Delegate to your Virtual Assistant

Delegation can be daunting – how do you know which tasks to let go of and which tasks to work on yourself?

The Six T model is a great technique for identifying and pinpointing the tasks you can and should delegate so that you can focus on your core business. I’ve also rounded up my recommended tools for communicating those tasks.

You have multiple plates spinning. When you can empower your VA to take initiative because they can proactively and confidently determine which plates they can take from you, you know you’ve achieved an optimal collaboration process.

So, how do I confidently choose the tasks that I’m going to delegate? You have to ask yourself:

• What am I a bottleneck for?
• What do I consistently neglect or forget?
• What do I really hate doing?

As an example from your friendly, service-based sales expert, I will be honest and say I don’t like the cold parts of outreach because of the inevitable disappointment and anxiety that comes with rejection. But I thoroughly enjoy working on the relationship-building aspect of networking once I’m in the door. So, I delegate the cold parts of outreach, like cold calls and emails, to my VA.

At My VA Rocks, we use a brainstorming technique from Harvard Business Review called The Six Ts to identify tasks that are tiny, time-consuming, tedious, terrible, teachable, and/or time-sensitive. Once you’ve written down all of those items that fit the mold, you’ll be able to really understand which tasks should be delegated and prioritized.

You also want to be upfront with your VA about what’s in scope. For example, things like newsletters and outreach may be within obvious scope, but things like family calendars and committee work may not be as obvious. So long as you communicate the types of tasks that are expected of your VA upfront, expectations are set, and there is no room for miscommunication.

Imparting what’s in your brain to someone else isn’t always easy, but taking the time to communicate the task at hand fully will set you both up for success. Below are the tools I recommend for delegation.

Loom or Zoom

Loom is a video messaging tool where you can pre-record both yourself and your screen when imparting instructions and then instantly share the recording with your VA. You can also use Zoom to communicate the task live and use the recording function so that your VA can reference it when needed.

Asana, Trello, Jira

Project management tools are great for keeping all tasks, big and small, in one place for one source of truth as progress gets underway. If you have a preferred tracking spreadsheet, that works, too, so long as you both agree on where the most up-to-date progress is being tracked.

Impact Filter

When communicating the gravity of the task at hand, I like to recommend a resource called the Impact Filter. It’s a template that you can fill out with the project’s focus, importance, ideal outcome, and success criteria, or the results needed in order for the project to be considered a success. This allows the person taking the baton to really understand not only all of the components that need to get done, but what the real vision is to achieve impact. You can find the template in your assets folder.

Live Weekly Meetings

Fresh out of the shower, pajamas still on, morning coffee in hand, whatever the scenario, these meetings should be live! (And by live, we do mean Zoom, though in-person where possible is great.) And if that means they need to happen before you are your tip-top self, so be it. As helpful as digital tools are, you don’t want to rely entirely on them. To avoid things slipping through the cracks, it’s helpful to go through everything in Asana or your to-do tracker together at the beginning of the week. And let’s face it, to really achieve a natural groove with your VA, they have to get to know you as a person with facetime, not just through your task writing.

Bi-weekly meetings can also be helpful in the beginning until enough trust is built to reduce them to weekly meetings.

Slack

Slack is a great tool for mini-comms throughout the day.

So, how do I confidently choose the tasks that I’m going to delegate? You have to ask yourself:

• What am I a bottleneck for?
• What do I consistently neglect or forget?
• What do I really hate doing?

As an example from your friendly, service-based sales expert, I will be honest and say I don’t like the cold parts of outreach because of the inevitable disappointment and anxiety that comes with rejection. But I thoroughly enjoy working on the relationship-building aspect of networking once I’m in the door. So, I delegate the cold parts of outreach, like cold calls and emails, to my VA.

At My VA Rocks, we use a brainstorming technique from Harvard Business Review called The Six Ts to identify tasks that are tiny, time-consuming, tedious, terrible, teachable, and/or time-sensitive. Once you’ve written down all of those items that fit the mold, you’ll be able to really understand which tasks should be delegated and prioritized.

You also want to be upfront with your VA about what’s in scope. For example, things like newsletters and outreach may be within obvious scope, but things like family calendars and committee work may not be as obvious. So long as you communicate the types of tasks that are expected of your VA upfront, expectations are set, and there is no room for miscommunication.