How brokers can learn to let go

Brokers are often driven, self-starters who like to get things done right – but does that have to come at the cost of doing everything yourself?

Ed Nixon, owner of Trilogy Financial Services, says brokers often struggle to “let go”.

“That’s a challenge a lot of brokers have, you have to learn to delegate. Yeah there’ll be mistakes, and you’ll need to fix them, but that’s all part of the learning process.”

Nixon, who employs ten staff at his brokerage, says the key to not pushing yourself too far, is to have faith in your staff to do things on their own.

“You need to back your staff a little bit and believe in them; learn to let go.”

Entrepreneur author and business consultant Victor Cheng, offers three ways brokers can learn to pass the baton.

1. Document the process

“In most small businesses, the knowledge about how to do everything is stuck inside the entrepreneur's head,” says Cheng.

“In situations where employees lack knowledge, the employees will either guess what is supposed to be done or constantly pepper you with questions that take longer to answer than just taking action yourself.”

Cheng offers three ways to document step-by step procedures for how to complete a commonly performed task within your brokerage.

1. Write a procedural manual describing how to perform a task.
2. Create a checklist describing the steps - assuming your employees already have the skills to do each step but often forget or skip steps.
3. Make a video using your smartphone as you perform the task, explaining aloud what you are doing and why you are doing it.

2. Document decision-making guidelines

“To grow a business without driving yourself crazy, you can't delegate only the tasks to others. You have to delegate decisions to others as well,” says Cheng.

“The key to getting others to make good decisions is to provide them with the implicit decision-making guidelines you personally use.”

In Cheng’s own business, he gave his employees three key criteria he would use to evaluate any customer-service related decision, and asked them to follow that, rather than ask him, if a decision came up.

“So far, they have made the same decision I would have made 98 per cent of the time. Best of all, there have been virtually no meetings, phone calls or emails to discuss these decisions.”

3. Create a schedule

Creating a list of daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly tasks that need to be done make sure that not only do things get done right, but they get done on time, says Cheng.

“Most entrepreneurs subscribe to the philosophy ‘If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself’. This mantra, accepted by many small-business owners as fact, is only half true,” says Cheng.

“If you want something done right once and you have no other time commitments, then the fastest way, in fact, is to do it yourself. However, if you want something done right repeatedly, day-in and day-out, all day long, and you don't have the time to do ten full-time jobs all at once, you can't do it yourself.”