7 Types of Tasks You Should Never Delegate
Go ahead and give yourself kudos if you’ve launched a side hustle or full-time business that’s grown enough to need help. Adding another trusted, bright thinker or bringing on extra sets of hands is a great way to get more done while growing your venture in new ways. If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed and can’t wait to pass tasks off, do yourself a favor and pump the brakes for a minute; delegating will definitely let you get back to focusing on the big picture, but there are some things you’ll want to keep on your own plate.
1. Deciding Who Joins the Team: “When you’re building a company and hiring, it’s important that you be leading the charge on who you hire by actively interviewing and remembering that you’re the best ‘sales’ person for your company,” shares Career Contessa founder Lauren McGoodwin. Bringing on freelancers or part-time help rather than a full-time hire? McGoodwin’s advice still applies. You should trust and feel confident about every single person who touches any part of your business or product, no matter what they’re working on.
2. Anything That Takes Longer to Explain Than to Actually Do: Have a quick task you want to get off of your list of responsibilities? If you can pass it off to someone who already knows what to do, go for it. If it’ll take longer to explain the task than it is to actually do it, you may be better off doing it yourself — at least this once. If the task is something you need to do often, consider setting up a time later to bring your team up to speed. That way they’ll be ready to go next time you’re in a time crunch and need to pass it off.
3. Tasks That Involve Confidential Information: Confidential tasks that require your credentials, a PIN, or sensitive customer information often don’t belong in the bucket of tasks you’re looking to offload. Need to grant someone else access so they can get stuff done? Smart tools like 1Password make it easy to share logins without giving out passwords or account info, while most software will allow you to set up accounts with limited access for banking, website management, and more. As you can imagine, this is also important when it comes to managing money. “It’s smart to hire a professional bookkeeper and accountant to make sure you’re legally keeping track of things the right way, but you should always be very involved in the numbers of everything. How much monthly sales and your expenses are, what your regular expenses are, what’s on auto-pay, and more,” McGoodwin confirms.
4. Things You Think Are Boring: Tasks you do often might not be engaging, but not all of them are fit to hand off to someone else. Before you delegate work just because it’s tedious, ask yourself if it truly makes sense to ask someone else to complete it. For example, it probably doesn’t make sense to assign writing captions for social posts to someone you brought on to help you manage money — even if they have less on their to-do list than you do.
5. Managing Tough or Emergency Situations: Every business owner deals with emergency situations sometimes, whether it’s an unhappy customer, website trouble, or something bigger, like not being able to fulfill orders. Though there may be parts of crisis management you can delegate when the unthinkable happens (such as updating customers), the communication, core message, and information should always come from you.
6. Client Pitching and Proposals: McGoodwin admits she made some early mistakes in business, and one of them was delegating client pitching and proposals to someone else on her team. Today, she advocates for staying involved with business accounts, clients, and the pitching process. “You know your company inside and out, your passion comes through to a client 100 percent of the time, and there’s no one that will create a better customer relationship than you,” she says, looking back. “Even more, any major revenue-generating part of your business should have a lot of your involvement.”
7. Your Business Culture and Team Vibe: “As you grow, you can hire all the amazing HR and culture folks you want… but there’s no one better at shaping the company culture than you,” encourages McGoodwin. “Always lead by example, and make sure your team has plenty of clarity around expectations and company direction.”
How do you decide which tasks to tackle yourself? Tell us on Twitter @BritandCo.
(Photos via Getty)