How To Delegate Effectively To A Virtual Assistant
It may seem easy to delegate to your virtual team; create a task, assign it to an employee and give a deadline. However, there’s more to virtual delegation than appointing a responsibility within a certain time-limit. Delegating to remote employees has its own challenges.
Communication is one of the biggest obstacles you’re bound to come across when virtually delegating. Members of your virtual team might not understand the tasks you delegated to them. It could also be possible that you have assigned a duty to an individual who isn’t capable to do it but they’re afraid or nervous to admit. Another issue which can complicate delegation would be mistrust and suspicion. Having a virtual team, you’re expected to share passwords and even some personal information. Thinking of the bad possibilities will make it hard for you to trust your virtual team in the beginning.
Despite the difficulties, while it needs preparation, commitment and hard work, it’s still possible to have a productive and effective virtual team. Here are a few tips and tricks that can help you excel in the art of virtually delegating tasks.
1. Know the Team. Discover more details other than their skills and background history. Go further, explore their personality traits, and learn their strengths and weaknesses. Knowing how your virtual team behaves and interact with each other is critical for you and themselves. That way, you can increase your mutual trust as well.
2. Develop Trust. One of the most challenging to develop in the virtual world is trust. As the virtual leader of the team, you need to be able to inspire and improve each member. Take time to engage in interpersonal communications. It may feel uncomfortable at first, but it’s a good way to get started.
3. Have Good Communication. It often occurs that your virtual team members are not available at the same time because of living in different time zones or flexible working hours arrangements. Provide your virtual employees with detailed information about their routine activities. One way of keeping on top of task updates is by using a project management tool.
4. Divide Projects. Being a project manager as your key role, discuss and assign projects to members of your team, either on a one-on-one basis or in groups. If a task can’t be done by one person, break it into smaller parts and assign different parts of the task to others.
5. Eliminate Micro-management. Recommend a timeline, set some guidelines and let them know when and how to update you. Providing advice or mentoring them along the way if they inquire is still acceptable, but delegating a task to someone then micro-managing them in every step of the process should be avoided.
6. Regular Feedback. To be aware of their progress, you should send regular feedback to your virtual assistants. Discuss how they are doing their jobs, and suggest possible changes they can make to work more effectively. Regular meetings and progress updates can be used to evaluate their tasks and guide them when they find themselves in a challenging situation.
Working with a remote staff or virtual assistant can be challenging at first. However, as you develop your leadership and delegation skills you’ll reap the benefits of freeing up your time to focus on strategic works.