People often don’t take it seriously when you first ask them to help.
But ask again. Then ask again. This is an important first step to being delegatable.
If you can’t delegate it
If there is something you need to be responsible for, but your colleagues cannot take over that responsibility, then you need to provide for the task and become a manager.
When you start managing people, you learn more quickly than when you were a subordinate.
If you are not experienced enough to take on other people’s responsibilities, then you can’t be entrusted with them.
If you can’t improve them
Another responsibility which you cannot delegate is the responsibility of improving the employees’ job performance.
This means that you should be responsible for continually checking in with your employees and helping them improve.
This can be done in a variety of ways. You could tell them that you will give them feedback.
You could develop a grading system for performance which they report back to you on, then have a one-to-one or several-to-many meeting with them so you can provide feedback to them.
But if you don’t do this, or can’t do this, then you need to leave that responsibility for another manager.
If you can’t do it
If you know that you cannot take on another person’s responsibilities, or you know that you can’t improve the employee, then the best thing you can do is to resign.
This means that you need to do everything you can do your job, without having another manager do it for you.
This means learning the company’s processes. It means doing everything possible to avoid mistakes. It means giving feedback and helping employees when they need it.
Remember, if you don’t do your job, someone else will have to do it for you. And if they don’t do it well, you will likely lose your job.
Tips for accomplishing your responsibilities
If you know that you cannot do something, then doing it as best you can is a great approach. But there is another approach.
Instead of letting the responsibility for your responsibilities be on someone else, you can actually do it yourself.
Here are a few tips which can help you accomplish your responsibilities.
1. Learn to use the tasks which are delegated to you effectively
It’s tempting to want to take over all of the tasks which are delegated to you, but if you are not capable of performing them, then you are better off letting someone else do them.
When you delegate tasks to other people, they do the task well, and that gives you confidence that you can do them, too.
You need to make sure that the people you delegate the task understand exactly what needs to be done.
If you do this, then they can help you to learn it, and then they can help you to learn to do it well.
2. If you don’t know something, find out as much as you can about the job
If you don’t have specific training in the task you are given, you need to learn as much as you can about how to perform the task.
This means that you should find out the processes which are used for the job, and then learn how to do them.
Once you understand how to do something well, you will be able to manage the tasks which you are assigned.
3. Try to do the work in batches
If you are given a lot of different tasks or one single task which is likely to take a long time, then you should try to do as much as you can during the day when the people you work with aren’t around.
When they are around, then they will notice how little you have done.
When they notice it, they will expect you to pick up the pace and do more, then you will have to tell them that you can’t keep up with their expectations.
If you work like this, then the people you work with will be under a lot of pressure, and they will want to spend time talking to you when they are around, instead of doing the work.
They will need you to help them and you need to make sure you don’t let them down.
Here’s an example: If you are given a job that needs to be done tomorrow morning, then tomorrow morning you should start by getting a bunch of people together to come up with a plan to make the job easier and more efficient.
Tomorrow morning, you will be asked to do the same thing. Then the next morning, you will be asked to do it again. The third time you will be asked to do the task will be a lot easier for you, because you will already know how to do it.
You should try to make the work you do look as though you are moving as fast as you can so that you make sure that the people you work with do the work correctly.
This can help to ensure that you are given more challenging tasks which you can handle, and it can also prevent you from being overloaded.
4. Use a timer when you are concentrating
Sometimes you have to let things slide for a little while. But when you are doing a job that requires focus, then you need to set a timer and concentrate on the task.
If you try to do the task, then you will find that you get distracted by other things.
Instead of wasting time thinking about other things, then you should just set the timer and get back to work.
A timer can help you to stop wasting time on things that don’t need to be done.
