A lesson that I keep learning and relearning is how to let go
of control and trust people. I
struggle there. I struggle there big time. And
what I don't trust, I know I try to control.
I try to grab on with anxiety to situations. I get
calculated in my interactions. I try to control responses.
But I know I can't do life alone. I have to learn to
delegate. Delegation is a challenge for me. And that is
what we're going to talk about today. Effective Delegation
Three steps Every leader should know
I'm in a situation, well, a lot of situations where
I need to trust. Well, I can trust and open up to people or I
can try to control and there's a consequence to that. They don't flourish,
they don't feel trusted, and the relationship
doesn't grow. So it's trusting
people on my team, trusting people that do contract work,
trusting my accountant and bookkeeper and attorney,
trusting my friends and my family. It goes on and
on. So welcome to the Decide youe Legacy podcast. Today's
episode is three steps every leader must know for
effective delegation. By the end of this episode,
you are going to be inspired to see that you can have a lot of
freedom by learning to trust, that it's going to benefit you much more than cost
you, that the results, even if you delegate poorly, are going to be better than
not delegating at all. And that you can do some things, take
action to delegate and get better at this skill. And it is a
skill. I'm sharing this today because I am struggling greatly with
delegating and letting go. So I have the hope that this podcast will
help me to refine my process and to be reminded
of the importance of delegation. You have to do that to grow
a team. You can't go through life alone.
When I realize that delegation is not going to kill me, that the
consequences are not going to be so dramatic, that it's going to derail my business
or my life or my health, then I'm more willing to actually delegate.
It's not going to have huge consequences and I can do it incrementally with little
things and go to bigger things. That's what good leaders do. A lot of times
they test not in a bad way. It's just seeing if someone
follows through. They're going to see if they can trust them with more things and
more things. And that's how you can grow in your career, by being trustworthy
consistently at a very high level. Consistency is key. Consistency
in your integrity in your behaviors and your follow through and your communication,
you can work on that. And I'm going to challenge you to work on that
today. So I like to challenge everybody to face their fears. And. And I want
to share one fear that I faced recently as I went to a 50th
birthday party for a bunch of friends in Portland. Hadn't seen many of them in
10 years. Had a great time, but I was afraid. I didn't necessarily want to
do it. My inner roommate was talking me out of it. I trusted my gut
intuition, followed through on my values of intentionality, relationships,
connection, fun. Made the decision to go. It was a great decision. So
I'm Adam Gregg. I'm your host of the Decide youe Legacy podcast.
I'm the founder of Decide youe Legacy. I'm also a family Therapist of
over 25 years and a legacy coach. Do speaking as well.
My purpose in life and the purpose of Decide youe Legacy is to
help businesses and people live
courageously. You can take action to do so, and
it will help your life tremendously when you do so. I struggle
with delegating because I'm afraid that
they could fail, that I could be embarrassed, that I make the wrong decision,
that I trust somebody. They're not untrust, they're not trustworthy.
I am afraid of the negative consequences
when I delegate the cleanup, potentially if they don't do it well. And
even I get a little bit afraid of all the interaction that needs to
go on when I delegate. So I hire a new employee to delegate to them.
And that requires a lot of interaction to get them up to speed. I'm afraid
of that at times. I'll mess that up. I'll train them in the wrong way,
I'll offend them, they won't like me. I mean, all these things can go through
my head in those situations. But
again, the benefit far outweighs the cost
of not delegating at all. So it triggers a lot of fear in me.
And the thing about delegating, too, is it triggers fear because I have
been burned in the past. I have made bad decisions in the past to delegate.
I have trusted people, and I've also trusted people that have been extraordinarily
great assets in my life. And more people, as I look
back, have been trustworthy than untrustworthy. It's just
those few that have been extraordinarily untrustworthy can often get magnified
in my central nervous system to
protect me from getting hurt again. I don't want to live that way.
It's not worth it. So three steps that are essential for a leader
to learn how to delegate. Now, number one
is to define what trust looks like.
What does it look like specifically? So how would somebody know
that you trust them? How would you interact with them differently?
How would they behave in a trustworthy way that would tell
you that they are being trustworthy. So if you can write that
down, things are clear on paper, put it down on paper on
purpose and see, like, if you hired this employee, this is what trust
would look like. And, and for me, it would look like they're
openly communicating with me. They're willing to share that they're struggling. They're
willing to share that they don't know how to do something. They're willing to ask
questions, even interrupt me, because they're asking questions. I
like being interrupted with good questions from people on my team because
I know they're learning and growing, and I know that they're doing something even in
that situation that is uncomfortable. I don't always want to be interrupted. I mean, don't
get me wrong. But if they're mustering up the courage to say, I don't know
this, can you help me? That's a great thing. Define what trust looks like.
Does it mean perfection? Well, hopefully not,
because they're not going to be perfect in getting the project done. They're going
to make mistakes just like you would. So
does that definition require or does it mean that you are
lighthearted around them and having fun? I mean, when you trust somebody, you're bantering,
they're talking to you openly about their struggles. They're not looking for perfectionism.
They're not trying to be perfect themselves. All those things to me, build
trustworthiness. So. And then attention to detail. But admitting when you made
a mistake, that's huge. I mean, a trustworthy person is going to say, I messed
up here, I dropped the ball. I was wrong. No excuses.
Admirable quality that I see again and again in people that I build
trust with. Are they willing to own how they have made mistakes in
the past? Even to say, look, I did this in the past, but I'm not
going to do this now because I learned from it. And I had a
situation one time where my daughter pointed out to me that she had addressed a
sit. She had addressed a concern with me that
didn't help her trust in me. And. And then.
And I didn't necessarily recognize how impactful it was, and I did
it again. And it related to trust. In fact, it was
continuing to ask the same question again and again, not
just Asking her how she had done studying her four
finals. It was asking her multiple times. And. And she had shared,
dad, hey, well, you know, I don't need to be asked multiple times. I got
it taken care of. You can. I appreciate you sharing feedback with me, but I
don't necessarily need you to ask me so many times. And then I would go
ahead and do it again. And that would hinder the trust that she would have
in me because I would say it multiple times. I had to step back in
myself and say I don't need to be a nag.
And a nag. One of the ways I think of being a nag is that
I'm trying to control someone's behavior in that situation. So I
appreciate her sharing that I didn't correct it. Eventually I got the point message
and I started to correct it. Big deal. So define what trust looks like
so you can explain to them clearly what success looks like
in this relationship. So if it's a project that
they're working on, let's say I was just talking to our
graphic designer about developing a bookmark that I
give to clients that helps you shift your perspective. And we had to go through
numerous iterations. So success as I defined it is that
we have a deadline and that you're checking in with me midway through the
project and that it's me asking for clarity in those
areas. And then as I've worked with her and gotten to know her as a
contractor, we've had good communication and good check in and there's ownership
of when we make a mistake, both sides. When I'm too much involved,
she has the freedom to say, dude, back off and trust me. But I don't
want to just not give her the support she needs in the project because she
needs enough information to create and succeed and make a winning pro,
a winning completed project. But we had to define it. So that's what success.
If you can define it for people, as I do with clients, any kind of
contract, any coaching relationship, let's define specifically what success
would look like. If we engage in this and if we can define it clearly,
then we can focus on that and it's going to show you how much
progress we're making on the journey towards getting
that project done or establishing that employee employer relationship
reaching our goals. It's crucial. I recently
decided to revamp the whole Decide youe Legacy website. It needed a
revamp that requires me to trust and delegate because I can't
do the website. I think I can do some things and I'm pretty
dangerous, actually. I'll mess it up pretty bad. And I need to trust people who
have more expertise in this area than myself. So I hired somebody. He
did our website, his company, the company did our web, completed our website in the
past, they're gonna do it again, a great thing. And I have to let go.
And it's scary to me. I feel even silly
sharing how controlling I can be.
And go to the worst case scenario. It's going to bankrupt our business, they're going
to mess it up, it's going to look funky, I'm going to
have the brands destroyed. I mean, all these things. And if you're hearing
and listening to this, if you work for this company that I hired, forgive me
because I trust you enough to hire you. And
it's my problem, it's my issue. I am a control
freak in recovery and I've made
a lot of progress recently, but I got a lot of work to do.
That is me. So second essential step to learn how to delegate is
that you must provide clarity. And this is a little bit different
than defining what trust looks like. The clarity means that
you are taking the time to do the hard work that it takes to
delegate. Well, because they won't know what to do unless
you ask for what you want. And you spelling out what you want means
having a job description or a project description, explaining
to them what tools and resources they have, asking from them what
they need, asking what questions they have and need answers to.
So for this website project, he has to ask me
specific questions, some of which I give him that I want
addressed on the website and we talk it through. I have to take the time
to step back and send the content over that I want on the website.
I have to be able to share with him what ideas I
have for the branding, what our niche is,
who our target market is. Kind of the same thing, what makes
us unique as an organization, what our values are and how I want those things
expressed, and then to trust that he does what
he does best, which is the creativity. And his team is a team of writers.
I don't claim to be a skilled writer in that regard.
Business, professional writing. I'm good in some ways
maybe, but I'm not good in some ways. And the problem
with me at times is my ego. I don't want to let go.
That safety, ego function makes me want to control
and protect and protect what I have and what is
mine. And that's not healthy and good. And it creates a great deal of stress.
So all this delegation from for you listening, I hope to inspire
you to see that at the end of this episode, you're gonna see a path
to freedom and actually a path to more success in your business, a path
to more success in your relationships. You can do things specifically,
that's gonna save your life potentially because you're letting go of
things. So I was just talking to somebody today who's a friend and
he's in his 80s and he struggles with some health
areas and his spouse struggles as well. And that was the
question I had is what can you let go of? Because he admits he's a
control freak as well. And he has people trying to help him, but he's not
letting them help him. And so the assignment for him in our conversation was
what can you do to
get some help? You know, And I challenged him too, because he's a good friend.
I mean, it was like, hey, I had permission to push back and
saying, you know, my perception of you at times is that when people give you
a good idea that is requires getting help from somebody else, that
you quickly go on to a new topic. Maybe I'm wrong here, maybe I'm
off pace, but. And you have freedom to share with me if I am. But
it ended up being a very productive, positive conversation about how
to take care of aging family members in a healthy way without burning yourself
out. He wants to get out of his house more. And he went to the
casino with some people in his family and had a great time and was really
energized by it. And I'm like, he likes to go to baseball games and sporting
events and he can't get out because of his spouse at times. At least that's
what he tells himself. But he has all these family members that would like to
actually get him out and, and step in and help, but he's not and hasn't
by his own self admission, been doing so really crucial thing.
So you provide them clarity, and that can be checking in with
them and giving them more clarity, sending an email, asking for an update. And there's
a fine line at times between being nagging and controlling and being
informative and being healthy in your discussion of the project's progress.
Cause you're not gonna be a good leader too if you forget
what they have committed to doing because you're paying them to do a certain task.
So one of the big mistakes that I have made over the years in coaching
clients, former coaching clients, people that know me, I apologize
for this one, is not following up with clients on
their commitments, commitments that they have made. Part of that is because
I know there may be some pushback as to why they didn't get it done.
And they have some shame, potentially. It's not really justifiable
shame, but they're ashamed that they didn't get the project done that they committed to.
This is not necessarily contractors, but it can be. If you don't hear from a
contractor on an assignment, there's a good chance that they got sidetracked and
they're working on it to catch up and they don't really want to check in.
I mean, but that may be a good reason to potentially check in. Not to
shame them, but just to have some dialogue. Because maybe it opens up a
conversation about how they're not managing their time well and you still
believe in them, you still trust them, but you have a good, healthy conversation because
they can admit, and they will admit, hopefully, in that situation, that they're
not making the progress that they wanted to make. So the third
essential is to let go. This is all about letting
go, but to intentionally get to the point where you're making the decision
that I've gotten to the place where I can let this thing go and
give them a chance and believe in them. And when you let go, you gotta
really let go. I mean, like, it's really essential. They feel in
you, in your approach, that you're actually saying, I
know you can do this. I believe in you potentially even more than you believe
in yourself. I know you can do this. And I'm going to let go of
the situation. And I've just talking about this. I have a great
deal of areas where I need to let go more and to see what
happens, but I need it. I need to make sure I do that. I asked
one of the people on my team, a real key staff member today, like, what
can I do to better let go? And
the employees said they wanted to think about it. And I just got an email
from them because I'm in a studio right now saying, hey, I want to talk
to you more about that. I have more thoughts on it and I'm really excited
about the conversation because I think it'll help me tremendously because they have very
good insight. I need to let go. And so in recently, some ways that I
have let go are by spending some money
on things that I wouldn't normally spend money on. It's a letting go of my
finances. Because you can let go there. You can let go of plans by
letting someone else make the plans. And not that you're not sharing your opinion or
anything, but you're trusting that they can do it. Well, it's a good reason to
have a travel agent at times to trust them that they can do your agenda.
I like that. I don't like overjamming my days. You can let
go of your health, not to let go of your health and like not take
care of your health, but trust medical advice that people
give you. People that have more expertise on your health than
you do. Like your primary care physician or trusting
your financial accountant or planner on
decisions because you've delegated that to them and then taking their
advice on how to make that win and not thinking you have all the answers,
which I can at times, trusting your attorney if you have one.
Those are all ways to delegate. And then you learn in the process.
And so what it means to let go is going to
be. It's on the other side of anxiety. It's
sort of close to anxiety, but there's going to be a sense
of excitement with it. Like I'm letting go and I know they can do it.
This is gonna be big. I may be let down, but I know people don't
generally wanna let other people down. I mean, I find that if you delegate, there's
people out there, they just wanna win. I mean they wanna let you, they want
you to be excited about what they actually get done. Which will be
very surprising to you if you're a control person like me. I mean,
very surprising when you see somebody who, they see how you've
let go and then they over exceed your expectations and then the business with
them grows, the trust with them grows, they get promoted, they, they grow in their
position and you see them succeed and that's very exciting.
And so a little story here. I
decided that I was going to delegate something to
a person recently and it ended up
being that they, they did a really good job on the project but. And they
did a really good job in the situation. But they came back to me and
they were going off and moving town and I knew that it would be a
short term project but basically expressed that that
it wasn't the healthiest dynamic and just be short and
sweet. I hired my daughter and I said that on another podcast
and Emerson, she came to me and she said
and she's an adult and everything, but she had never actually worked as an
employee of Decide youe Legacy. And I feel like she would be a great employee.
I know she'd be a great employee and I think there's great
potential in the future and Everything. But she came to me and she expressed
that after I had delegated this stuff and she wasn't supervised by me, but
expressed that she was at a place where she wanted more of a dad than
a boss. She's going off to school. And I took that kind of hard. I
mean, it was like I delegated something I trusted something I fully trusted. It
was kind of. It was a risk and everything. And then it took me a
couple days to bounce back out of that and think, and this again, I'm
owning this right here. And then to just think, you know, that's really a valid
point and that's a mature perspective. And. And as I went into
it, I hadn't thought it through enough. I got overly excited about having her on
the team and I didn't think it through enough to go through the process that
I would go through in delegating to somebody else because I was so excited.
So you can kind of jump in too quick. And I don't think I did
jump in too quick. It was spontaneous. I'm really glad because I learned and I
believe she learned and I believe my team learned. Our team grew in
that whole process. So make a decision.
You know, indecision is a decision. The worst thing you can do is make no
decision. The best thing you can do is make the best decision. And
the second best thing is to make a decision that doesn't go well. That's better
than making no decision at all. So let that sink in. And if
you found this content helpful, hit the link to Shatterproof yourself
light. 7 small steps to a giant leap. To a giant leap in
your life. Period. It's a 20 minute video, 25 minute
video in a worksheet, four page worksheet you fill out as you watch the video.
You want to write your answers down. I would encourage you to. Or type them
in the fillable PDF. Download that. It's going to help you out and it's
going to help you in one area specific to delegation and it's the
emotional component. One of the sections is on how to own your
emotions because that letting go is an emotional fear thing
that you can actually do. There's an article that's linked that goes on with
this, goes along with this episode as well. And it's on.
It's on delegation steps. That article has not been written
yet, but by the time it's been, this podcast has been published at
least like a month after it's been published, there will be an article on this
content. So that's a challenge to myself. I just delegated
that to myself as I went through this episode. So nothing's going to make
me happier than knowing you took an action based on this content to delegate.
So please share with me in the comments how you have
delegated because that's gonna inspire me and take one action.
That's you applying something here that you learned in
this podcast. Share it with your friends. I wanna delegate to you. Give it a
rating and review on Apple or Spotify. Subscribe
as well. Share it with other people. That helps it reach more people
organically. And that's what we're in the business of doing, helping people
live courageously. Delegation is a courageous act.
Trusting is a courageous act. There's no positive change until you
decide to change. To decide means you are eliminating other
options and your legacy depends on you. Deciding the
impact that your life has on others is your legacy. I want to close
today the way I always do. Live the life today that you want to be
remembered for. Ten years after you're gone. You decide your legacy.
Nobody else. I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.
RA.