Executive Podcast #293: Mastering the Art of Delegation

Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holly, a Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. As we get started today, I want to remind you to go to maxwellleadership.com/podcast. Click on this podcast, and you’ll be able to find a form there that you can fill out. If you have a question for Perry or I that you’d love for us to discuss on an upcoming podcast, you want to download the Learner guide. Yes, Perry.

Perry Holley:
Yes, please.

Chris Goede:
We were just talking about where we’re at. We have a very exciting episode coming here in the near future, a milestone for us. And so Perry’s always willing to take help on the topics. Very teachable, and we don’t need the principles. Just give him the topic. He’ll figure out the rest of it.

Perry Holley:
And I got the principles.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, we’ll go from there. So please visit that. Fill out that form. Well, today’s topic is titled mastering the art of delegation, as we often do around here. This is about some coaching calls that you’ve been having. It’s been a lot of conversations with multiple different levels of leaders, and so we’re going to dive into that in just. Just a minute. But this, I want you.

Chris Goede:
I want you hear me say that, because, again, we talk about this. This is just real stuff that we’re hearing that we’re dealing with, and we want to be able to share that with you. Well, leaders, who can master this art of delegation, man, if you can figure that out, you’re going to be able to unleash your team’s potential, and you’re going to be able to develop strategies for distributing work and decision making throughout the team in a much more effective way.

Perry Holley:
Yes, this is from several coaching calls in the last few months. It comes up quite a bit. I think it comes from a good place in people’s, in leaders hearts. They want to be valuable. They want to add value to the team. But here’s what I’ve had. I said, I have a problem. I think I can do it all, and I absolutely, positively cannot.

Perry Holley:
But I don’t invite others to join me in that. And that. Why am I not. Why should I do this?

Chris Goede:
Is.

Perry Holley:
I’m not great at everything, but I have team members that are. I used to think that trying to be good at everything was good leadership, that I should be able to master all these things on our team, all these different roles, that I should be able to do those. And then I realized that’s not good leadership. That’s probably more management and not leading. What I have learned is that good leaders know what they’re bad at or less. I mean, bad sounds like a negative word, but less talented at. They. They find people who are excellent at those things, the things that I cannot do.

Perry Holley:
Well, I know people on my team who can. I’ve hired it that way. And I wonder how you. I mean, I know that’s why you brought me in 100% like this.

Chris Goede:
I mean, I think you’re talking right to me. I think this is something that, in my leadership journey, I struggle with, and I have to continually think about it and work on it. And so the art of this that we’re going to talk about today is very helpful for me personally. And as I was reflecting back on this and we were talking about, why is it such a challenge for me? You think about the control side of things and some of the things you shared with, as you were kind of opening right there. Right. The perfectionism. Well, it’s got to be done, you know? Right. And I’m just going to do it.

Chris Goede:
The. The time invested in the skill development of other people. I just don’t have time. And you begin to tell yourself these stories, and then you don’t end up delegating. Uh, and you end up doing yourself.

Perry Holley:
Well, you have a much bigger problem. Yeah. I’ll give you a diagnosis. You.

Chris Goede:
Wait a minute. What are we talking about here?

Perry Holley:
And this. This is going to, uh. This is true for a lot of people listening to this is to. And the guy that I’m coaching right now that’s got the biggest problem. This is his problem, too. You are a really good person. You care a lot about your team. You care a lot about me personally.

Perry Holley:
I know you do. And you sometimes. And we do. I do this, too. I take on. I said, I don’t want to burden you. I know how busy you are. I could just.

Perry Holley:
I can take this from you. I can. And I thought, no, and then you teach this. I’ve heard you teach this about doing the things that only you can do. And so instead of you doing the things that only you can do and putting it on me or the others on the team to do what only things we can do, you tend to take things off their plate because. And it’s come a great place in your heart. You just want the thing. Other things you said can be true as well.

Perry Holley:
But I know for many of it is not. I can just do it better. I can just do it faster. It is.

Chris Goede:
I got it.

Perry Holley:
You’re overworked. The team’s overworked. I got it.

Chris Goede:
But when I do that and when leaders do that, right, what we’re doing is back as we opened up and I said, hey, you know, when you can figure this out, you’re going to unleash the potential of your team. How powerful is that statement that I am or other leaders are? You are missing out on unleashing that power of the potential of that team. That’s a powerful statement. Instead of me just, well, let me just protect you from it. Right. And the great ones, I read this statement, the great ones have a mindset of empowering. Right. There’s a difference a little bit between delegating and empowering, empowering others and recognize the long term benefit.

Chris Goede:
So we’re talking about unleashing the potential of your team and the long term benefit of mastering this art of delegation. That’s the key.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. And this idea of, you said something in last week’s podcast, I thought about it later, was about, when you talk about accountability, you said that you had a statistic, said that it’s like 70 plus plus percent of people want to be held accountable. When you were just, I thought the same thing here is that I want you to assign me stuff, I want you to take stuff off of your plate. And we teach this in our 360. Leader is for me to lead up to my leaders. I need to take something, lighten your load, take something off your plate and so that you can go forward and do the bigger things that only you can do. So there’s a bit of a relationship here between the delegateur and the delegatee is that I really want you to delegate to me because one it says you trust me and one it says that you believe in me and that I can then also I can lighten your load and I can make you more effective as a leader in the organization. It really is a beautiful thing, but we’re all so busy trying to protect each other or, you know, protect our, you know, I don’t want to show my weakness.

Perry Holley:
I can do everything. There’s all kind of things going on. I think about a definition of delegation really around. It starts with admitting where I’m not so great, meeting my weaknesses, plus finding people who excel in the areas where I am weak, plus giving the task away and the big truth is that when I learn to delegate for far better, it’s like you said, long term, it’s an investment in learning how to get better and at more things getting done, and that there needs to be some intention around preparing people to receive. Just like you were saying, that long term, I’m setting up for success down the road.

Chris Goede:
I think that this is something that if you can develop a little system and a process, some don’t have any challenges with it, but if you do that again, it’ll help you, it’ll help the team, and long term benefits will skyrocket. And so we’re going to give you a couple steps that will help you kind of develop that process and what that looks like. So the first step. Step one is, and Perry mentioned this just a minute ago, we talk a little bit about this inside our team, which is, what are the things that you should be empowering and delegating others to be doing on your team? What does that look like? And then you got to back up from there and say, well, what are the things that only I can do for the team? And so you got. You got to spend some time thinking about this and. And write them out and. And be true to those statements. And then.

Chris Goede:
And then you go, okay, this is. This my bucket? Okay, now, here’s the next group of things that I have on here. What. What team member has the skillset to be able to. To really dive in and make this well? And back to your point a minute ago, I think when we go about doing this, not only do they want to be held accountable and be a part of this, but also makes them feel connected to the team. I think, of a team member, you know, that I have, where when I’m not handing out things, it feels like there is a disconnect from us versus saying, hey, no, no, no, I need to help with this. But it’s got it. You got to start with making sure that what is it that only you can do for the team or the organization, then let’s look at the others on that list to see which team can come in and work that problem for you or that skill set.

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Perry Holley:
Another thing, I think maybe step two would be giving clear instruction. And what I’m thinking mostly here is about including the why. I’m asking you to carry this forward for me, and the instruction could be about, why are we doing this? Maybe you’re training them. One of my best leaders I ever had worked for. He liked to. I didn’t know it at the time. Now, looking back at my knowledge level now where I am, he didn’t just give me anything to go and do. He would say, I want you to go figure this out and come back and tell me what you would do.

Perry Holley:
A bit of a training to see what’s my thinking like. And he would then give me feedback on my thinking. Over time. He might say, I want you to go develop the direction we should go and then perhaps take the first step and come back and tell me what you did. It was a progression of as he was training me to take things off his plate, to delegate to the team, he didn’t just say, go handle this because that’s a recipe for disaster to do that. So I think, why? This is hard thinking, well, this makes perfect sense. Figure out what you need to delegate. Give him some instruction.

Perry Holley:
Why is this hard? Well, it takes a little time. It could be easier to do it myself. By the time I could tell you, I could just have it done, but then said, well, then why would you do it? Well, you already gave the answer. It’s an investment for the future. The more I develop you to be able to take things off the plate, to move the ball forward, doing the things that only you can do. I can focus on only things I can do. And now we start to build momentum and you’re going to stall momentum. If we’re always with busy work and putting out fires and everybody doing only everybody’s business, it’s not going to work.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. The why is so key to your point. I know that anytime I am asked to take on a project, to take on something that’s delegated to me, if I can understand the why behind it and then how that ties to the team or how it ties to the organization as a whole and where we’re going, it makes it so much easier on me to buy into that because I can connect the dots, by the way. Also, when you’re delegating these responsibilities, these oftentimes won’t just be an individual contribution. They’re going to need a team. They’re going to need to put together, you know, cross functional team. They’re going to need to tap into different resources. They need to be able to communicate the why as well while they’re building out their teams to be able to do that.

Chris Goede:
And so I think you got to definitely communicate that why is one of the first key things. Well, step number three, as you think about building this process to help you develop this art of delegation is set the expectations about exactly what you want them to do and, and how much authority do they have? Right. Like should they check in with you before taking this next step? I like what one of your leaders said, hey, do this, then come back and tell me what you would do. Right. Yeah, he was setting that clear expectations and then, or, you know, maybe are they free to the, you know, the 1080 ten around here? Hey, 10%, 80%, you just keep running, come back to last 10%, whatever it might be. Now, this is hard for leaders to do this, though, because I think a lot of times we make a lot of assumptions around the qualities or the skill sets of our people. And so we go, hmm, we’re making an assumption here that they already know what I want. Right? Or we’re making an assumption that they have the ability to be accountable and to run this task out by themselves.

Chris Goede:
They’re going to execute on it. We make a lot of assumptions and so it’s really hard by doing that. We go, no, I’m just not going to delegate it because I’m making, they don’t understand it, they don’t get it. And so we make an assumption and we don’t need to be doing that. We need to be having conversations and set clear expectations on the front end. And that’ll help with that.

Perry Holley:
I just, following on that step forward, I think would be more like check in and follow up. And so based on, like you said, the level of authority that you granted, so what you asked them specifically to do, follow up on how those things went and where improvement may be needed, how to, I love it. I always thought about it as checking their thinking.

Chris Goede:
I like that a lot.

Perry Holley:
Go do this. Come back and tell me what you would do. Go figure this out. Take a first step and come back and tell me what you did. I’m looking to see how are you thinking the way I want you thinking. Are you thinking properly about this? Are you expanding your perspective, and are you seeing things in light of the bigger picture, or are you just in the heads down? I want to project your thinking, but one thing I want to really encourage our listeners here is thinking feedback, not micromanage. Is that the worst thing you can do is, hey, I gave you that. What did you do? I’m going to go with you and see how you did.

Perry Holley:
Let me go help you present. No, I’m not micromanaging you. I’m giving you freedom to go execute at the authority level that we talked about, and then I want to come back and follow up. How did that go? What worked? What didn’t work? What could you have done differently? What would you do differently the next time? Okay, now I can hear your thinking. Correct your thinking, coach your thinking. Now I’m building somebody I can build, too. So why is that hard? Well, again, it takes time. Everything is an investment here.

Perry Holley:
I’m investing in the future of this person’s contribution to the team. Their investment as a developing team member goes back to something we talk in previous weeks about, a culture of growth that really feeds into this quite a bit.

Chris Goede:
That’s good. Well, step number five is recognize good work and ask for their feedback. So we’re just talking about giving feedback. I think this is essential. They’re gonna be closest to the project, and so you do need their feedback. What are they seeing? What are they feeling? What are they hearing? What’s going on? But make sure, on the front end of what I just said, make sure you’re recognizing when you see them doing good things. Matter of fact, I would even encourage you, when appropriate, recognize them in front of others and do so with specific examples.

Perry Holley:
Yes.

Chris Goede:
Hey, I asked Perry to lead this project for me, and let me just tell you where they’re at and the status. And, man, I’m so proud of Perry and the team are doing because of these three things, not just general. Right. Because the team needs to hear those specifics. Um, why is this hard? I think it’s hard because of pride. I think a lot of leaders have a hard time acknowledging, hey, Perry, you know, Perry did that project better than I did, or, you know, and you give up that I’m the only one that can provide around here, I can fix those problems. And so I think there’s a. I think there’s a pride and ego that happens in there.

Perry Holley:
How secure are you as a leader? Personal insecurity, which reminds me of. I always ask, I’ve been doing this a lot lately in workshops and speeches, but asking the leaders, do you want to see your business, your department, your organization run without you, or would you like to see it run because of you?

Chris Goede:
I love that statement.

Perry Holley:
You know, they know the answer should be, I want to see it work without me. But it goes back to how secure you like, if it runs without me, you won’t need me. No, that’s not it. But I always ask, what does a leader that builds a department where it works without them? So if you step away, everything still works on that. I ask them to come up with a list, and the list always includes the art of delegation. I move work to people who can do it better than me, faster than me, more effectively than me, and I am now free to step back. I’m not needed for everything to happen to do that.

Chris Goede:
Yeah. Well, listen, as we wrap up, let me comment on what you just said, and then I’ll give you a closing thought. Isn’t it true that no matter your role inside an organization, how important it is when people step away, they resign, they all of a sudden, you know, don’t show up for work, the organization goes on. Right. Like, somebody fills your role in a heartbeat. And so just be, be aware of that. As you’re thinking through that, some closing thoughts for you. I think as leaders, as we think about this, and these are just some of my raw thoughts and thinking about becoming better at the art of delegation, I think to optimize productivity for our team, to develop those that are on our team, and to really achieve the strategic objectives that funnel up to the top of the organization.

Chris Goede:
You have to do this. You have to do this. You can’t do it by yourself. And you got to have a team, team with you. And John says, know, if you want to do something, you know, successful, do it. Do it by yourself. Want to do something significant, then do it with a group of people. And what that means is you got to understand, you got to empower and give them ownership and responsibility through delegation to be able to do that.

Chris Goede:
And we need to, we need to really allow our leaders to focus on the right tasks and get dialed in on that. Because I know to your point earlier, like, sometimes I’m doing things and I’m like, man, I should really be focused on three other things than doing this task. And so what, what’s happening there? That is I’m not only am I not unleashing the potential of our team, but I’m also withholding what our team could be accomplishing in the organization as a whole. And so we need to make sure that we are focused on the right task as leaders and then figure out the art of delegation for the others.

Perry Holley:
Perfect. And John also says if someone can do something 80% as well as you give it to them, they’ll figure out the other 20. That’s good as you go. Great stuff. Reminder, if you’d like to have the learner guide for this issue, learn about our offerings or leave us a question or a comment. You can do all of that at maxwellleadership.com/Podcast we love hearing from you. We’re very grateful you’d spend this time with us.

Perry Holley:
That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast.