Actually, you want to make yourself dispensable. I know, if you are not required to do your job, you’re not needed at all. Why would you want that? Once your boss finds out no one needs you, you would be out of a job.

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, it is exactly the goal you should have.

Have you ever found yourself in the uncomfortable position of having a new important deadline to meet while you are extremely busy? When you really can not be deflected from what you are doing, you better stick to the task at hand.

That’s the time to exercise your delegation skills and get a staff member to help you out! The situation gets even more difficult if you seem to be the “only one” who can do the new job.

If that’s the case, you will find yourself never going home. If you are the chief, you have limited the growth of your company to you and only you.

Why? If you are the only one who can do something, every thing has to stop to wait for you to show up and do it.

Delegation—the act of authorizing a subordinate to execute some of your work on a temporary basis.

This skill is a vital way to maximize your personal productivity. Everything that you do everyday does not have the same level of importance. Think about this. If you have ten things to do, most likely one is the most important and another is the least.

That does not mean that it does not need to get done, but rather, you may not be the one to do it.

Becoming a highly skilled delegator will enable you to truly get the most vital done every day. Plus everything you have agreed to gets done.

Delegating becomes a necessary part of aligning resources to achieve the plans, goals and objectives of your organization. It really does not matter if it is the entire company or a small department.

When you have accepted an overall plan it will fall to you to determine the most effective and productive way to carry it out. If you are skillful most will naturally be allocated to certain positions within the team. Think of delegating as a temporary assignment activity. As a result of these assignments, the team will become powerful.

You may know, or may be, a “mother hen”. This is a person that really only goes through the motions of assigning work to people. In fact, this type of person cannot be a very effective manager since they are unable to develop performance expectations of anyone. Instead or nurturing, they tend to smother others.

Think of this objectively. Anyone who thinks they have to do it all will limit themselves to their personal band-width. A highly productive person gets more done then they can personally do.

If you can do this effectively—always getting more done than you can personally do—you can always do more. If you are always someone able to do more, you are someone we will always promote.

If you are a “chief” with these skills the sky is truly the limit.