anyway, all day long. It’s just how the brain works. So you might as well take control of the process and visualise exactly what you want. With regular daily practice you’ll find you will be more confident, more at ease, more effective. You’ll also find your economic identity will have changed. And soon after, your wealth.

Are you prepared to make 2012 your most thriving year yet?  It would be great to put the negative news of 2011 behind us and begin shaping a future that we propose!

Here are three quick steps you can use to jump-start your year:

Confirm your hypothesis
Be acquainted that you are making an assumption about and then authenticate your assumption.  Get in touch with your prospective clients to find out what it would be of significance to them, If you think a new product would be immense,  Confirm your hypothesis before you start and save the time and money that it takes to change later.

Never assume that you’re correct. If you’re initiating a new service, you will have a mass of assumptions.  Business is built on hypothesis.  investigations, statistics, surveys, etc. all exist to gather information to authenticate or contradict hypothesis.

Track your advertising/marketing
Organize your marketing thoughtfully and follow your results. Know what you’re trying to achieve with your marketing.  Not generically.  Understand who your targets are, how to reach them, what elucidation you’re offering, what results you expect, how many touches it takes to convert a prospect to a customer, how long your crusade will last, etc.

Marketing is costly in money or time (or both).  Even if you’re core effort is online and isn’t costly, it will still cost you effort and time. Never market without having a finances, goals, and a way to track your achievement.

These simple steps can help you immensely.  Not only will they assist you construct results, they will assist you save time and money that might otherwise be wasted on guesses.

Set your objective
Adjust and adapt to changing circumstances, but always with the goal in mind.  This is one of the keys of setting goals; it upholds your focal points and assists you coordinate your actions. Countless people will not bother but it has been said a couple of times. Set your goals.  Note them down.  Commit to them.  The point isn’t just noting them down and then hoping they’ll come true.  Set the goals and then plan how you’ll accomplish them. Break the goals into pieces and allocate pieces of them to dissimilar offerings your corporation has.  Track your progress towards your goals and scrutinize what works and what doesn’t work

Hiring a Virtual Assistant to handle your busy schedule or carry out tasks that don’t make a good use of your time is probably one of the most effective ways to get yourself on track and become more productive in your business.

The goal of Virtual Office Angels is to free up your time, increase your productivity, and reduce the amount of stress in your life. Most of our clients are small business owners who need extra help getting things done, need access to a wide variety of services, and are working on a budget.

Our Virtual Office Angels can help take care of those things that:

• get neglected or procrastinated,
• projects that are beyond your capability,
• those things that are absorbing your time,
• and anything that you don’t have to be doing yourself.

By delegating these things to our virtual assistants, you can focus on the truly important, high-leverage activities within your business that need your attention.

The result:

• Increased productivity
• Greater efficiency
• More Time
• Less Stress

The outcome is that your business moves forward, faster and easier.