Episode 86
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to [00:01:00] the show today. We're going to talk about a topic that has been coming up again and again and again with my clients working through the ops playbook, especially folks that have managers on their teams, which is the topic of delegating. And so today I'm not going to talk about strategies for how to delegate because that's something that I've actually talked about quite a bit on the show. I want to talk about where we get stuck when it comes to delegating. And if you know anything about me, it's I'm all about reframing places where people get stuck.
Before I created this podcast, I wrote the book unstuck. Reframe your thinking to free yourself from the patterns and people that hold you back. Spoiler alert, some of these people are you. And this is all about reframing. Reframing is my jam because when we take a look at a perspective or a belief or something that's keeping us stuck and we shift that perspective just a little bit, we start to see all the possibilities that are revealed to us.
And that's what I want us to do with delegating today. Because oftentimes as business owners, as team [00:02:00] leaders, we have this perspective that delegating means micromanaging, means telling people what to do, means throwing stuff over the fence, whatever our belief is, it prevents us from delegating. And then as a result, we have way more things on our plates than we have to.
We're way too far in the weeds. We're making every little decision and that is costing us so much time and money in our business. And I have found that for business owners and managers within teams that start really getting good at delegating, they can save themselves literally hours, hours and hours every single week automatically right out of the gate.
Like the minute we're done creating the ops playbook, it's instant savings. Okay. So to kind of get us there, I want to paint the picture of some of these places that we can feel stuck when it comes to delegating. I know I've been in all these situations, so I know managing team, I felt like, Oh, I don't want to delegate little stuff that feels like I made a list of all the stuff I don't like doing [00:03:00] and gave it to my team member because I don't want to chip away at their motivation.
I don't want them to think that I think they should do all this tedious work and I sort of feel guilty. Okay. So maybe that's you. If that resonates with you, I hear you. Okay. We've all been there. I think other times we don't delegate because we think we're actually better at all the things. Okay. And if this is you, that's okay too.
That we say, well, I'm really good at this task. I'm really fast at it. I know it's going to be done right. And so delegating, it feels like it's going to slow it down and maybe make it done worse than I would do it. Okay. Fair, if that's how I think you that's cool too. And other times we feel like, well, I really want to delegate this thing.
I don't want to do it, but I don't think my team members are really. Able to take that thing on. And so there's some fear around, well, I can't have this thing done through like a learning curve process. I need it done right. So I'm just going to kind of keep doing it. And I would guess a lot of us fall into this third bucket that, yeah, we're not opposed to delegating.
Maybe we don't have the belief that it's just [00:04:00] throwing somewhere in the fence, but we aren't, we don't think our team is really, you know, set up yet to be able to do that. And without getting too far into like how to delegate, I would say a lot of times the answer is just setting clearer expectations.
And I know I've got a few episodes on this that I'll link to in the show notes. Setting clear expectations, make sure that you are really setting up whoever's taking this thing on for success so that they can not only know what, you are envision with this task, but they know where to put their creative spin on it.
So that's like a little kind of jump to how we get from not really being sure people can handle it to how we let someone really run with it is by setting clear expectations and, and really painting the picture of what success looks like. But again, now what's the problem with when we don't delegate?
Well, we've already talked about, right? It means that we're stuck in the weeds. We're stuck doing more work than we really have to be doing. And I think a lot of us, if we're the business owner, if we're a senior manager, we're managing managers, this means that really [00:05:00] the value of our time, is being spent on things that could be higher value tasks.
So let's say we're a service provider or a coach or consultant or doing something that we could be, you know working with clients and charging a pretty high hourly rate. Instead of charging that hourly rate and working with the clients, we're in the weeds managing folder structures and social media copy and hashtags.
So we end up taking this potential revenue that we could be incurring and walking away from that, leaving that on the table and spending our time. On these little things we don't have to be doing. And so the moment we make this shift, the moment we figure this out, when, when we roll out the ops playbook and figure out what are those key decisions we can be delegating?
What are those tasks? That's how we can recoup money right away. Because when we say, Oh, here's the places that I'm spending time on things that I don't have to be boom, right? You can be now having more time open to perform services, to be coaching, to doing that consulting work, whatever that looks like, [00:06:00] which is really that income producing activities.
I think the other piece when we don't delegate is that we take an opportunity away from our team members to really step up as a leader. And this may even have a higher cost, right? Because this can chip away at team morale. Team members can feel like we don't trust them and then maybe they don't stay.
And there is nothing more expensive than high turnover because we spend so much time looking for candidates. Recruiting, interviewing, ramping people up, really helping people be set up for success. That if they feel they're not empowered, that you don't really trust them, that you're not letting them really step up and do the job and have autonomy.
If they leave because of that, you got to do all that over again. [00:07:00] So when, when we're not delegating, this is where team members can feel like, well, I guess they just wanted to hire someone that they gave like direct marching orders to. And a lot of people don't want to do that. Or they feel like they were sold a different job than they're able to perform.
Or they feel like, well, I could step up and do some of this if you set clear expectations or if you gave me a little coaching. So it can chip away at trust. And I think again, that's one of the bigger things we want to address because sometimes Because we're trying to spare someone from doing some kind of task that maybe we thought, Oh, I don't want to throw this over the fence.
Or, you know, I don't want to burden someone with this. They actually interpret that as you not thinking they're capable of doing it. And so we don't want to have that happen. Right. Because that's not even what we meant. So that's another one of the costs of not [00:08:00] delegating. And then I think the biggest one, you know, the kind of combination of all of these, it's just the stress that you feel as a, as a business owner, as a manager, as a team leader, the feeling like you have all this stuff and the to do list and the task list never ends.
And it's just one more thing after the next. And you feel like, gosh, I'm a bottleneck, but I don't really know how to get out from under that. And this is one of the biggest pain points business owners have shared with me is like, I, I want to scale myself. I want to be doing more income producing activities.
I want to be able to empower my team. I just don't know where to start. And that's why this is one of the six areas we dive into with the Ops Playbook is we figure out, okay, well, what are those places? That you, you absolutely have to be involved and what are all the rest of those and what are the steps we need to do to take to get there.
And during that three months implementation that I provide through the Ops Playbook, we make sure all those steps can happen so that you can hand everything off. Now let's talk about what looks on the other side. Cause this is where all the magic happens. What happens when we have delegated stuff? [00:09:00] Okay.
Well, essentially it's the flip side of all the issues, but let's just talk about it. So first and foremost, going kind of back backwards to forwards, the stress that's relieved by knowing you are working on the exact right things. You can't really put a cost on that, right? Because you're not laying awake at night.
Like, Oh God, I got to add this. You're like, Oh no. Now, when I get this kind of activity, when this kind of task comes my plate, I do it. When I get this kind, my team does it. When I get this kind, I outsource it. When I get this time, I put it on that backlog, right? You have clarity for what to do when new work comes up and that allows you to really prioritize your time better and really lean into your team members.
Okay? So then that handles the, the second thing I mentioned is really breeding trust in your team because when we have communicated, you know, Hey, Hey, Hey. Here's what I really want y'all to focus on. Here's some opportunities to grow. Hey, I heard that you are excited about this and that's why I'm handing this off.
Super quick segue is that the more we get to [00:10:00] know our team members and their career goals and their interests, the more we can have a targeted approach to how we delegate. And I was just on the phone with someone this morning, a manager talking about, you know, she had a team member that was really analytical.
And the person was really wanting to bring data in the way they were working. And they brought it up a few times and she was really looking for opportunities to help that person really lean into that passion. And so she had a task on her plate, then she said, Oh, this is something that would be so much better if we brought an analytical lens to it.
And then she went to that team member and said, Hey, I'd love for you to run with this thing and really bring in all of the data, all the analytical thinking so that we can really amplify this. And the team member was thrilled because not only did she get a leadership opportunity, she saw that her manager really, really valued this skill that she wanted to bring into the work and had been proactively looking for opportunities to help her lean into that.
Right? And so you can imagine how much trust that breeds with that person and her team member. How much confidence that team member has in her manager that she's looking out for [00:11:00] me, right? Because she delegated this thing and knew exactly the right kind of thing to delegate. Okay. So that's some of the power in that.
Now, the last one is feeling like, gosh, I, I'm just in two, my hands are in too many pies. I'm in too many things. I'm spread too thin. Right? You can see that when we figure out what to delegate, those feelings don't happen anymore. We're not that bottleneck. We're not causing this sort of slowdown and things because people are waiting for, you know, the next assignment to be made.
We've created a clear process for it. Well, how do people know when they need approval or how do they know when something's done? How do they know when they need your input? Cause we've communicated what that looks like and that will start to free up so much stress on, on, on your mind because you're not wondering, Oh God, if I don't check my email for an hour, how much of the business have I slowed down?
And we never want to be in that situation. Okay. We're the visionary. We're the idea person. We're really moving that ship forward. We're driving the strategy. But we don't have to be involved in every single thing. And that is, again, this reframe. And when we reframe our feeling [00:12:00] of, of, you know, delegating and handing things off, this, this takes away control to this can elevate our business.
This can elevate our team. This can create that bench of leaders. Now, now we're able to really reach kind
of You have exponential growth. But we know the old thing, you know, the old saying, if you want to go faster, go alone. If you want to go further, go together. I think that is right. I'll look it up and make sure, but we have to have to bring our team members in. If we want to scale, we know we've got to bring more people into the fold.
If we want to scale, we know we have to let go of certain things. It's just time to do it. But the first, I think, again, the first place we can get stuck is this belief. That delegating is bad. I don't want to do it. So let's shake that off. Let's reframe it. Let's bring in some of these strategies, right? Of really figure out what are the right things to delegate, how to communicate those expectations, what does success look like and come out the other side.
Because again, like I [00:13:00] said, this is one of those biggest places that we can save money instantly. Okay. A client I have that, that runs a PR firm, she was realizing, you know, she was spending a lot of time on writing, you know, creating templates for press releases and researching different things around press releases and doing a lot of the social media editing, things like that.
She offloaded all of those tasks to folks that were really better suited to do that anyway, saved about three or four hours right out of the gate that she could now use doing PR for her high profile clients that she was charging a thousand dollars an hour for, right? So that was it. 4, 000 a week that we got back just by making that quick shift and moving some tasks that were actually better suited for other team members that they wanted to be doing to their place.
This is the change that we can make when we reframe our fears and hesitations around delegating. All right. So if you are ready to get started, I am ready to support you. Send me a message, reach out leahgarvin. com and let's talk about it, right? If you're feeling stuck, if you're not really sure what to delegate, that is the [00:14:00] perfect thing to start with.
We can look at, well, how are you spending time? Identify what are those things that you want to hand off and go from there? Okay. leahgarvin. com is sign up for that free strategy call. Let's dive in. See you next time.
