Gene Marks on Delegating

 
Delegation is an ability every manager needs to have. Business expert Gene Marks discusses how effective delegation can benefit a business owner.
 

Video Transcript

When people talk about some of the weaknesses or some of the things that they need to know to be a successful business owner, you know, I – I know a lot of successful people, way more successful than me, that started at very, very small levels. And the, the root cause of many of those successes is delegation. Delegation is what strong managers do and if you're going to make the big bucks in life, if you want to be successful, in the end you're going to be a manager. Unless you are some great artist, or you're a professional football player, or you're a rock star, you're going to manage people. And even at the highest level, the largest companies, the people that are the CEOs and the senior VPs of those companies, they got there, for the most part because they're good at managing groups of people. In other words, they're good at delegating, right? So, you've got to be thinking, if you run your own business, whenever something comes up, some issue, some problem, some opportunity, some something, um, the best small business owners I know, the first thought that comes into their mind is who's going to do that for me? And the worst ones that I know, the ones – when I say worst, the ones that just aren't as successful as others – are the ones that are like, oh, I just got this new thing to do. Where am I gonna find the time to do that? Maybe sometime over the weekend – whatever, right? The smartest people delegate. And you hear the phrase about delegator die. I'm not one in for clichés, but it really is true. That really is true. So, you know, I think that the reason why I've been able to have a really good work/life balance in my company, um, is because I am, I am a selfish, lazy guy, and when, ah, but things do come up, when a problem, one of the first thing that always comes up to my mind is who's going to take care of this? Who's going to take care of that? So, not that I don't keep in touch with it, making sure that it's getting done and it's being managed, but, um, I delegate a lot because I know what I know, and I have other people that work for me that are much better at what they do than I am. So let them do what they gotta do and I gotta have trust in them to do their jobs. So, delegation is an enormous, enormous strength of the best business owners that I meet.

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