Why small business owners not able to delegate?

Small business owners often find taking most of the task on themselves. Non-delegation, on many occasion, becomes a bottleneck for the growth of the enterprise. The hands-on approach becomes harder to maintain. Despite knowing that delegation is one of the crucial roles of a leader, many fail to do so.

Some of the common reasons for non-delegation and challenges faced by most of the small enterprise owners are :

1) Self-enhancement bias: People who are perfectionist and feel it is easier to do themselves or their work is better than others

2) To maintain their importance: Some people think passing the work will detract from their influence. They fee their importance form the system would go away. The sense of insecurity holds then keep doing themselves.

3) Lack of self-confidence: Some do not want to get upstaged by their employee/ sub-ordinates /partners—they lack the confidence which does not allow then to part their work/responsibility with others.

4) Lack of trust: Some owners do not trust their employee. There can always be a debate on the reason for the same. Is it the employee does not do their bit to earn the trust of their owner or the owner does not do his bit? But the fact remains that due to this lack ness owner find it difficult to delegate.

It is always better than the owner explicitly communicate his trust and confidence in the employee's abilities. It helps to reinforce the team members committed to the company's cause and will relive the constant owner's effort of looking over his shoulder.

5) How do I know what to delegate: Many a time the challenge/dilemma owners face which result in non-delegation is " How to decide what to Delegate "?

A straight forward exercise many people use to find this answer is " to write how do they spend their day ". If you take this exercise, you will observe that while answering this question, you are not able to recall all the activities. When you try to start noting it down, you can find much low value / less important work eating away your time. Such small value /less critical activities can easily be a target for delegation.

Delegation is not merely passing the work. It is the process of identification, development (skill /knowledge ), motivation , observation and support to take the work/responsibility by others.

Though as an owner, it is hard to digest that it is essential for small enterprise to either have the capital to hire the right people, or you partner with the right people and work hard.

Delegation can be done verbally, but a well-documented delegation is always effective as it keeps everyone on the same page.

If you are planning to delegate some of your responsibility and finding some roadblocks or you want to more on the subject, please feel free to be in touch.

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