This is a post all leaders should read. Even if you are a pastor, this will give you insight into how the business leaders in your church think.
Co-founded by Bryan Miles and his wife Shannon, BELAY Solutions is an organization I am honored to promote. Originally called eaHELP, they expanded the horizons of their Virtual Assistant service model to include MAG Bookkeeping, copywriting services, and web support services. In January 2017, the Miles Advisory Group suite (eaHELP, MAG Bookkeeping, Render and Ellipsis) came together under one name – BELAY. This name has a great deal of significance to our leaders because of its core meaning: To belay is to provide the support a climber needs to ascend.
Below is an article entitled The Most Important Skill You Need as a Business Owner which originally appeared HERE on LinkedIn. The content is so rich and valuable I want to make it available to you.
After reading, if you are considering a virtual assistant, click HERE and start a conversation today.
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As we wrap up the year at BELAY and review our progress, there is one attribute that has been critical to our success creating an award-winning, highly productive organization.
Delegation.
More important than leading a talented team, building out sales funnels, and yes, even more important than project planning. Delegation takes precedence over them all. Every leader I know (including me!) can wrestle with delegation. It’s one of the hardest things a leader needs to do, but it is the most important skill you’ll do as a business owner.
Why? Leaders that overextend themselves wind up doing inconsistent, low-quality work, and locking their businesses into maintenance mode, rather than growth mode. Remember, just because you got a lot done this week, doesn’t mean you did any of it well. And it doesn’t mean it served to improve your business.
The most successful small-business owners I’ve seen have realistic views of their talents, weaknesses and bandwidths. They also understand that, for everything that doesn’t fall within their wheelhouse, there’s delegation.
Delegation is essential for your business’s success for two reasons: 1.) Your time is limited. 2.) You aren’t always the best person for the job. Effective leaders thrive on humility and are never afraid to say, “I can’t handle this,” or, “I don’t know.” Delegation allows leaders to leverage the expertise of others, and use their own time more effectively.
Our business has gone farther because I’ve hired the best people I know to entrust responsibilities and give them the space to keep dreaming big dreams and setting big goals. And next year will only be bigger and better because we’ve set the machine in motion, with minor tweaks tweaks here and there as needed. By delegating the right stuff to the right people, I can own the business and not run it.
This year we won a spot on the INC 5000 list, marking our 4th win. How did we do it? You can bet it’s because we placed delegation at the top of our priority list. Just as I’ve learned to delegate, I’ve taught my leadership staff how to delegate to their teams. The result is employees who know they are trusted, which empowers them to work harder and yields a level of productivity that isn’t seen in many other organizations.
I’ve watched leaders both procrastinate and embrace delegation. The ones who embrace delegation are amazed and shocked by the positive results. The ones who procrastinate delegation continue to be their organization’s bottleneck.
Effective leaders must embrace delegation. According to Gallup research, “founders who have and use high Delegator talent can generate better business growth and venture success than leaders who get lost in the day-to-day minutiae of managing a business.”
In the very beginning, some entrepreneurs have no choice but to shoulder excessive loads. Limited capital, inconsistent growth and 24-hour days will force many upstart entrepreneurs to become (very exhausted) one-man bands. But, even after the revenue starts streaming in, many entrepreneurs continue to do it all.
I’ve heard plenty of different theories about why so many entrepreneurs take the “Swiss Army” approach to leadership, but I think you can chalk it all up to just one simple character flaw: arrogance. By refusing to entrust even the smallest tasks to others, leaders’ express supreme confidence in their own abilities, and flat-out disrespect for those of others. Not only is it an ugly reflection of one’s egotism, it’s also just a lousy way to do business.
Ultra-productive leaders delegate almost everything. Instead of trying to figure out how they can get the task done themselves, they focus solely on on how the task can get done to get the end result. They take themselves out of the equation as much as possible. Great leaders aren’t micro-managers. They trust that their employees can get the task done just as effectively.
You may not be comfortable with delegation at first, but it’s one of the most important things you’ll need to do. If you’re going to lead a successful organization, you’ll need to be completely comfortable with delegation. It’s never going to go away, and as a leader you’re constantly going to be identifying what needs to be done. The sooner you get comfortable and confident in delegating tasks, the sooner you’ll start seeing increased productivity and results in your organization.
Trust me when I say once you prioritize delegation in your business, your organization will become more agile, more productive, more responsive, more creative and more efficient because of it. Just because you can handle everything doesn’t mean you should. Remember, as a leader, you are not a cheap resource!
Now, start today. What can you start delegating right now? Need help deciding, download this resource.