Task overload is common at every tier of management right the way through the organisation. The requirement is always for growth, the customer demands only ever increase, and the marketplace is more competitive regardless of sector. Responsibilities accumulate slowly, like unwanted gifts or highly specific tools, and it’s easy to find yourself one morning opening either your shed door or calendar app and pondering the benefits of just torching the whole thing and walking away. 

Sharing this workload with your team (or household) is the only way to make headway, and it’s also an essential part of developing them in their career (or your household). Empowering your team is important for them, for you, and for the business. An empowered team is more engaged with their work and feels a greater sense of achievement when the business succeeds. Giving individuals greater responsibility enables them to develop in their role and achieve more for the business. And as a manager, developing a successful team supports both the business and your own career. 

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Start simple, and start with a plan

Like so many things in both business and life, success comes from preparation in advance, and consistent communication through delivery. Put the time in to understand your team and your objectives first, then create a broad structure for how they can be delivered that leaves room for your team to develop and deliver the solutions themselves. 

Above all, have a structure that enables continuous review of both overall progress and individual team member goals. It shouldn’t be burdensome - “have fewer meetings” is one of the great rules of successful teams - and where possible, you should use an online task management tool like Workiro that brings data and reporting together into a single view, so you can see at a glance how your team is progressing. 

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1. Review your task and identify what can be delegated

It’s very common for managers to feel that the world is on their shoulders and they have to do everything themselves, but this is a recipe for personal burnout and business underperformance. Start by giving yourself the hard rule that you have to delegate, even if it doesn’t feel possible - evaluate your workload and find what can be passed on.

• Is each task serving the business objectives I’ve been set? If it isn’t, then reconsider if it’s even worth doing - it’s easy to accumulate busywork that doesn’t serve the overall business goal
• What are the tasks that can only be done by me? Be brutal, here - put ego aside 
• Which tasks are taking me the most time? A simple audit of what you spend your time on will indicate the major time sinks, which are ripe for delegation
• What tasks can I hand off to somebody else?
• Once I’ve got that list of tasks - who in my team would benefit from taking this on? 

If it’s a new or junior team, it’s fine to start with delegating smaller tasks, like routine book-keeping or administration. If that’s the case, break down larger objectives into smaller jobs that can be safely delegated. As team members develop, they can and should be trusted with more responsibility.

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2. Find out how team members work best, and create a structure that supports it

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The day-one challenge in team management is that all people are different, they have different specialisations and work in different ways, and it’s vanishingly rare for an entire team to arrive with the perfect skillset and the same approach to getting things done (if this happens, cherish your time with this team while it lasts). Some people work best as solo operators and will chafe against others getting involved, while others do their best work as part of a group. Everybody gets upset when they feel they aren’t being treated fairly.

The first step is to review each team member’s past performance, and then ask them directly what work they most enjoy, and how they best like to work. Then, create a team structure that supports this, and assign tasks and projects accordingly. Make sure that roles are clearly communicated, so everybody knows what’s expected of them personally - this also prevents individual members taking on too much work, which can cause tension and team issues later on. Be clear up front and you won’t find yourself having stressful conversations further down the line.

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3. Clearly set out goals for the team overall, and each individual member

To effectively empower your team, each team member needs to know and understand the overall objective, and what they individually need to deliver in service of it. Be specific about outcomes and deadlines - for instance, a junior member may need to complete a data entry task by a certain date, while a more senior member would need to complete a reconciliation process or complete a client review. 

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4. Explain the “how” - but don’t micromanage

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This might seem counter-productive when you’re trying to empower your team - you want them to achieve things without your guidance, after all! - but often people have different expectations of the “right” way to do things, and that can cause friction when in teams even when everybody wants to work well together. Set a clear code of conduct and ensure that everybody knows it - but leave people open to find the best solution to each problem. 

Micromanagement is among the most hated corporate experiences, with research by Trinity Solutions indicating that 73% of employees felt micromanagement had impacted their job performance - and a key focus of empowering your team is giving them the opportunity to find the best solution. Set the rules - including available resources and “red lines” that shouldn’t be crossed - but give people the room to come up with their own solutions. They might not be very good solutions, at first, but helping people to understand why is a key step in empowering them to come up with better ones.

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5. Have a very clear feedback loop - which doesn’t mean more meetings

An essential part of empowering your team is regularly checking on progress and providing support if necessary. A clear calendar - weekly or monthly - to review progress aligns with clear goals, and means you can give constructive feedback and catch any problems as they arise. It doesn’t mean adding more meetings to your workload, either. By using Workiro to bring your business data into one place, you can monitor progress on key tasks like client communication and document approvals from within a single interface. That makes it easy to monitor progress and follow up with feedback if required, and you can save longer conversations for your next 1:1 with your direct reports.

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6. Involve your team in decision-making

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One effective first step to empower your team to make decisions is asking them how to solve specific problems. Fresh eyes can often bring new approaches that reflect the current state of the business. Make sure that you share relevant data and insights - for instance, your knowledge of prior campaigns or customer behaviour - and keep an open mind about responses. Hold the mantra “there are no bad ideas” - you’ll probably get some responses that prove otherwise, particularly from junior staff members, but if you show your working on why things aren’t possible, you guide people in the direction of things that are.

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7. Don’t slow things down by adding new tools

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It’s tempting to think that there’s a tool out there that will magically solve any given problem - but every new tool adds more complexity and reduces time spent solving real problems. A recent study from Dimensional Research showed that 44% of professionals waste a “significant” amount of time switching between apps, and that’s not including the time spent learning how to use them in the first place. Effective empowerment doesn’t need a specific tool, just good communication - a document management system like Workiro links your existing apps like Office365 and Oracle NetSuite, and links your files directly to your task list. 

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8. Always call out and reward positive behaviour

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A key part of empowering employees is rewarding them when they get it right, and the very first step is calling out good behaviour. Direct feedback to each team member confirms they’re taking the right steps, and highlighting it to the wider team - even by a simple group email or Slack callout - reaffirms your expectations for them all and demonstrates how you’re supporting everybody. Praise for work well done is simple, quick to deliver, instantly rewarding for even the most jaded recipient and completely free - give it out whenever you can.

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9. Trust your team, and demonstrate that they can trust you

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The truly essential ingredient for team empowerment is trust.

You need to trust your team members to deliver on their goals without you looking over their shoulder at all times - and they need to trust you to support them in that. By matching up employee skills and working styles with the right goals, you should be able to trust them to deliver - and by effective support, you build their trust in you which enables them to make decisions with the confidence you’ll back them up. And that means being supportive even when things go wrong: some mistakes are inevitable, but by showing how to make things right, you involve people in the solution and position them to avoid it in future.

Get your New Year off to the best start by reviewing your workload and coming up with a plan to empower your team - and take a look at how Workiro could help that and save you more time besides by booking a call or joining a group demo.