What are the qualities that manager, what are they doing? How are they creating an environment with clear expectations? How are they creating clear priorities for the team? How are they providing coaching and course correction when needed? And we talk about what that manager is doing. Because delegating is not just saying, take this over and I'm going to get out of the way.
It's about creating the support so that that person can be successful once they've taken that task on.
Welcome to the managing mid simple podcast. I'm Lia Garvin, your host and team operations consultant through this show and my signature ops playbook. I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech to save you time. Money and stress. It doesn't matter if you're a business owner who realized that running a team isn't as easy as you thought it would be.
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Welcome back to the show. Bye bye. No matter who I talk to, whether it's managers in the corporate world or small business owners and entrepreneurs, one of the hardest things about being a manager, about being a leader is delegating. Okay. And you are not alone if you are struggling with this because we all struggle with it.
If we're a solopreneur, we're struggling with handing stuff off to a virtual assistant. If we are managing managers, we're struggling to figure out, you know, how do we find the right things to manage, to delegate. If we are running a business, we struggle with figuring out like when to sort of get in the weeds and when to let go.
And this is something that plagues all of us and it's, we can never talk about it enough because it's something that can change depending on what stage in the business you are, what you have going on the personal side. There's a lot of delegating that's got to happen at home too, I think for a lot of us.
And I wanted to talk about though, how do we support middle managers and delegating or how can we ask for support when we are feeling stuck when we're delegating? And this one, as you are thinking about managing managers or hiring managers and making sure they have space to be able to offload things, this one is going to give you a real sense of how to set that person up for success.
I'm doing a workshop in a few weeks at a big Silicon Valley tech company. And their engineering managers have been struggling with delegating and that's really what we're focusing on. And as I thought about, you know, what I want to impart on the team, there's actually one thing that I actually wanted to leave with the leadership team themselves beyond the tips that I'm going to give to the managers around how to create some more space and comfort delegating.
There was one thing that I thought would be the most, most helpful if they took away. And that's what I want to talk about today. And first let's talk about, well, why, why is it so hard for middle managers to delegate? Well, you know, I think the biggest is that we're stuck between two opposing forces, right?
We're stuck between the demands of our own management chain. We're stuck under the demands of our own management chain. We've got our own team members asking for stuff and it can feel like we're pulled in the middle. We want to show our value. I've heard from a lot of middle managers in the corporate world, especially like if I don't do all this, how do I show what I do?
What's my job? So I think folks can struggle when they're managers with feeling like, I don't really know where, what my identity is and what my role is, unless I'm really doing everything. And that's really challenging. And that's, That's going to hold that person back, but they don't always recognize how they're getting in their own way.
I think it's also folks really want to support their team. They love their team. They want to protect their team. They want to shield them from taking on too much work, from getting asked and randomized and all these things. So we keep a really tight hold over what our team's working on and that prevents us from scaling and that shows up, you know, whether you're a middle manager or leading a business, right?
The, all these things can show up no matter what, what situation you're in. And I think a big one, and this certainly happens for business owners and definitely for middle managers and anybody in between. is we see that a lot of stuff does get missed when we're not hands on and we're not in the weeds.
And so that reinforces this belief that, well, I have to be here because look, this thing got dropped or this thing wasn't brought up in a meeting because I wasn't there or this team member missed this thing. And so we're reinforcing this belief that we can't step away. It makes us not be able to delegate.
It makes us afraid to delegate. And the whole thing is a self fulfilling prophecy. So we got to stop that in its tracks because we know that. On the other side of delegating is creating leaders who bring an ownership mindset to their work, who are accountable. That's what we create. When we delegate, we build more trust with our team members.
We see the full potential of our team members. We create more space for ourselves. We can focus on growing our team, our business, getting a more strategic position. We free up more time for ourselves. On the other side of delegating is all the good stuff right at the other end of the rainbow. But we have to get there.
And the one thing that I would encourage you most of all, if you are managing managers. If you're finding that manager screen stuck and if you're figuring out, you know, how to give your own self permission is to reward and incentivize the act of delegating. I'm gonna say that again. The number one thing is to reward and incentivize the act of delegating because often what happens is the total opposite and it reinforces that fear again.
I've been in a situation when I was a middle manager where I was trying to delegate a big project to a team member. And it was hard. Okay. I wasn't great at delegating in the first place. And I built up the courage. I set clear expectations with that team member. We were meeting about it. We were really, she was on a roll.
She was really managing the project very, very well. But my manager was coming to me every day asking, what's going on with this project? Where are we at? And I, and I felt like, like, should I get back more in the weeds? I want to be able to answer these questions. I don't know. I feel uncomfortable. And it was because my own manager wasn't giving me space to delegate.
And so a big part of delegating in and of itself is managing up, is saying, Hey, here is what I've delegated. Here's how I'm keeping track of progress. And here's how I will keep you informed. But us as the leaders. Us giving our team members support to delegate, not hounding them for updates every minute and not asking them to do things our way when it's like two steps removed from them or they feel like they have to grab the reins again, that's going to make it so much harder.
And so we don't want to make delegating a punishment. We don't want to make it seem like, you know, they shouldn't have done it in the first place or we were actually wanting them to be controlling everything right now. We want to reward and incentivize delegating. And so how do we do that? Well, we talk with our own managers and our team members about what kinds of things should they delegate or what are some of the opportunities we ask them to first propose ideas.
We don't want to give them a list because we want them to feel accountable. We say, Hey, what are some things that you feel like you could offload to team members? And then we can say, okay, well that's a great idea. Like how, how do you plan to be informed? Let's talk about how I can stay informed. And you design this plan that's very open ended, that the, that the manager feels totally in support of, that they feel like, okay, they have your backing.
And then in that conversation, you've agreed and implied that you're going to take a step back. And then you got to honor that you have to really take that step back. And if you realize you need to inform, you can say, Hey, I know we had this conversation. I'm actually realizing I'm getting pressure from the clients or the stakeholders or the executives, whatever, to be more in the loop.
Can we reset? Okay. And instead of just demanding updates, ask to have a reset and have another conversation. And then maybe it's you and the manager and that person they've delegated to, or maybe it's just the two of you, whoever makes sense. But again, we don't want to create helicopter management with, with the person that's delegating.
We don't want to create thrash and we don't want to make it feel like I shouldn't have done this in the first place. Now, how do we reward someone for delegating? Well, this is going to address the fear that I've heard from a lot of managers of, well, if I don't do everything, like how do I show what I'm doing?
How do I prove my value? We talk about the, the impact of the team and we talk about the leadership qualities that that manager has set up to enable the team to be successful in taking some of this ownership themselves. So we talk about. Hey, what are the qualities that manager, what are they doing? How are they creating an environment with clear expectations?
How are they creating clear priorities for the team? How are they providing coaching and course correction when needed? And we talk about what that manager is doing because delegating is not just saying, take this over and I'm going to get out of the way. It's about creating the support so that that person can be successful once they've taken that task on.
And so if your manager isn't clear about that, that's what you really want to talk about. You want to say, Hey, in this project for this next quarter or whatever we're doing, this is how I'm going to be evaluating you because you're not in the day to day. This is what I'm looking for. And then you set clear expectations around the, these sort of leadership qualities that you're asking them to step into.
So they really see, okay, that's my role. I don't need to be doing the actual deliverables. I don't need to actually be deep in the weeds because my success is measured by this. Now, a huge one too, because we're talking about that's how you're incentivizing and evaluating them. You want to make it really clear that the success of this project really is, you know, you are part of that, right?
Once you hand it off, it doesn't mean you're not accountable anymore. And that's one of the, you know, the double edged swords of being a manager is that you still are responsible for your team. So if you're worried about a manager delegating because they're just going to hand it off and absolve themselves of responsibility, that's a really clear expectation.
We want to set that, Hey, part of your success is the success of your team. and make sure they see that they've got to own that too. I was working with an agency a couple months ago and they had a manager who, when the leadership would ask what the status of projects are, she'd say, I don't know, like ask them.
And it was like, Whoa, this manager has no clue on how to actually follow through on the fact that they are responsible ultimately for the success of the team. And we had to do a lot of coaching with that person to kind of click the, that awareness in that when you're managing folks, you are, you know, you're the umbrella over the success.
And yeah, if someone doesn't do their job that day, it's not specifically like your quote unquote fault, but you got to get in there and be coaching them and holding them accountable. And then that ultimately translates to your leadership. So if you're struggling with that piece, that's another one is holding your own managers accountable to that.
They are responsible for the success of their team. And there's all these tools to do that. And here's how, and then that's how they're being incentivized and rewarded. This is the number one thing you can do to support folks in delegating. is encourage them to do it and reward and incentivize them for delegating effectively.
So what does that look like? We said that means talking about how you're going to support them in delegating, talking about those leadership qualities of how they're actually being evaluated since they're not doing the work and then getting the hell out of the way so that they can do that. Because again, if we feel like delegating is too scary, because actually we're gonna get in trouble later when something goes wrong and that we become invisible and no one thinks we're needed anymore.
When all those fears are reinforced, we're not going to do it. So if you want your managers or team members in general to be delegating, we have to set them up for success, talk about how we're going to reward and incentivize them for doing that and then give them the space to do it. See you next time.
That's all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. With that said, let's spread the word. If you love this episode, please pass it along to someone who might benefit from it.
See you next time.
