"If you give me a lever and a place to stand, I can move the world."

Archimedes may have being talking about the power of the fulcrum in physics, but he pretty much nailed the importance of delegation for the successful manager.

Trying to get things done as a manager without using delegation is like trying to move a giant object without a lever - it may be possible, but it's incredibly inefficient, and you run the risk of looking like a crazy person.

Using effective delegation is the quickest way to get more out of less - to use a hackneyed phrase, delegating to your team really does make 2 + 2 = [some number more than 4]. Not delegating simply makes you the bottleneck for everything that you and your team are trying to achieve - nothing can move faster than your personal processing speed.

Here are six steps you can take to improve your delegation skills

1. Determine What you are Going to Delegate
The best way to decide what do delegate is to adopt the philosophy that you will "only do what only you can do" and then delegate the rest. Write down a list of all the tasks and activities you have for the next week or month. Which of these are tasks and activities that only you can do? Concentrate your time and effort on these tasks and delegate the rest.