Okay. Raise your hand if you have heard the mantra, don't just work in your business, work on your business. It sounds like a dream, doesn't it? I remember early on in my business wondering what that even meant. I remember just being so inundated with the work day to day that I didn't understand how I was supposed to escape the that. And not until I started hiring did I learn what that actually meant and realized that the secret to turning your dream into reality lies in the skill of delegation. It is so essential. You as a business owner cannot do everything in your business and accomplish the vision that you have. So with that said, delegation is incredibly important.

It's something that a lot of business owners don't have experience in. So they're not bringing the years of experience managing and leading other people to the table. They're just bringing to the table what they are so incredibly great at, the thing that they built the business to do to deliver. And when they're great at it, it makes it really hard to let go and to work on the business because they love what they do, they love what the business is about. But when you get delegation right, you open up doors to scalability, you improve your team's performance, you have the chance to focus on high impact activities that only you as the CEO can do. The thing is, when you get it wrong, you're in for decreased productivity, low morale and stalled growth. So there really are truly some benefits to delegation and that's why you need to delegate effectively. So what does it take to delegate effectively and what are the traps that can set you and your team up for failure? That's what we're going to dive into today.

I'm going to share with you the biggest delegation mistakes that you need to avoid. These pitfalls are going to cost you time, they're going to waste resources, it's going to cause you to lose credibility, and it's all going to happen while putting a cap on your business's potential. It will limit what is possible for you. Okay, so let's go through these so that you can avoid them. I don't want you to make these delegation mistakes. Now, the first mistake, and ironically the biggest mistake, is to not delegate at all. When you have the opportunity to choose to delegate, but instead you hold on to tasks that others could do. You're not leading, you're not stepping into your CEO role, you are bottlenecking your business.

When you hold onto it, you're limiting your business's growth. So that's the first mistake not delegating at all. The second is mismatch skill sets. What I mean by this is when you delegate a task to someone who lacks the skills to accomplish it effectively, that's setting them up for failure. And this is your responsibility as a leader to make sure that when you delegate to someone that they have that skillset, you need to know your team's strengths and weaknesses before assigning tasks. And you need to continue to provide the training and the resources and whatever they need to set them up to succeed. Okay? So if they don't have the skillset, it's your responsibility to get them up to speed or to choose someone else to delegate to. The third mistake is lack of clear instructions.

If you're not clear about what you want, don't be surprised if you don't get it. Too many business owners hand something off without clear direction and then they don't get back what they were hoping for. And maybe they had a vision in mind, or maybe they didn't take the time to properly prepare, but it's just not hitting the mark and it causes so many problems. You need clear, concise communication. You need to outline the desired outcome, the timeframe, any critical steps, any critical information that must be included or expectations, and provide that to the team member so that you give them the best opportunity to deliver their best work to you the first time. The next mistake is micromanagement. If you delegate a task, please allow the person to take ownership and actually follow through on that task. Providing too much oversight, too much checking in can not only be counterproductive, it can be demoralizing for your team.

So avoid that micromanagement. Give them autonomy and space to attempt the task on their own and then make sure that, yes, you'll follow up. So I'm not saying ignore it. Right? There is follow up, which is the next mistake actually is not following up or providing feedback after a task is completed. You need to make time to follow up, to have maybe a quick debrief to go over what went well, to talk about what could be improved. This is where the real growth happens. If your team member doesn't get it right the first time, you shouldn't just give up, right? You have to spend that time giving feedback and checking in, following up, holding them accountable to the clear directions that hopefully you gave them. And this is going to help your delegation skills improve.

It's also going to help your team members quality of work improve. The sixth mistake is abdicating responsibility. So this gets confused quite a bit. People think that they're Delegating because they hand off tasks, but they're actually abdicating. Delegation is not about dumping tasks that you don't want to do onto others and then walking away, forgetting about them, ignoring them. You need to remember that as a leader, you are still ultimately accountable for the outcome of any work that you delegate. And so checking in, regularly, providing that support, providing the feedback, the clear direction, all of the things we've been talking about are so incredibly important. You can't let go of your responsibility as a manager when you hand someone else responsibility.

The seventh mistake is reverse delegation. This happens when you delegate a task, but then you take it back before it's completed. Maybe you get impatient, maybe you start second guessing the person's capabilities, maybe you just get frustrated by the questions that they're asking or the work that they're delivering to you. And rather than giving feedback, you just say, I'll do it myself. Maybe your team member is actually gladly trying to hand it back to you and then get out of handling whatever challenge or problem they're facing, they're trying to give it back to you instead. That is all reverse delegation. No matter why it's happening, it undermines trust and it wastes everyone's time. If you've handed off a responsibility, let it go unless there's a critical reason to intervene.

And if your team member tries to give it back to you, then make sure that you keep the responsibility with them and you empower them to go figure out a solution. Mistake number eight is overloading your top performers. Now this one's tough because when you have someone who is so incredible, so reliable, they always deliver great work. It's really tempting to just give them more work. That's referred to as rewarding someone with more responsibility. And sometimes a team member wants more responsibility, but sometimes they don't have the capacity for it. And when they don't have capacity and you keep piling on tasks, it not only risks burnout for them, it also neglects the development of other team members who could be learning from doing those tasks or creating those results. And so I want you to make sure that you look at capacity of your team and that you spread the work around and you actually give it to the person who is in the role that is responsible for that task.

I've seen other business owners hand off responsibilities to a different team member who was a top performer, even though it had nothing to do with their day to day job. And that individual would get so burnt out, even though they perform well most of the time. It always leads to a phase of burnout. And I've just seen too many times really great team members walk away because they can't handle more. So avoid overloading your top performers. In the end, mastering delegation is about more than just offloading tasks. It's about strategically allocating resources. It's about developing your team's capabilities.

It's about creating a culture where everyone is aligned and empowered to contribute their best work. But when you avoid these common mistakes and you implement best practices with delegation, by doing the opposite of everything we just discussed, you can step fully into your role as a CEO, focusing on high level strategy and decision making responsibilities that drive real growth. That is where your business needs you to be. Your business needs you in the CEO role. So the next time you find yourself bogged down with tasks that other people on your team could do, or maybe you find yourself second guessing a delegation decision, I want you to revisit this list. Because this list, when you revisit it can save you time. It might just save you time, money, and a whole lot of headaches. So stay focused on what is possible.

Stay focused on your ideal CEO role and delegate like a pro, because that's how high performing teams are built.