Hiring managers does not automatically free you up if those managers were never taught how to actually manage. Lia breaks down the three root causes keeping owners stuck in the weeds and walks through a simple narration method for teaching decision-making without adding more meetings. This episode is essential for any owner or founder who promoted people into management roles and is still fielding every fire.
This episode is part of the Delegation, Bottleneck & Getting Out of the Weeds series. Browse all episodes →
Mic drop moments
“Delegating requires a lot of leadership skills all rolled into one. And if we have missed check in the box on any of those areas, then the process breaks down and we don’t know why, we just know I tried to hand something off and it didn’t work.”
“I think we can often confuse delegating for dispatching.”
“…we have not removed ourselves as a bottleneck, because we’re still reviewing every step. And it’s not true delegating, because that person can’t make more than one step at a time.”
“That’s the beauty of true delegating. We’re handing off the outcome. It doesn’t mean we’re not involved.”
Episode highlights
Dispatching vs. delegating: why the difference matters
Most leaders think they are delegating when they are actually dispatching. Dispatching is playing fetch with tasks: go look this up, come back with options, let me pick one. It frees up a little time, but it does not remove you as the bottleneck. You are still the review step at every point, and your team member can only move one step at a time.
True delegating means handing off the outcome, not the to-do list.
The event planning example that makes it click
Lia uses a high-stakes company event to show the gap. If you tell someone “go find venue options and come back,” then “go find catering and come back,” that person is just an aggregator. They cannot think bigger than the individual item in front of them.
But if you say “I want you to own the vision for this event, here is the goal and the budget, come back with how all the pieces could come together,” something different happens. That person starts connecting dots, proposing ideas you had not thought of, and building real ownership. That is the horsepower you hired them for.
The cost is bigger for your team member than for you
When someone feels like they are just fetching and returning, they never build a sense of ownership. They are not growing. They are not thinking. They are waiting for the next ball to be thrown. The dispatching pattern puts a ceiling on what your team can become, not just on how much time you save.
Nothing feels hand-off-able? Look for a piece, not the whole job
A common objection: “My work is too specialized to delegate.” Lia pushes back on this directly, drawing on a workshop she ran with engineering managers at Google. The conversation kept hitting a wall until the reframe landed: you are not handing over your job or your title. You are finding a meaningful piece of something that someone else can own end to end.
For example, you do not hand off the full project roadmap. But could someone own aggregating the roadmaps of every intersecting team and come back with a cross-team coordination proposal? That is a real project, builds real skills, and gives you back real time.
The choice is not tasks-only vs. handing over your entire role. Everything in between is the opportunity.
The five-step mental model before any handoff
Before delegating anything, run through these five questions:
1. What does done look like? Define success upfront. 2. Where do you want to weigh in? Name the checkpoints. 3. What context does this person need to be effective? 4. What decisions do you still need to make? 5. Then set expectations and let them run.
That is the whole system. It is not complicated, but most leaders skip it entirely and then wonder why the handoff did not stick.
AI tools have the same problem
The dispatching pattern shows up with AI just as fast as it shows up with people. If you are using Claude or any AI tool as a fancy search engine, you are not unlocking its value. You are still reviewing every step. The same shift applies: define the outcome, set the context, specify success. Until you solve the dispatching habit, adding AI just adds more steps.
Delegation is the root of every other leadership problem
Time management issues, burnout, being in the weeds, team members not following through. Lia is direct: all of those conversations are really about delegation. When you shift from dispatching to handing off outcomes, you free your time, develop your team, and finally get out of the decision-making loop on things that should not need you.
Related episodes in this cluster
- Ep 233: Why you’re still the point person for everything (and how to fix it). Being stuck as the final decision-maker on everything is almost never a delegation problem. Before delegation can work, three things have to be in place: the right people, clarity on where you as the owner should focus, and simple systems that reduce noise. This episode is most useful for business owners and team leads who have already hired and communicated expectations but are still buried in the weeds.
- Ep 225: How to stop being the bottleneck on every decision your team makes. When your team brings every decision to you for final sign-off, you are doing two jobs at once and your team is never building real ownership. Lia’s fix is to articulate your own decision-making process, then deliberately offload specific decisions with a simple communication system so you stay informed without staying in the weeds. This episode is especially useful for founders and team leads whose capable people are still waiting on them before moving forward.
- Ep 221: Clients keep asking for you by name. How do you hand off work without losing their trust?. When clients insist on working with you personally, the bottleneck is rarely about your team’s ability. It is about two separate problems: your team needs your method translated into real training, and your clients need a clear, confident message that your team delivers the same standard you do. Lia walks through the exact moves to solve both sides, from codifying your secret sauce to publicly edifying your team members in front of clients. This episode is most useful for founders, consultants, agency owners, and service-based business leaders who are stuck as the face of every client relationship.
- Ep 220: You hired managers. Why are you still in the details?. Hiring managers does not automatically free you up if those managers were never taught how to actually manage. Lia breaks down the three root causes keeping owners stuck in the weeds and walks through a simple narration method for teaching decision-making without adding more meetings. This episode is essential for any owner or founder who promoted people into management roles and is still fielding every fire.
Want to go deeper?
The Unstoppable Team. How to build a team that runs without you in the room.
Full transcript (click to expand)
Lia (00:00): Managing people is hard, leading a team is hard, running a business is hard. All of these things are hard because you’re dealing with people. I’ve often asked when it comes to leading teams, what is one of the hardest places where most people get really stuck? And feedback is up there. But I think the place where we get the most, most stuck, whether we are running a team of one and it’s a virtual assistant, or we have a team of thousands.
we’ve been managing one day or we’ve been leading folks for decades where people get the most stuck is with delegating. Because delegating is where everything comes together. Delegating brings in, do I trust my teams take this on? Do I trust myself to set expectations the right way? Do I even know what success looks like? Have I defined performance? Delegating requires a lot of leadership skills all rolled into one. And if we have
missed check in the box on any of those areas, then the process breaks down and we don’t know why, we just know I tried to hand something off and it didn’t work. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. This hard, hard thing of delegating effectively, a couple shifts to make to get it right and how much it unlocks. Let’s do this.
Now we all know we should delegate. When I talk about it with leaders, they’re always like, of course I need to delegate more, I need to let stuff go more.
Some leaders say, the biggest shift I’ve ever made in my work was learning to delegate, letting things go. And I think even that leader has opportunity to figure out more things, right? Because we can always get better at figuring out not just can I hand off tasks efficiently, not just can I let go of things I don’t want to be doing, but how can I hand off the ownership of an outcome so that I’m not still making the decisions.
I think we can often confuse delegating for dispatching. And I think about dispatching is like if you’re playing fetch with a task, throw the ball out there, hey, team member, go look this up and bring me the answer. Go schedule this meeting and then go tell me, go do this and come back. And when we play fetch with a bunch of tasks, yeah, we might free up some time. I think we need to do that at least.
but we have not removed ourselves as a bottleneck, because we’re still reviewing every step. And it’s not true delegating, because that person can’t make more than one step at a time. So you’re kind of putting a ceiling on what your team member can get done, because you’re still the review step at each point. Now, what is the cost of this? Well, first of all, you aren’t able to get distance away from that thing, because yeah, maybe they did some research and save you some time a little bit, but you…
because you have to stay connected to that, it’s always gonna be on the top of your mind. You’ll always be spending time and energy on that. So it only gets you so far. But the cost is actually a lot bigger for that team member. When someone feels like I’m just going to get something and come back to you, they don’t build a sense of ownership around that actual task or the thing that they’re working on. They’re just looking up this whole thing. let’s say there’s a big event that you’re preparing for.
and you told a team member, okay, go look for venues and come back to me and I’ll pick one. Okay, go look for options for catering and come back and I’ll pick one. Go look at options for table rental and come back and I’ll pick one. You know, maybe imagine when you were planning your own wedding, if you were doing it yourself, right? You’re looking at one individual thing and you’re coming back to it. That person is just giving you options and coming back. They’re only playing this role of aggregator researcher. What would the difference be if you said, hey, I want you to…
plan this wedding now or this event, whatever, let’s say it’s an opening party or for your company or a big holiday thing or a client gathering, whatever it is. And it’s a big event, high stakes. You’re gonna be bringing folks in the door. You wanna use it to really build up excitement around your business. So it’s an important event. And you said, I want you to design what could be the best possible event. I’m gonna still need to be approving a lot, but I want you to really own this.
Own the vision for this and let’s talk about what that looks like. Come back to me with options of how all these different pieces could come together. If you hand it off the bigger picture of this event that has to do this thing and we’re gonna wanna get this kind of visibility, it’s gonna have this many people and these different things, this person can now put together a broader vision that they’re then owning and carrying out. Then asking them, okay, let’s figure out catering. They might come back with this whole, okay, well,
because the theme is this, I thought this catering would be good and that really goes with this kind of table set up and this sort of bar thing over here. Now you’re getting them to think bigger and more holistically. And then they’re thinking about the stuff that you didn’t have on the list. Maybe they say, oh, well, this whole, know, with this motif for the food, we need to get a ice sculpture and a chocolate fountain and have this sort of like activities out here because you’ve given them the opportunity to think bigger and broader. You’ve given them space to play.
That’s the beauty of true delegating. We’re handing off the outcome. It doesn’t mean we’re not involved. It doesn’t mean we can’t weigh in. It doesn’t mean we don’t communicate the points in which we wanna weigh in. It doesn’t mean we don’t communicate the vision upfront. I think in that example with an event, we wanna paint the picture of what is the best event that we can envision and say, hey, this is the standard. How can we outdo that? Or this is what we wanna get done. This is our budget.
how can we make the best possible thing within those guardrails? You can still paint the vision, but then you wanna give your team member space to be creative, figure that thing out. And that’s where the magic is because now you freed up so much of your time, you’re letting this person run with it. You’re letting this person really go big and come back with ideas that you hadn’t thought about before. And they’re not stopped at every two seconds because you have to approve something and review it.
When we’re thinking about delegating, a lot of us right now are thinking about not just between ourselves and our team members, but how are we thinking of utilizing agents and skills in Claude and all of these kind of new sorts of automations that are available to us. And we actually have to use a very similar process. So I’ve been working a lot with my clients on figuring out how to incorporate something like Claude code into their workflow, how to give their team members superpowers. And this is something that really comes with that conversation of
how do we define the scope of this task that we’re having Claude run with? How are we giving it the right inputs? How are we defining success? How are we saying exactly what we want to, setting the context exactly we want to come away with? We’re doing the same thing. So I think one of the places we can get frustrated and stuck when we are figuring out how to fold AI in is we’re doing the dispatching thing. We’re saying, up this thing and then we still have to do all of this other work. We’re saying, no, that’s wrong, that’s wrong. Find me another one, find me another one.
and we’re not utilizing the full horsepower of it. It’s almost a Google search without Gemini, right? Just like kind of old school search as opposed to defining an outcome and utilizing it the best it can. And I say that because I think it’s a thing that we want to be really incorporating our workflow when we’re thinking about AI. It’s not, it doesn’t help as a shortcut until we’ve actually solved this underlying problem.
of shifting into the outcome mode. Again, there’s gonna be some things that you just want a quick answer and of course that’s fine. You may say, well, I don’t know if anyone is ready to take over that whole outcome that I wanna hand off. What do I do if I don’t have anybody that can do that? Then my question is, what about a piece of the puzzle? Let’s say you are, you you’re the primary person that has like business, new business conversations or sales conversations with new clients.
and you have other team members and there’s a lot of work that goes into that, but like that’s some of the magic and that’s why maybe, know, folks work with you because you build that relationship up front and it’s like, obviously you’re not gonna hand that piece off. And so you maybe have decided nothing about that whole area can be delegated, but I would push back on that. And this came up for me in a training I was doing with engineering managers a few years ago at Google. And it was, the training actually came to be because folks were struggling with time management.
And so I was brought in to do a workshop on time management for engineering managers. But come on everybody, when we have a time management issue as a leader, the whole conversation is about delegating. And so this training ended up being about how to really build our muscles delegating and shifting from dispatching to true delegating. And when I was talking about that, a lot of folks said, hey, I’ve got capable people, I’ve got a great team, but there’s…
there’s just some stuff that like I can’t hand off, know, writing performance reviews. I can’t hand off kind of defining, you know, the approach for my team of how we’re gonna, you know, divide the work up over this project. I can’t hand off, I’m not just gonna throw my whole job over to another team member. And I said, listen, I get it. Okay, you’re a smart person. We’re doing this workshop at Google, right? This is not about handing over your job. You’re not handing the keys over to your business. You’re not handing over your title as manager. You are finding what is a piece of something.
that maybe somebody could still own end to end. And so with this example with this engineering team, I said, okay, well, could there be a piece of the project scoping where someone is doing some of the research upfront and they come back to you instead of just looking up one thing with a proposal for how we move forward? Or if someone is, or if one of the big things that you’re figuring out is kind of the roadmap for the next few cycles, could you delegate a piece around aggregating
what are the roadmaps for other teams that your work’s gonna intersect with? So that you’re giving someone something to, and they own the kind of cross team collaboration, aggregation and strategy piece that will then plug into your bigger vision. And as we talked about that, we started to say, well, what are meaningful work kind of task projects that we could hand off that actually give that person an opportunity to lead and build relationships and build up their skills? And then,
really enhance your own ability to do your role the best. And it was about shifting away from, either have to give people tasks like read this one email and answer one question or do my job for me. We thought it was this all or nothing. And it’s totally not, it’s everything else I would say. So when you’re feeling nervous about delegating and you’re thinking, I don’t even know if this person’s ready. I don’t even know if this or that. I don’t have two seconds to even stop and delegate. Now we get into some of the strides down.
on how to delegate, which is a whole other conversation. I have a ton of that in the new manager playbook. But what I wanted to talk about today was how do we even put a mental model around delegating so that we can put the right system in place? And I know I talk a lot about systems. This is truly just the framework in our minds. Like, okay, when I’m gonna delegate something, I first think about what done looks like, what success looks like. I then think about, well, where do I wanna weigh in?
I then think about what are some of the of context that folks are gonna need to be effective. And then I set expectations and like you’ve kind of been one, two, three, four, five, you’ve worked backwards on five foundational repeatable things that we do to delegate. That’s our delegating system. It’s as simple as that. And it can be hard to define that. It can be hard to think, I don’t even know where to start. It can feel like I don’t even have two seconds. I should just do it faster, do it this way.
but that is where we’re not utilizing the horsepower of our team. And when we’re thinking about how do I build a profitable team? How do I get myself out of the weeds so that I’m not making every decision? These are the moments. Like this is the actual like tool you have. And again, if you’re thinking about, well, I would rather use an agent than hire someone else or I wanna figure out how to actually make that feel full of that in my workflow, you’re gonna be pretty frustrated utilizing.
AI if you’re not actually answering those questions anyway. They’ve got to be answered either way. So delegating is truly the way that we scale. It’s how we unlock so much. It’s how we actually know what we need to be focusing on, how we can really put our team members in the right moments, right situations. It’s how we save time. That’s why any conversation, again, I said it, any conversation that’s about time management, that’s about burnout, that’s about being spread too thin, that’s about being in the weeds, that’s about
⁓ I keep telling my team members to do this, they’re not getting it. All of those things are all tied up with delegating. And the big piece is the shift from dispatching into delegating. And then we set the expectations, we set the context, we define when do need to be looped in, what decision we still need be making, and then we let that person run with it. Because…
We’ve hired people so that they can make us better, make our team members better. And if we want a carbon copy of ourselves and we’ve made our own virtual, you know, clone, we still have to define how we make decisions and how we would just make decisions because that thing cannot read our mind right away either. So we’re gonna be using the same process. And if you’re eager to figure out how to use some of these automations in your workflow,
figure out Claude skills on your team, how to give your team members superpowers. This is a place that I have been supporting teams that is unlocking so much. It’s not replacing people, it is giving them superpowers and is solving those problems of, gosh, this person is taking so long to this repeatable task and I need them over here. Or why are we reinventing the wheel every time we could have a better way? This is the way that we are using Claude skills.
with my clients and they’re seeing all of this efficiency overnight. If that’s something you wanna look into, something you wanna bring your team, reach out at hello at leagraph.com. It is, I am so excited about this because if you’re a long time listener, I’ve been big on we gotta slow the reins around AI. We need people, we cannot just decide, I don’t need anybody anymore. I feel like I have unlocked for my clients.
the yes and with it. And for myself, I’m figuring out how to utilize it in ways to bring information and research together. So it frees me up to do things like the podcast, right? That I love to do. So again, if you wanna explore this with your team, there’s so much out there, it’s really exciting and I’d love to support you. So reach out to liagarvin.com or hello at liagarvin.com and I will see you soon. See you next time.
Questions this episode answers
Why does delegating keep failing even when I have a capable team?
Most of the time, what looks like a delegation problem is actually a dispatching problem. When you hand off individual tasks and ask someone to come back at every step, you stay the bottleneck because you're still the review point throughout the whole process. True delegation means handing off an outcome, not a to-do list. The team member owns the vision, makes decisions along the way, and comes back with something bigger than you would have gotten by playing fetch with a series of tasks. The system breaks down not because of the person, but because the outcome was never clearly handed over.
What is the difference between delegating and dispatching?
Dispatching is playing fetch with tasks. You throw something out, the team member retrieves it and brings it back, and you throw the next one. They can only move one step at a time because you're the approval layer at every point. Delegating means handing off the full outcome. You set the vision, the budget, the guardrails, and then you let the person figure out how to get there. They start thinking holistically, connecting pieces you never even put on the list. You still weigh in at key moments, but you are no longer the bottleneck at every single step.
What if I don't think my team member is ready to take on a whole outcome?
You don't have to hand off everything at once. Look for a meaningful piece of a bigger project that someone could own end to end. For example, instead of asking someone to look up one competitor's roadmap, you could ask them to own the cross-team research and come back with a strategic summary that plugs into your bigger plan. That gives them real ownership, builds their skills, and frees up your thinking without requiring you to hand over your entire role. The goal is not all or nothing. Most of the value lives in the space between quick tasks and full job handoffs.
How do I set up a simple system for delegating so I actually do it consistently?
Start by thinking through four things before you hand anything off. First, define what done looks like and what success means. Second, decide where you want to weigh in during the process. Third, identify the context and background the person needs to be effective. Fourth, set clear expectations. Work through those in order and you have a repeatable delegating system. It feels like a lot when you are in the weeds, but this is exactly how you stop being the decision-maker for everything and start using the full capacity of your team.
Why does fixing delegation also fix my time management and burnout problems?
Any conversation about being spread too thin, being stuck in the weeds, or feeling burned out is really a delegation conversation. When you stay the review point for every task, nothing leaves your mental load even if someone else is doing the legwork. Shifting to outcome-based delegation is how you actually get distance from the work. It frees up your time, gives team members real ownership, and lets you focus on the decisions only you should be making. The dispatching habit keeps everything on your plate in disguise, and breaking it is the real fix.