Are You Wearing Too Many Hats?

Are you wearing too many hats? Most Advisors are!   When advisors come to us they realize that they are wearing too many hats and want to delegate as much as they can but don’t know where or how to start. If you’re an advisor feeling that same way, you may find today’s article helpful.

It doesn’t matter what type of business you’re in –if you’re wearing too many hats, eventually you’ll get top heavy and the hats will begin to fall.  Even if you’re good at everything, the truth is, “doing it all” will eventually zap your energy and before long, you’ll be burned out, tasks will start taking longer to do, mistakes get made and the list goes on.  If you keep going something will eventually give, if not in your business, in your personal life or health.

The hardest part of delegating is where to get started, so with that in mind, we offer these tips.

HOW TO DETERMINE WHAT TO DELEGATE:

1. Determine What Needs Done. The first thing you’ll need to do is determine what exactly you do. Spend a week writing down everything that you do in a day, even if it’s to make the coffee. By the end of the week you should have a pretty good list.We can’t tell you how many times advisors will tell us that after they’ve made their list that they were amazed at just how many hats they were wearing. It’s no wonder they felt exhausted, overwhelmed and flat burned out.

2. Ask Three Questions. Next, go through your list and ask yourself these three questions about each task.

   A.  Am I skilled at doing this task?
   When you insist on doing tasks that you’re only halfway skilled at doing, you’re actually hurting yourself and your business. Why? First, it usually takes twice as long as someone who’s properly skilled and your work may not even be as good. Second, it takes you away from the tasks where you could make your most valuable contribution.B. Do I enjoy doing it?
   Even if you can do the job, every minute spent on doing something you don’t enjoy doing or aren’t efficient at is time lost on doing things that you love and will grow your practice.

   C.  Is this an activity that only I should do?
   An example of this might be meeting with clients, a prospect or attending a network meeting.

3. Decide what to Delegate first, second and etc.

Now look at your list: you should have a pretty good idea of what you want to keep doing and what you should delegate.

WHAT NOT TO DELEGATE

The first thing to decide is what you don’t want to delegate.  This should be your highest payoff activities for both you and your organization. This is where you experience the most satisfaction and make the greatest contribution. You want to do more of these kinds of activities.

TO BE DELEGATED:

Second, you’ll want to decide what to delegate first, second, and etc.

1. From your “To Be Delegated” list, pick out your lowest payoff activities. These are the ones you dread because you don’t enjoy them and you aren’t good at them. By hanging onto them, you’re holding you and your organization back. For most of our clients, this is usually Account Administration tasks i.e. completing account applications, transfers, follow-up, troubleshooting and etc.
2. Next, pick out tasks that aren’t as urgent as #1 but still drain you and keep you from doing your best work. For many advisors that we work with, scheduling and preparing for client meetings or marketing would fall into this category.
3. Tasks that are left are most likely tasks that you love doing but you aren’t particularly good at them. For these you need to ask yourself whether or not you could become competent with the right training, and do you have the time to train. Regardless, you should make a decision to get the training or give it up and delegate the task.

The first step to delegation is to get started.  Until you do, you won’t experience the happiness and business growth that you are dreaming of.  From our experience, once you get started taking off some of your hats, you’ll soon become a delegating pro and only wear your Best Hats from now on!