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The 6-Step Model That Makes Delegation Actually Stick · Leading in Change

• Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Gloria from Success Labs. Speaker 1: And I'm Adrian and this is the Leading In Change podcast. And today we are going to be talking about delegation. So Gloria, let's start with an icebreaker before we dig into it. Okay. I would love to hear what is something you are excited about or looking forward to. ⁓ Speaker 2: ⁓ lots of stuff, but one thing I'm excited about is I'm doing a comedy show ⁓ next Friday, the 29th. And it's ⁓ it's kind of like the Saturday Night Live show, but also a little Carol Burnett, if you're more my age. And so we do skits and stand up and music. And I'm very excited this time because we actually have our special guest host, is the mayor. of Baton Rouge, Sid Edwards. So I got to meet him, I got to meet people from his staff, and it's just been a lot of fun writing and coordinating that with them. Speaker 1: That's so cool. I love it. I'm excited for that too. Me too. ⁓ what am I excited about? I am well, first of all, you are legitimately like a hilarious comedian. So I'm sure it's gonna be a good show. So that is gonna be next Friday. And the night ⁓ the night after that, I'm having my birthday party. ⁓ it's like Mount Olympus descends to my backyard if the weather holds out. So, you know, we'll see how that goes. For sure. ⁓ Speaker 2: Yeah, what's going on with you? ⁓ twenty nine. I remember, yeah. Speaker 1: crossing my fingers and saying players. okay, so let's dig into delegation. Like why why are we talking about this? ⁓ why does it matter? Why is delegation important? Speaker 2: it's important because that's really at the end of the day when we talk about leadership and we talk about especially supervision, right? When you have people, ⁓ you have the a capacity of a team. So, you know, their ability to get work done, their willingness to get work done. And as leaders, we need to utilize it. You know, capacity ⁓ lost is never is is never regained. So when we're not delegating, we are losing production. We're losing, you know, ⁓ the creativity of our people. We're losing everything really associated with how we use time at work and in our daily lives. So it comes up ⁓ almost every coaching engagement, ⁓ certainly for first line supervisors, but it's not unique to them. ⁓ you know, department managers, really anyone, letting go of things is by definition difficult for people who excel at work. ⁓ they're really good at getting things done. and they're truly committed. So they really care about the quality of it. They care that it's on time. They care that their name is on it. And, you know, they care how it's done because a lot of times they're invested in the process of getting it done. They put a lot of work into that. And so, you know, by nature, people who are truly committed and good at what they do, have a lot of trouble letting go of things that are important to them. So it comes up with, I would say just about every coaching engagement I have. And even even coaching engagements for people who are not leaders with authority. They lead through influence. ⁓ That influence is needed to get work done through other people. So ⁓ it's a it's a universal ⁓ challenge. Speaker 1: Yeah. That I I see the same thing as well. I think that one of the things that's hard for people to click about delegation is they don't understand it's going to limit their own potential and the potential of others, right? Like if other people don't get those training and development opportunities, they're not going to be able to get up to the next level. So then it's going to be harder to justify moving you up if you don't have people that can come behind you. But also if you're stuck in the weeds of the work, you're not doing the job that you're supposed to be if when when you're a manager, right? Absolutely. How do you articulate that? That your job now as the manager is different from when you're the doer? Speaker 2: can I tell tell a little story? Yeah. ⁓ for those fans of Downton Abbey. Yeah. the the ⁓ the Lord Grantham once ⁓ took aside ⁓ the new Matthew who came and didn't want to have a valet, didn't want to have, you know, the servants, and was dressing himself and so forth, and felt like, you know, ⁓ I can do all these things myself. And ⁓ he took him aside and said, ⁓ you are denying these people of a livelihood. this is what they're hired to do. What are they gonna do if they don't have these positions? And I know that was a long time ago, but you really are. We we deny our employees the opportunity to to do what we get to do. And and typically I will ask let's say one of my clients hires someone new. And a lot of times I'll hear them say, well I don't want to inundate them, right? I don't want to frighten them away. And I said, okay, let's put that aside a minute. ⁓ let's remember back when you first got your job, first day on the job. How excited were you? And they they were like, I was very excited. And I said, What happened? Well, I sat around for a while because nobody had time to to to do anything with me. And it took a while to get the kind of work that challenged me, that excited me about work. And and you know, their answering. their their own problem. Yeah. I'm nodding and they're getting it. I'm like, yeah. I would have wanted someone to throw at me things until I say uncle. Yeah. Speaker 1: That are meaningful, right. People want meaningful work. Speaker 2: They even want work, right? They want stuff to do. Yeah. the, you know, the the better you you get at it, the more meaningful you want it to be to you. But at the end of the day, people want stuff to do. ⁓ they want to contribute, they want to show that they're capable and that they have ⁓ something to contribute to the organization. So it you know, you you don't want to deny them that. You you want to treat them as as you want it to be treated. Speaker 1: There's a saying that I can't remember who said this to me, but if all the foods on your plate, the people around you are gonna go hungry. And so when you think about it literally like that, you're starving your people of opportunity. It if I think it can be a helpful reframe. Absolutely. So I wanna talk about like why is it so hard? Like what are some of the misconceptions that people have about delegation? I heard you say a second ago, it it takes longer. It it's you know, I don't have time for it. Speaker 2: Yeah. It's interesting because they're not misconceptions. Those are very real. So ⁓ the challenges of delegation often I hear are it's about time and trust. I don't have time to do it, to, to explain this to you. By the time I do explain it to you, I could have done it myself three times. I have I don't have time to really think and organize around passing off work. ⁓ and then the other is is trust. They don't do it. They're not going to do it as well as I do it. It still has my name on it. I can't just, you know, if something goes wrong and somebody says, what happened? I can't say, well, I don't know. I delegated that. Yeah. The buck still stops with you. So those things make it incredibly difficult to delegate. And so I don't call them misconceptions. I call them that's true. Right. But here's what's also true is you're never going to get out of that until you start. Speaker 1: Stops with you. Speaker 2: Delegating. That is the only path to not doing so much work yourself or not doing that type of work yourself. The only path is to get somebody else to do it. Yeah. So it's, and I think that's what makes it, you know, I'm not just ⁓ telling someone, hey, think about this a different way. Yeah. ⁓ the big a challenge with delegation is you have to do it. That's the only way to get the benefit of it. I call it the pain and the game. The only way to get the payoff of an of delegation is to make the investment. Yeah. That's it. Speaker 1: makes sense. Okay, so I'm gonna shake things up. I think that's a good segue to then how do you delegate well? What does good delegation l look like? How do you train teach someone to effectively delegate? Speaker 2: ⁓ again, incredibly hard. Yeah. Because it goes against the grain of ⁓ the type of person who will ⁓ get promoted into, who will climb to that level where they need to start delegating. ⁓ it's letting go of some good habits, what I call. So it's those are all great traits, right? We we love a control freak when they work for us, ⁓ not so much when we have to work for them. Yeah. And organizations don't benefit when their leaders, their higher level individual contributors continue to exhibit, again, those good traits ⁓ because it it doesn't then ⁓ allow for delegation. So one thing about delegation, so when I teach this subject, it's not just, ⁓ just delegate, right? We're gonna start with this model. There's so much that goes into it. ⁓ you need to be self aware. You need to understand what your approach is to time. What are your true expectations around work? ⁓ one thing that I like to challenge my my learners with is when you tell someone that this needs to be done by the end of the day, when do you go and follow up on it? And they get a little sheepish and there's and they say, Well, I kind of start creeping up on them at 10 in the morning. And I'm like, interesting. Why? Well, because I'm afraid it's not gonna get done. Right. Yeah. And so I say, then why are you telling them the end of the day? Why don't you tell them 10 a.m.? And they're like, well, I don't wanna be a micromanager. It's like, that's not micromanagement. If that's something that you're comfortable with, then you gotta be transparent about it, right? Speaker 1: reminds me of the phrase clear is kind. You know, you're not doing anybody a service to pretend like this what, you know, being our clear on what done looks like. Done is at 10 a.m. I I have at least a first draft, right? And maybe the final version is due end of day. Speaker 2: If if that's what you're comfortable with, if that's how you're going to be comfortable turning loose of something, then be clear about that. Look, this isn't due until the end of the day, but I would like to see it at 10 because, you know, because I'm worried about it. Yeah. Just be frank, but just be open with those kind of conversations. I love that. And in that openness, you change from, you know, why you bird dogging me when you told me end of day to Very clear. I gotcha. I understand. You're nervous. You're helping me to be successful. You want to be successful. And it just changes the whole thing. One small thing like that is just to to talk about it, to say, This is my expectation and here's why. So Speaker 1: It it reminds me of building in checkpoints too. Yes. Like so many people will delegate a task and we can talk about how do you set up d that delegation on the front end. I'd love for you to talk through that. But once you've done that, not checking in until it's due. And it's like you've got to build in those checkpoints to calibrate along the way. This is what you've done that's great. Here's where you're going too deep, right? Sometimes like you'll see that or you're off on a tangent. And so it helps. Calibrate them and keep them on track. Speaker 2: Yes. Also helps calibrate you because so say more. Yeah, because ⁓ so when we delegate, right? So we talked about self-awareness, how how am I, how are other people, what is their approach to work, how do I adjust my approach so that they're successful? ⁓ you have to it's so communication, right? We're starting to talk about talking with someone else, explaining something. So there's a whole communication piece that happens. And so those things, skills in those areas are required to be an effective delegator. You know, it's not why don't you just delegate? Okay, well there's no just in delegation the same because it's complex. So when we start with a model for delegation, the first thing is tell them what you want them to do. And you know it's like, okay, well duh, it's not as easy as it sounds. We have a lot of assumptions. We tend to forget small steps, especially if it's if we have a lot of expertise in it. We're not remembering, ⁓ that step, ⁓ that screen looks like this, or I need to consult with that person or check this. Speaker 1: You don't know what you know. It's it's like hard to see the knowledge that you have that hasn't been transferred to this person. Speaker 2: Absolutely. It's like, you know, when you're driving home from work, giving somebody else directions, even though we don't have to do that anymore. But basically my car drives itself home. I don't even think about how many streets do I pass before I get to to where I turn. It's it's routine, right? So it's kind of the same way with things that we do, the type of work that's typically delegated, at least in the early ⁓ years. is work that is more routine and so forgetting skipping that and so be clear ⁓ one thing i like to ask my students is ⁓ have you ever told a child to clean their room and most people have and i say how many of you are sat were satisfied with the result of that and everybody's like no right yeah so you know when we delegate it's not hey clean your room it's okay I want you to take you know Don't shove dirty dishes under the bed. ⁓ pick up all the laundry, you know, put these things away. We're very specific and detailed with what what is our definition of a clean room? That's gonna differ from an eight-year-old's definition of a of a clean room, or certainly a 15-year-old's definition of a clean room, if you've ever raised teenagers. So being really clear with describing that. Speaker 1: That it something you said earlier is describe what you want to get done, not necessarily how. So giving people the freedom to do it in the order that they want, maybe if that's possible, if it's not super process oriented, but you know, approach it their own way, but make the outcome really crystal clear. There's this analogy that a coach I used to work with would call it the ice cream shop. And so I'm gonna go on tangent with a short story. It in this ice cream shop, the owner kept going through staff. He couldn't find anybody that would keep it clean to his satisfaction. And so he had this long checklist that kept growing, you know, wipe down the counters, refill the napkins, refill the ice cream containers, mop the floor. I mean, you can think of all the things that kept going on this checklist was to and so people would just get fed up with it. And like he kept having turnover. And finally, you know, somebody came along and and said, okay. What I'm hearing is you want it to look like opening day. And he was like, Yes, it needs to look like opening day at the ice cream shop. That's a clear picture in your mind. It's like opening day is bright, shiny, everything is full, everything is fresh. It's not you. It's special. And so that clarity of vision, okay, it becomes a lot easier to execute on that. You know that the wrapper on the floor is not going to be there opening day because nobody should have been in here before opening day. Speaker 2: Used. Right. Absolutely. I think being clear with those, and you had mentioned something about unless it's very process oriented, give them the freedom. And and again, knowing your people, how they do stuff, but knowing yourself too. So I think it's okay when you're describing what you want done. Again, we're going back to transparency to say, this is the result I'm looking for. This is the first time I've delegated this this. So I want you to do it exactly this way. Are there multiple ways to do this? Yes. But this first time, please do it this way. Once once we get this nailed, you understand it more. I'm gonna back off and then do back off, right? Unless again, it's very much, you know, process or compliance oriented. But it's okay to start out with that. Again, you know, when we talk about when when when I talk about delegation, there's the task itself, there is the person's ability to do it. their motivation to do it. And then there's you. That's an important factor, right? What is my comfort level with turning loose of this stuff? And often that's the biggest key is how comfortable am I? Because once you okay, I'm going to define this in a way that I'm going to be able it might still be a little bit scary, but that's going to help me turn loose of this. Yeah. And then you start to give flexibility or autonomy. if that's appropriate. ⁓ and so, you know, what what you're doing, and then with that transparency, you're moving from someone perceiving someone to be a micromanager to, no, I'm just, you know, I'm just intelligently turning loose of this. ⁓ Micromanagement is a term we throw around. We use it to define anyone who is ⁓ concerned with details, checking in frequently, insisting on things being done a certain way. We just call that a micromanager. Well, it's not micromanagement in a negative sense if the person needs that to do the job successfully. It's micromanagement when the person doesn't need it. Let's say they've done it five times, they've been successful, and you're still on them like that. All right, now we're probably talking about micromanagement. Yeah. But not the first time. We're just talking about good guidance, right? We're talking about being smart about it. Speaker 1: Love that. That's such a good distinction. ⁓ okay, so I'm gonna try to recap what I heard. Number one, you need to be really clear when you are handing off the task of how do I want this to get done? What does success look like? Yes. So articulating not only the end product, but how I do it. Yes. Walk them through that. Yes. ⁓ I heard that you need to match the task to the person. So their skill and their competence. competency in that is a factor, right? So if someone doesn't have any experience doing this thing, you might need to be more hands-on and micromanage a little bit more early. And then you let go as they gain more experience. ⁓ we said build in checkpoints. So so check in and and help calibrate along the way and and build those checkpoints to your comfort level. I love that you said that, right? Speaker 2: To your comfort level and to the level that is needed. If you have something that's not due for three months, don't wait two months and three weeks before you check on it the first time. There will be no time to get it back on track if it has gotten off track. So build those in in a smart, in a smart way, in a safe way. Yeah. Speaker 1: That's a great ⁓ and then I think also let mistakes be part of the process, right? Like have the level of mistake that you're comfortable with happening so that way they can learn from them. Speaker 2: Right. If it's something where a mistake cannot be made, then you need to be with them every step of the process. You need to ⁓ make sure that they're flawless before you ever turn loose of it. And so really very few things are like that anymore. I mean, we automate that stuff, right? If it's so rigid. So, you know, it's but it's a good way to think about ⁓ you know, when do I turn when can I turn loose of this? When is this no longer delegation? And this is actually. It's theirs, right? And so again, moving toward that, you are going to develop people and what we talked about earlier with giving people a challenge and allowing them to do things, these are the first steps toward that. What one thing that I also ⁓ talk about is give them background, give them the why is this important. The context that is Speaker 1: the context. Speaker 2: That is motivating. And by motivating, I don't mean, ⁓ you know, this is so much fun. I mean motivating in terms of, you know, the seriousness of it, the impact, the consequences if it's not done appropriately, as well as the fun stuff, right? How I'm contributing, this difference that I'm gonna make. You have to be careful with that because let's say someone, let's say the task is, you know, has some risk and you have somebody who's brand new to it, but they're eager. Right. So if you've ever tried to train an eager person, you know, you realize you have to keep them pulled back, right? Maybe they're creative, they're eager to impress you with what they can do. there's nothing more dangerous at work than someone who doesn't know how to do something, but is extremely eager to do it. So you have to think about how much stuff do I give this person? You don't want to give someone Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: information that makes them think they understand more than they do. You might not want someone problem solving. You might want someone to go in and say, if it doesn't look exactly like this, I want you to stop and come get me. Right. I don't want you to troubleshoot. I don't want you to figure it out because of the complexity of this task or the consequences of trying to figure it out yourself. There's some tasks that you might say, if if you don't know, come up with some Some options, right? Again, depending on what is that task, depending on your comfort level. So that background you have to think about is this person gonna think for themselves when they're not qualified to think for themselves on this task? Again, trans. Speaker 1: Transparency. Yeah, I've got a ⁓ hard lesson that I learned in this. And I I think before I go into it, I I really resonated with me in what you just said is around the why and the context. And I think about like what's the audience for which you're producing this, let's call it like artifact thing, whatever process, whatever it is that you're doing. Like who is this for? Why is it important? I think all of that matters. I remember I was delegating at one point in my career. a a report out to someone on my IT team and it was to somebody who was like so pumped to get in there and and work on a report for the president. And so Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: know, he was just jazzed and so, you know, I I gave him very clear parameters, I gave it a very clear outline. I mean, so ended up over engineering this thing. I I just needed a piece of paper with some numbers on it. Right. Right. And I it was just data I needed extracted from the database, correlated in a specific way. Yeah. But went on to build it come, you know, I I checking in, he's like, I'm I'm working on it. Look, here's this. I'm like, okay, yeah, but I just need this. We get to, you know, two days in when I'm supposed to have this thing, and he's built this whole dashboard. None of the data is accurate because he hasn't he didn't understand the database schema as well as I thought he did. He had some bravado. Anyway, ⁓ so to me that was such a like a hard lesson in I don't care how eager you are. Right. I I ended up giving the task to the guy who hated it because he did it consistently every time. Yeah. And I said, you know what? We'll call this guy Gary. Right. I said, Gary, you're not touching this again until you sit with Michael and learn it really, really well. Right. And it was humbling, I think, for both of us. But that's to your point, you know, and imagine if that was in a control room, you know, at a plant or something like that. Speaker 2: Right. So it's not like more, more, more, right? More specific, more background, more context. No. Speaker 1: What's the right amount to effectively get the task done? Absolutely. And I think that the more someone, the more responsibility someone has within the organization, I think the more context is helpful for them. Right. So if their oversight is one small task, a little bit more context than that task is important. But if someone is overseeing lots of processes and tasks or an entire department, they need more context on how that fits in is kind of how I think about it. Right. Speaker 2: Right. Now you can talk about it because again, going back to motivation, ⁓ delegation is a great way to develop people, to coach and develop them, to motivate them, to make them feel like what they're doing and who they are is really important in the organization. So giving background and consequences, it's you know, but for you, we don't get this, right? And that's a powerful way to motivate everyone in the organization. Really, if you think about people who are responsible for the more routine tasks, maybe the they're not client facing, or you know, it's highly administrative in nature and they don't necessarily see right that to tie those to the greater goal of the organization in a way that's meaningful to them, right? These numbers that you're checking for accuracy, which is a tedious type of, you know, activity can be, ⁓ if these are wrong, here's what happens, right? Here's what that flows into. Yeah. So, you know, I I think still using background and and that information to keep people motivated to show how important they are, but a measured approach. And again, I'm gonna go back to transparency. Here's why I'm telling you this. I'm telling you this because you're an important part of this organization. however, at the same time, ⁓ if it doesn't look like this, if something looks off, stop. Yeah. Right. So I think we can do both, right? It's not an all or it's not an all and nothing. Speaker 1: Okay. We're going to go into a lightning round. Okay. I'm going to ask you some questions that have come from our audience. Okay. And ⁓ you know, around delegation. And I'm asking you this because you are, I think, the best person to answer them. Okay. ⁓ and we're going to talk about our essentials lab, which is really focused on frontline leadership here in a minute. But Gloria leads the Essentials Lab. And so this is some of the things that we talk about in this. Okay. So the first one is, you know. What do I do if I have no time to delegate? Speaker 2: ⁓ What do you do if you don't have time to delegate? So, ⁓ you know, I have a client who was not focusing on some higher level aspects of her job. And we investigated it. She's ⁓ I don't I just I don't have time. I'm doing all this stuff, all this stuff. And I look, you know, we took a look at it and I said, you need to choose one thing and you need to delegate it. And she said, I I can't. I don't have time to explain it to anyone. Nobody knows how to do what I do. I cannot delegate anything. So I thought about it a little bit and then I said, okay, here's the answer. You need to delegate two things. Which you know, maybe that's kind of funny, but it's true. Yeah. You will never, you will never feel like, I don't have anything to do today. I guess I will delegate. ⁓ it never happens. One, if that's your situation, then why why are you delegating? Right? It is the sign of I need to do it. And that's where, you know, we talked about misconceptions early. And and the reason I'm so averse to talking about it as a misconception is because it's true. You don't have time. And I want to validate that for people because they're sitting around thinking, why can't I do this? Why doesn't anybody understand I don't have time for this? And I say, I do understand, right? However, the hard truth is you will never have time until you turn loose of some stuff. Turn loose of it or automate it or delete it or just stop doing it. I mean, there's really no other answer for that. So with Adrian, I know that you're, you know, helping a lot of people with AI and ways to streamline work. And so when we talk about delegation in class, you know, we we do talk about okay, who can take something on? But one thing I challenge people to do is. Do you still have to do it? Yeah. Have you ever questioned the need to continue to do this task? Have you ever investigated can I use AI? Can I automate it? Can I hire a vendor to do this? And so really thinking creatively about that. ⁓ I used to work for Intel Corporation. At the time we had a we had a philosophy, ⁓ beg forgiveness versus ask permission. Speaker 1: I love that. Speaker 2: We needed to do our work cheaper, better, faster. This was in the 90s when we used to talk like this. And so the only way to do that was to continue to challenge the work that we were doing. So if you you go to somebody that you've been providing information to for years and you say, Hey, do you still need that information? They're gonna say, Well, yes, because nobody's got time to really think about that, right? But if you stop providing it and nobody hollers, that might be a sign. Maybe, maybe I don't need to do this. Maybe they can go find it themselves. Now, if they do holler, you're like, Okay, just testing, right? Yeah. But that type of culture really gives people that empowers people to test. Do we really even need to do this anymore? Yeah. And so, you know, that's my answer. I don't have time to delegate. I'm like, yeah, I feel you, right? Speaker 1: Right. And and you're never gonna have time if you don't delegate. Absolutely. Okay, I love that. Absolutely. Okay, here's another one. I try to delegate, but I end up doing it myself anyway. Speaker 2: Right. ⁓ it and I think the thing is why. Why do you end up doing it yourself anyway? So look at what happened. And often it's we run clear, ⁓ the person's not getting feedback, the person doesn't understand anything, what we've told them, and that's gonna be natural. That's gonna be actually kind of expected ⁓ originally. So really taking on that responsibility of okay, what did I not explain clearly enough? ⁓ the other thing that I want to mention here is ⁓ inability to do something is much different from a refusal to learn to do something. Same more. ⁓ we talk about so situational leadership is a great model that I touch on. It's it's ⁓ it's pretty thick, but it's excellent a model for really thinking about using the capacity of your team. If somebody cannot do something, then we have no business ⁓ punishing them for Their inability to do it. If someone refuses to learn, right? What so inability to do something is an issue of of skill, right? Can't do it. They need training, they need explaining. You need to be clearer, whatever, right? ⁓ refusal to learn is an issue of will. I will not learn to do that. That is something that needs coaching, possibly feedback, right? Possibly discipline. So really thinking about what's going on. If it's They can't do it, something's missing, right? Do they not have the proper context, the training? And and does that fall to you as the leader? Yes. Right. none of my clients have a full staff of qualified people, none of them. Yeah. There's not a one. And once you do get a team of fully qualified people, you're gonna be moved to another team. Right. To lead that team. So nobody has it and it's your job. Speaker 1: That's great point. That's right. Speaker 2: to ensure that the work is done and that the people are capable of doing it. So I forgot what your original question. Speaker 1: So it this is where ⁓ it made me think about AI. So the question was, you know, I try to delegate, but I end up doing it myself anyway. And this is the pushback that I hear with a lot of people when trying to adopt AI, is they are not doing the very things you said. They're not clear in their in their prompts. Their prompts are murky, so they're getting a bad response. And then they just shut it down as opposed to saying, Well, let me give feedback. Okay, I see I missed a few steps here. Or I wasn't clear on what the output I wanted. Let me give you some feedback and calibrate that. ⁓ and and then they don't ⁓ you know, give feedback on the end product. So like when you do get to the end, say, okay, this is for next time the takeaway from this situation, right? I one of the things that I do every time I'm prompting AI after a back and forth like that, where I've clearly, again, to your scenario about driving home and it's just automatic, where I clearly have left out some steps. And they were clarified through the feedback process. I go back and I say, recap this conversation and improve my prompt so that way next time I come to ask you for this, I can do better. And I think doing that same kind of practice with your team of okay, how could I have handed this off better? That look back for yourself is really important. Speaker 2: Absolutely. And I think also the asking of the question, right? What do you mean? ⁓ when you said ask your team, how could I have handed this off better? Right. So you delegate something, it's not correct, you end up doing it yourself. One, ask yourself, was I clear enough? Ask the person, what happened? Yeah. Right. Right. ⁓ I thought that I asked you to do this, you did this, what happened? Speaker 1: Yes, I love what happened. So that's one of my favorite Speaker 2: questions. Well, I thought this. Well, here's what I tried to do. Because, you know, you delegate something to someone and they they do it. They think they're fine. Either they don't hear from you, which is like, I I mean I this is good news. Yeah. Right. Or all they hear is this was wrong. Right. And you know, if if that's done to me, I'm like, look, do it yourself next time, right? But you know, letting them know, you know, here's what I here's what I meant versus here's what I told you. Here's what I meant to say. ⁓ but I think maybe I wasn't clear. So, you know, and then, ⁓ I thought it was this. Okay. Speaker 1: Yeah. That ownership mindset around the work. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Two more questions. One, my people are already overloaded and I feel really guilty adding more. So what am I supposed to do with that? Speaker 2: And the conversation, right? The asking of the question. Join the club, right? ⁓ again, they're overloaded with things. Everyone is. ⁓ none of my clients feel that they have time. but you have to. Some something is failing there, right? ⁓ now it's not just giving people things for the sake of giving them, right? Yeah. It's if you are not performing, if you are not spending ⁓ the time that needs to be spent on the activities that ⁓ change the organization for its survival, that move people ⁓ ahead, that deal with problems. If you don't have the time for that, ⁓ you're never gonna get it by holding on to things. So everyone having that same mindset. ⁓ so the the the more you're closer to the actual tactical work, empowering your people to stop doing things, question automate, use a vendor, what whatever the case, right? Are you open-minded about that? Is your organization forward thinking in that way? Yeah. ⁓ they they need to figure out how to get stuff off their plate at the same time. And I'm telling you that your motivated people ⁓ want to. They they want to. Now that said, don't get rid of all that because some of those tasks are they're rewarding. You know We hire people who are results for goal oriented, right? And there's a satisfaction from, you know, I did this and that feels good. And I can look back at the end of the day and say, I can see the fruits of my labor. Right. Yeah. The more you move into a leadership role and away from that, in some cases, until you can shift your mindset, it can be unsatisfactory, right? You look back at the end of the day and you're like, I got nothing done today, right? Yeah. And so don't turn loose of all of it. Yeah. Right. Because some of that I think is needed to keep us motivated. You know, I I like to go home, I like to wash dishes. It's it's one of those things where you can barely clearly, you know, you feel the water, you see the dishes. It's it's nice. And ⁓ yes, I use my dishwasher, but I enjoy that task, right? ⁓ and so there might be things in your in your work where I I really enjoy this. It it helps me to have at least something that I can see. But I really don't feel like that's a problem. I feel like the problem is, you know, don't don't feel like I have to get, you know, I'm not gonna delegate because I don't want to turn loose of all this stuff. I'm not asking you to turn loose of all of it. In fact I'm turn asking you turn loose of one. And let's see how it goes. Speaker 1: You know, so what I heard you say is you've gotta give, you know, like that's the work. You've gotta give people some of it. you know, giving people meaningful work, leave some for yourself that is meaningful as well. Yes. One of the things that a great boss I had said to me is I want every year for you to have a new bullet that you can add to your resume. And what she meant by that is I want you to have some project that meaningfully advances the goals and objectives and bottom line of the organization in a substantial way. And so when I understood, okay, I have to do all this shit I don't want to do, I I understood at the end of the day, I was getting to this impact that I can clearly articulate that is added value to the organization. I know is portable for me. When I go to my next job, I can say, I did this thing. And that it'll be of value and it will be impressive and it will make me feel accomplished. Yes. Right. And so connecting the dots for people of the impact of what this work is. Like you said, what is the why? You know, and then keep that for yourself, right? Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. Okay. Yes. Last question. My boss micromanages me and I don't want to be that person of my people. So what do you do in that situation? Speaker 2: ⁓ you can't so I the delegation model that we use in Essentials Lab, we start with tell the assignment, give background accordingly, give parameters, ⁓ including budget, ⁓ timelines, things like that. Check for understanding, meaning ask a good open ended question. don't just ⁓ I'm gonna explain all this and then you got it. Yep, okay, we're done. No, they never got it, right? What run me past what you're gonna do. I want to make sure I was clear, walk me through your next steps, right? ⁓ and then ⁓ give feedback on it. There's a a six-step model, right? ⁓ flip it, flip it the other way, right? Add the six model. Six steps is I don't know if I ⁓ describe the assignment, give background, define parameters, give timelines, check for understanding, give feedback. Those are six steps. Speaker 1: Step model. I love that. Speaker 2: Use them in reverse. Ask for specifics, right? You want this improved. What does that mean? What does that look like? What does it look like today? What are you expecting? Right. So flip all these the other way. ⁓ why? Why are we doing this? What happens if it doesn't get done? Speaker 1: I I heard this great ⁓ line on a podcast today that said information is not understanding and understanding is not behavioral change. And so what that means is just because someone has all the information does not mean that they understand it. And just because they understand it and understand why it's important doesn't mean they have the skill or will or to do the behavior. Right. Right. So we have to check for information, understanding, and behavior when we're delegating. Speaker 2: Right. And when we're being delegated too, right? I I do have ⁓ a lot of my clients that have this concern about the the direction that they're given. And so using that model, asking for feedback, saying, ⁓ wait a second, let me let me tell you what I think I heard. Right. And so the pulling of information from your boss or someone who's delegating to you can then help you be more successful. Speaker 1: One thing I'll add to that I love is modeling that behavior, right? When you have the opportunity to do that in front of your employees, it's showing them it's okay to ask questions. It's okay to say, okay, let me see if I got this. And then if there are gaps, hearing that and saying, okay, thank you for filling in those gaps, right? Model that behavior that you want to see. Speaker 2: Yeah. And for the feedback part, you know, particularly with delegation, tell people how they did, make it motivating, meaning, ⁓ let's let's say that they did half right, half wrong. ⁓ hey, this this part looked good. Thanks. Next time do these things this way. Yeah. And that makes it more forward looking in terms of okay, I'm gonna get to do that again, right? It's not an all for nothing. If if you're being delegated to make it easier for that person to give you feedback by, you know, what should I do different next time? Right. And a lot of times that just looks like advice or recommendation versus the sting of constructive feedback, even though it's really the same thing. Speaker 1: I think that's great. I love that. Yeah. Okay. So to wrap it up, ⁓ what is one simple takeaway you want people to come away from this episode with? Speaker 2: ⁓ you know, we we all struggle with it. ⁓ we all struggle with delegation for various reasons. ⁓ for me, I'm a natural procrastinator. I like to ⁓ do what I like to do. I mean duh. Yeah. And so I if I like to do it, I do it. If I don't like to do it, I put it off until I have to. And then the pressure of that is fun. I know that's a sickening to a lot of people, but that's just how I roll. ⁓ When you are like that, delegation, here's the challenge for delegation, is to transfer work to someone. There has to be some sort of organization to it. But if it's just by the fly, right? Or I'm like, it isn't even midnight yet, right? I can get that done, then I lose that opportunity to use the capacity of my team, right? Because I have to do it. I've put it off too long. I cannot now ⁓ you know, give this away. So, you know, in thinking about ⁓ the waste that's going on when I'm doing that for my fellow procrastinators out there, you one of the skills of that you have to adopt is to be more ⁓ methodical and planned and organized. So ⁓ that's one thing. For for the opposite, right? Where the folks who if there's something they don't want to do, they just get out of the way, right? Put it at Get it done out of their minds, right? In that case, the delegation ⁓ problem, the delegation challenge can be not really thinking through stopping, can somebody else get this done? Or being too much of a, I'm gonna take it all, you know, the the challenge all on myself. So we all have issues with it, right? However, you're wired, there's gonna be something in there that makes delegation more of a challenge, not because people are bad, because people are people, right? So I think it's one of those things that I've not met the natural born delegator. I've not they might exist, but I haven't met them. Right. It is a learned skill. You have to practice ⁓ and you have to keep practicing and keep moving through those ch that the difficulty to to be effective with it. Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. ⁓ my one takeaway, I that I I loved what you said about ask them to say it back. Ask somebody to repeat back what you heard. So what did you hear me say? Tell me what you think the task is. Right. I think that the in the act of articulating that will help you see the gaps in your own explaining. Absolutely. And the gaps in their understanding. Absolutely. Cool. Okay, Gloria, talk to us about essential sub. Speaker 2: Essentials Labs. So, you know, delegation is the last thing, ⁓ last topic for that class. And I talked a little bit about this already. You you have to have a number of other skills before you can be an effective delegator. You have to have self-awareness. ⁓ how do people want to be communicated with? What's my approach to time and to work? ⁓ you have to have the mindset and the behavior shift of being a leader versus being a doer, and really change your definition of. a result and what the work actually is. You know, I've had folks say supervision would be so much easier if it were not for the employees. Right. Yeah. It's a whole different ballgame. It's a whole different job, right? It's big transition. And then your communication skills, your ability to speak, mostly your ability to ask questions and listen, to really ⁓ hear Does this person really understand, you know, what I am asking them to do? And so we cover those the first three days of, I mean, the first day of Essentials Lab, we cover those three topics pretty in depth, right? They're foundational. They're really foundational for anybody, for anybody who works. Those are great topics. Day two, we take those foundations and say, okay, let's put these into place for the critical, sometimes difficult conversations that you're going to need to have. As a supervisor of people, ⁓ driving accountability, what does that really mean? Right? We throw that term around. Have we ever sat and defined it? What does it really mean to hold someone accountable for something? So we we take some steps there, giving feedback, constructive feedback, which is typically the of course the the tough one, right? But positive feedback too. Are we noticing and communicating regularly? Things that people are doing well. And I've had folks say, well, it that's their paycheck, right? That's their positive feedback. And I'm like, no, it's not, right? Because everybody's getting a paycheck. ⁓ If your employees are doing something very well, or even meeting your expectations, to be honest, do they know that? Because they might think that it's invisible. Yeah. So giving feedback and then finally delegation. Because as we've talked about, all of those skills that I've just mentioned. are required to be an effective delegator. So we teach it last and we kind of wrap up that way. So that's really essential slab. It's moving from doer to leader. Speaker 1: And when is the next scheduled essential? Speaker 2: The next scheduled one is July, July 15th and 16th. ⁓ we've already got a good bit of folks in that class. There's still a couple of spots left, but ⁓ it's a nice ⁓ you know, break to the work in the summertime. And ⁓ it's we've got a great mix in there right now of industrial folks and more office type folks. And so it's an opportunity not just to learn about some foundational. skills. It's an opportunity to meet other people, meet other professionals. Whether you're sitting, you know, in a control room, if you're in a tank farm, if you're sitting in a bank, an office, a hospital, people are people. And so the Essentials Lab really tackles what are the foundational and by foundational I don't mean easy. I mean foundational skills for getting work done through others. So I'm excited about that, about that cohort coming up. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. That was our episode. If you are interested in joining the upcoming Essentials Lab, go to successlabs.com/slash classes. We also are regularly hosting this, so you will find our other dates there. Please make sure to click subscribe, sign up for our newsletter where we talk about all kinds of topics like this, and we'll see you next time.