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We tend to think of delegation as a tactical challenge, but most of the time, leaders who struggle to delegate are dealing with a deeper belief issue. In this episode, Alex and Ben discuss the 6 heart postures that get in the way of delegation, from beliefs about our own self worth to the level of trust we’re willing to place in people. They also explain why effective delegation is essential for servant leadership, and they cast a vision for a healthy, effective, and lifegiving culture of delegation that can transform your business and life.
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Episode Recap:
- Ineffective delegation is one of the most dangerous pitfalls for creative leaders
- Servant leaders know how to tap into the potential of the people around them
- Healthy leaders know their capacity is finite
- Struggling to delegate is often a heart issue, not a tactics issue
- 1. Insecurity of Belief: Is your identity tied to your to-do list?
- 2. Pride: Can you see the work without yourself at the center?
- 3. Aimlessness: Do you have a vision that points up and out?
- 4. Perfectionism: Do your standards leave room for mistakes?
- 5. Distrust: Do you believe in your people’s integrity and competency?
- 6. Impatience: Are you willing to play the long game?
- Healthy delegation can change your life, and it is possible
If you’re ready to move beyond just gathering information and start executing on what truly matters, Path for Growth’s 1-on-1 coaching can help. Apply now at pathforgrowth.com/coaching.
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[00:00:02] ALEX JUDD: So here's the problem. If you are a creative entrepreneur, business owner or leader, uh, your ability to create opportunity massively exceeds your ability to delegate responsibility. And, and so what happens there is you produce more than you could possibly sustain and you haven't developed the skill or ability, uh, to be able to hand it off to other people and actually let it go.
[00:00:34] ALEX JUDD: And, and so in some ways you're on this doom loop where you're like, man, my greatest strength actually becomes my biggest downfall because I haven't, developed the quintessential leadership capacity, which is effective and healthy delegation.
[00:00:49] BEN LOY: What are, uh, some of the dangers, when someone doesn't delegate?
[00:00:53] BEN LOY: Well.
[00:00:54] ALEX JUDD: I mean, burnout would be number one. Uh, number two would be you never see the people around you reach their fullest potential. And that's the one I think I would actually park on is because burnout is a time management issue. And a lot of people look at delegation as a time management tactic. And it obviously is a time management, tactic rooted in the question, how do I get many of these things off of my plate?
[00:01:18] ALEX JUDD: But I actually think for impact driven leaders, uh, if we just look at it strictly as a, a time management tool, we're missing all of the fruit and value of delegating. Well, because I think at its core, uh, delegation is a people development. Tool A. And so when we don't delegate, we don't effectively hand off responsibility.
[00:01:41] ALEX JUDD: And how do people grow in their role? Grow within your business, move forward as a person, move forward as a leader by proactively adopting responsibility. A. And so what you'll look up and see is you may be growing, although you're probably not enjoying it, but none of the people around you are because you haven't given the them the ability to grow.
[00:02:00] ALEX JUDD: Because the ability to grow always requires increased responsibility, but you're unwilling to let go.
[00:02:06] BEN LOY: Yeah. How does, this is interesting. How does delegation speak to servant leadership?
[00:02:12] ALEX JUDD: leadership? Yeah. Well, it feels like a leading question that you have an answer to, so I'd like to hear your thoughts too.
[00:02:18] ALEX JUDD: Well, what is service operating in the best interest of another
[00:02:22] BEN LOY: person?
[00:02:22] BEN LOY: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:23] ALEX JUDD: Uh, I'll never forget. I at one time was, sitting down with a group of leaders within a company that had very much gone from the, uh, founder hustler stage all the way up to the operator and was knocking on the door of the CEO stage of business if we're using our four stages of business that we teach business owners.
[00:02:41] ALEX JUDD: And I was sitting down talking to the leaders after a training session we had done and just hearing some of their story and, and, uh, their kind of trajectory of how they'd grown with the company. And many of them had been there for years. And many of them, actually all of them were not in the role that they started in.
[00:02:59] ALEX JUDD: I asked each of them, could, could you have imagined yourself doing the role that you're currently doing whenever you started? And they, they all like, gave me a very, like, exasperated like, are you kidding me? There's no way I could have ever imagined it. So then obviously that begs the question, well, how did you get here because you're now managing people.
[00:03:18] ALEX JUDD: You're now leading this department and stuff like that. And, and all of them had some version of the same story. They said, well, our, our owner, the business owner, he got really overwhelmed and he was like, I can't do this anymore. I just need you to take this on and I need you to take this area. And they were like, I, I didn't think I could do it.
[00:03:37] ALEX JUDD: And he said, it's not that hard. You can do it. And then he just kinda like encouraged me and challenged me along the way. This is not necessarily a, a prescribing a template for delegation, but it is, there's an insightful truth in this. And I asked them, okay, well what happened? And they said. Dadgumit if I didn't start doing the things that I didn't think I could do.
[00:03:56] ALEX JUDD: And they said I looked up and within, you know, a few months, stage of growth that I never even deemed was possible for myself. 'cause I had never done, it was now routine and ordinary. And every single one of 'em said that story where it was basically like he handed me more than I thought I was capable of.
[00:04:15] ALEX JUDD: But then I started to just chip away at it and learn the skills associated with it. And now I look up and it's called my job. And, what I would say is like, we, that is possible for most people.
[00:04:26] ALEX JUDD: So
[00:04:27] ALEX JUDD: actually, let's go back to the question then. It's servant leadership. Uh, you serve people when you believe more about them than they believe in themselves, and then you pave the way for them to step into that greater version of themselves, is what I would say.
[00:04:41] ALEX JUDD: But what are your thoughts there? How does it connect to servant leadership?
[00:04:44] BEN LOY: I, yeah. I mean, I completely agree. I think I asked the question because it just kind of dawned on me while you were talking. You know, I mean, uh, Jesus was a servant leader, and I
[00:04:52] ALEX JUDD: master delegator.
[00:04:53] ALEX JUDD: Yeah,
[00:04:53] BEN LOY: exactly. And like calls us to be servant leaders in the same capacity, but I think often.
[00:05:00] BEN LOY: The way people view servant leadership is, oh, I'm going to take on more. I'm going to do the more medial tasks, or I'm going, you know, and so I think there's this, maybe this, this assumption of what service leadership is versus how that actually practically plays out in what's, what it's intended to be in the context of, leadership and, and expanding.
[00:05:24] BEN LOY: organization or business. Uh, and then also how that speaks into delegation. Because delegation, I mean, and I think the heart posture is what's really important, right? Like delegation could be something of, oh, I am above these tasks, I'm above these things. I am like, you could very easily view and pivot into a posture of I'm going to get as much off my plate as possible.
[00:05:47] BEN LOY: Because, for whatever reason, I feel like I am above these things and I'm going to use the people around me to accomplish whatever it is I'm trying to accomplish. I think the correct posture and the one that you're speaking into is, no, I'm going to use delegation as a tool to develop the leaders below me in a way that in the, in the future and in the long term, like they will benefit greatly from, and ultimately, hopefully God will be glorified through that.
[00:06:14] ALEX JUDD: Yeah. I love that.
[00:06:15] ALEX JUDD: I feel like the theme of all of our podcast episodes is at least one time I say, we could do a whole nother episode on that. We should make a drinking game. Right. If you're into that sort of thing. Right. But it's like I, uh, an episode on Jesus' delegation style. It's like we are fools if we don't think the responsibility that Jesus delegated to the disciples wasn't maybe largely sometimes and mainly focused on their development and less even sometimes the fruit that they were gonna produce for that.
[00:06:47] ALEX JUDD: Certainly there were sometimes where it very much was a fruit, but it may be more like, Hey, you're gonna have to be the type of person that can do these types of things, because I'm not always gonna be here. And so how do we get you there? I'm gonna send you off two by two and you just go do it and we'll see how it goes.
[00:07:04] ALEX JUDD: We'll hear back on the backside, there's also a lot of tactical and practical wisdom, and he sent them two by two. We could have a conversation around that of like, man, not delegating to people in isolation because there's so much, uh. Opportunity for feedback, growth, mutual accountability in payers, which I think is really cool.
[00:07:24] ALEX JUDD: But I'd like to maybe cast vision for what the healthy leader is aware of when they're thinking about delegation. I think healthy leaders, we could also say mature leaders are aware of their finite capacity. So hopefully this statement isn't news to people. You have limits. Period, right? Like there, there's no punchline to that joke, right?
[00:07:49] ALEX JUDD: And it's also not a joke. What's crazy is, I mean, there are leadership programs out there that will tell you, you are limitless. And it's like, no, that's actually not true. Like you have limits. You do need to sleep, you do need to eat. Now, certainly our limits are often, uh, far beyond what we deem them to be, but you are absolutely a limited person.
[00:08:11] ALEX JUDD: You are not God. You are a human being, so therefore you have limits. So you're keenly aware of your finite capacity. Number two, you gotta be aware of other people's remarkable ability.
[00:08:22] ALEX JUDD: This was inspired in me in a interview that I once did with John Collins, who is one of the co-founders of the Bible Project.
[00:08:30] ALEX JUDD: he was talking to me about the way they make Bible project videos and what's most helpful in the design and execution of Bible Bible project videos, which if y'all haven't seen Bible projects videos, they're so good at explaining, um, the narrative of the Bible and they zoom in on topics that could actually be very theologically complex and they just, uh, like create these wonderful videos and it's a really established organization.
[00:08:54] ALEX JUDD: So he said they'll, test concepts and ideas and stuff like that with focus groups. People internally, and he said that one of the things he had to learn is that things go best when he assumes people are really, really, really smart. He says like as a communicator and as one of the designers of these videos, I assume people are really, really, really smart.
[00:09:19] ALEX JUDD: And If they're not understanding this video, that's because I am failing as a communicator or this concept doesn't work. It's not because of their lack of intelligence. And that is actually the opposite of the way a lot of, quite frankly, our politicians communicate today. A lot of our politicians say, assume that your people can understand things at a second grade level, and then make sure that you dumb things down to that.
[00:09:42] ALEX JUDD: It's like, no, assume they're really smart and just recognize that if they're not understanding, then it's probably something that's wrong with your style. And, that can absolutely be transferred to leadership. It can absolutely be transferred to delegation. Assume that the people you are delegating to are intelligent, they're smart.
[00:10:02] ALEX JUDD: They also want to do the right thing. And, and so if they're struggling to take on responsibility, maybe it's a you problem. Maybe it's not a them problem. And then the final thing we already hit on is delegation is a development opportunity. It's not just a time management tool, it's a people development tool.
[00:10:19] BEN LOY: Hmm.
[00:10:19] BEN LOY: So what prevents leaders from, uh, from delegating or from pursuing those things that you were just talking about?
[00:10:27] ALEX JUDD: Yeah. Uh uh, I, it's wild. Like I rarely, if ever meet a leader that just says, delegation isn't for me. I don't want to delegate at all. Right? Many of them say, I want to delegate. I know that I need to delegate, especially if this business is going to grow.
[00:10:44] ALEX JUDD: They just don't. And I think the failure a lot of times we make is we think that the reason why we don't delegate is a tactical issue. We think that the thing that's holding us back is just a very basic, like, I don't know the right practices. I don't know the right actions to take in order to delegate well, and I, wouldn't demi dismiss that entirely 'cause I'm sure there's some of that.
[00:11:09] ALEX JUDD: What I often see though, is the things that are actually holding back leaders from delegating. Are not these external tactics, it's these internal issues. It's not matters of our hands and our heads even. It's matters of our heart. And unless we resolve these beliefs, our behaviors will not follow. And, so what I have found most helpful for me is to lift up the hood and say what's going on within my heart posture, my belief system around things like work and responsibility and other people's capability and all of that.
[00:11:44] ALEX JUDD: That's what we're gonna do in this episode today. Because if I can get into the root of where maybe my heart posture is wrong, if I correct that, then all of the action will properly flow out of that
[00:11:57] BEN LOY: Hmm. So what's the first thing that you would say holds leaders back from
[00:12:02] ALEX JUDD: Yeah, so the first one that I'd like to focus on is insecurity of the leader. Um, and what we're really talking about there is if your identity is attached to your to-do list, why would you ever hand anything off?
[00:12:19] ALEX JUDD: Right? So if you have believed the equation that who I am and my value and my worth is equitable to the amount of things I individually do and accomplish, you're gonna have a very tight grip on the things that you do. And you're never gonna take any actions that results in your to-do list getting smaller, especially not sustainably over time.
[00:12:44] BEN LOY: Mm-hmm. It's interesting that you, you point to a to-do list when it comes to insecurity. cause I, I feel like someone who is in that position would say, oh, I have the capacity to do all the things on this list. And so I'm that like, I'm going to continue to do it like that. That doesn't feel like it.
[00:13:01] BEN LOY: It's coming from a posture of insecurity. But you're saying it does.
[00:13:05] ALEX JUDD: Yeah. I mean, I think if your I identity is wrapped up in that. Yeah. I mean, I, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this too, but I am oftentimes interested in how a leader does on their days off, whenever it comes to insecurity of the leaders. So like, when's the last time you had a day off where you didn't have a to-do list associated with your work?
[00:13:29] ALEX JUDD: Or maybe you didn't have a to-do list at all. And if the answer to that is never, well then maybe this is the one you struggle with, right? But if the answer to that is. Man, even on my days off, all I can focus on is the things that I need to do, or I feel a tinge of inadequacy, like I'm not doing enough in my days off.
[00:13:52] ALEX JUDD: Well then that's some deep seated insecurity that is absolutely going to affect your work, right? and what will happen is you will either hit the eject button on your day off and go do something very tactical, which is responding to emails and all of that. or you, whenever you do come back, maybe you do take the day off.
[00:14:15] ALEX JUDD: You're gonna be a little bit overwhelming for people because you feel like you're behind and you're gonna come back feeling like you're behind. And then everyone around you is gonna feel like they're behind as well. your standards as a leader cascade. The other thing that I've noticed, this is an unfortunate reality.
[00:14:31] ALEX JUDD: Your insecurities cascade. And so if you have this longing, inadequacy inside of you, do not believe that that just stops with you. That cascades into your team because feel like they can never be enough for the person. That can never be enough.
[00:14:48] BEN LOY: it's interesting 'cause what you just pointed out, like the antidote to that would be delegation.
[00:14:52] BEN LOY: Like if you're worried about stepping away from a for a day and your entire business going up in flames or coming to a screeching halt, like the antidote to that would be delegate more, like more responsibility so that those things are moving in the background when you're away.
[00:15:08] ALEX JUDD: Yeah. Which actually starts to hit on the, the second thing that holds leaders back that we'll get into as well, but the, I guess the thing that I would ask leaders, especially if you're in that operator or CEO stage,
[00:15:22] ALEX JUDD: are
[00:15:22] ALEX JUDD: there meetings that you go to that the meeting ends and you, other people have action items assigned to them, but you don't.
[00:15:31] BEN LOY: Hmm.
[00:15:32] ALEX JUDD: You know, and, and how do you view those meetings? Like do you view yourself leaving those meetings saying like, oh man, I need to make up some, some action items to prove myself as a leader. That's insecurity Or do you leave those meetings knowing, hey, like we have built a business that individuals have roles associated with specific responsibilities and this particular meeting tasks were delegated to those individuals that have those responsibilities.
[00:16:01] ALEX JUDD: And just turns out that nothing in this meeting today was related to my role. And that's okay. That doesn't mean that my role isn't valuable. That certainly doesn't mean I'm not valuable. It just means that I don't have any action items out of this. What often happens though is we sign up for action items that we then don't have the time to do, but it makes us feel good because we then had something with our name next
[00:16:23] BEN LOY: it.
[00:16:23] BEN LOY: Mm. So you mentioned the second thing. Uh, what is that?
[00:16:28] ALEX JUDD: Yeah. So the second, uh, and we can use the word enemies, right? The second enemy that's holding leaders back from delegating, I would say is pride. And how convenient that, the letter smack dab in the center of the word pride is I Right? Because that's really one of the core things that's going on when leaders fail to delegate oftentimes is they have an inability to see the work without themselves in the center of it.
[00:16:56] ALEX JUDD: And a lot of times this isn't like this malicious thing, right? A lot of times I think we think of pride as this malicious act of rebellion, and I think it is that, but it doesn't feel that way oftentimes. A lot of times it's just like. I am the only person I have ever seen doing this thing. And so if I'm thinking about how we are going to do this thing in the future, it's always gotta have some version of me, myself, and I in the middle of it.
[00:17:25] ALEX JUDD: and you're not rebelling. You're just like, I literally don't understand that there's any other way a lot of times, which, even me talking about this, I know people are listening to this and being like, that is foolish, but we are all capable of living it
[00:17:37] ALEX JUDD: out
[00:17:38] BEN LOY: Yeah. I mean, you've already spoken into it a little bit, but how does pride often appear versus how we expect it to be? Because I feel like many times the way that we view pride to be, it's, it's loud.
[00:17:50] BEN LOY: It's, bragga, daious, you know, it, it's in your face. And I think oftentimes that pride can be a lot more silent.
[00:17:59] ALEX JUDD: We were at a pretty critical juncture of our business where we had started delegating, uh, responsibility.
[00:18:06] ALEX JUDD: We had started delegating coaching responsibility in our business. So this is something that I had been doing as an individual contributor, and now we were hiring coaches to be able to do this, and one of the deficits that we experienced. In that transition period was, I was good at hiring coaches and bringing them in, getting them inspired.
[00:18:28] ALEX JUDD: But there started to be a real deficit around these coaches need ongoing management, accountability and feedback to not just have this initial 90 days of growth, but to have a sustained rhythm of growth over time. Because the people that we bring on as coaches, they, they were not trained professionally as coaches prior to coming into our business.
[00:18:46] ALEX JUDD: They were business owners prior to coming into our business that then opted in for saying, I wanna become part of your Navy Seals of coaches coaching team is what what we say. And there started to be this deficit of like management. And there was a period of months where m. I felt bad because I wasn't doing a good job of managing the coaches, and I had to figure out how I was going to do a better job of managing the coaches because it was my problem, right?
[00:19:19] ALEX JUDD: I mean, I think of that country suck. Wanna talk about me? I wanna talk about, I wanna talk about number one, omi. Me, my, that's the first and only time I will ever sing on this podcast,
[00:19:28] BEN LOY: that song before in my life.
[00:19:29] ALEX JUDD: Oh, it's, it's actually a hilarious song, but, uh, what I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see, uh, yeah, it's a great song.
[00:19:36] ALEX JUDD: We'll listen to it after this. Um, that's great. Where was I going with that? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it, I, I felt like it all had to revolve around me and, and this was a me issue, so it wasn't even the good things, which is often what we associate with pride is taking all the credit. This was a problem in our business that I could not see a solution beyond myself being the solution.
[00:19:58] ALEX JUDD: And why is that? Well, that's actually kind of a logical, kind of conclusion because that's what I had always done before everything changed for our business. Whenever I experienced some humbling, I threw up my hands and I said, what if I'm not the solution to this problem? What if there's another person that would be better at these things than me?
[00:20:18] ALEX JUDD: That's a novel idea. A and. It became crystal clear. We've got a coach on the team, her name is Olivia. She would be up for taking this on in a full-time capacity. She has excellent management capabilities and is certainly way more gifted than I could be. And the thing that was blocking me from seeing that was the fact that I viewed myself as the only solution to our problem.
[00:20:42] ALEX JUDD: And so, you know, in some ways people would say, man, that Alex, he's a really hard worker. He keeps trying to improve in the area of management. And what really needed to happen was for me to just have the humble realization of like, I am not a good manager. We have the resources to pay people that are really good managers and so we should just do that.
[00:21:02] BEN LOY: I mean, it sounds like really you were realigning with the vision and,
[00:21:05] BEN LOY: and maybe expanding your vision for what the business could be.
[00:21:09] ALEX JUDD: yes. And that actually jumps into the next enemy of effective delegation. But, but before we get there, I, one thing that I would highlight is just a quote that I heard long ago that it rhymes.
[00:21:22] ALEX JUDD: So it's so easy to remember, but it's also so helpful. It's the more you lead, the more you need. And, that is very true. The, the more you are leading into the future, the more you're going to have to ask people formally and informally for help. And if you are bucking against that internally, like if you're like, I just don't wanna have to ask for help, that is pride.
[00:21:45] ALEX JUDD: And, and the cool thing is, is the minute you name it, then you can do something about it that looks a lot more like humility. So the third enemy is the aimlessness of the leader. And really this is just rooted into the fact that, you know, all of us as human beings, we are aim seeking creatures, right?
[00:22:03] ALEX JUDD: We are always consciously or subconsciously asking the question, where am I going? And, and if you don't have an answer to that question, what you're really lacking there as a leader is you're lacking a vision for what's up and out in your life. And if you don't have a vision for what's up and out, you're gonna look down and in.
[00:22:25] ALEX JUDD: And that's gonna cause you to hold onto everything you currently have because you think everything you currently have is the best it'll ever get, and it's the most you will ever do. And if you don't have a vision that's the opposite of that, why would you ever delegate in some ways? So, aimlessness of the leader is in enemy number
[00:22:43] BEN LOY: I think, uh, term.
[00:22:44] BEN LOY: That I've heard when referring to like looking down and in, it's just navel gazing. Like staring at your belly button. Right? And I mean, if you're walking on a path and you're headed towards a goal and you're staring down at your belly button, like you're not, you're not looking at where you're going, you're not watching, you're not being mindful of where you're stepping.
[00:23:01] BEN LOY: Like you're just so focused on what's going on inside that you're gonna lose your footing.
[00:23:07] ALEX JUDD: Yes. and naval gazing is the personal growth phrase. Nitpicking or micromanaging is the organizational phrase, right? Like, if you don't have a vision for where you're going, you may even tactically delegate, but it's gonna be a nightmare for your people because. It can be very rewarding to just go in and correct people and be like, that's not the way I like it.
[00:23:31] ALEX JUDD: That's not how I want it to be done. You should do it this way instead of that, and you can act. The, the thing that's really dangerous about that is you could do a full day of that and feel like I did a good job of leading today. I did a good job of what would these people do without me? And that's not leading.
[00:23:46] ALEX JUDD: That is literally reacting to things that are already occurring. Leaders help cause things to occur in the future that is different and new. And so that's not to say that we shouldn't be giving some feedback and that we shouldn't have rhythms for evaluation, but it is, that is not the work of leadership.
[00:24:04] ALEX JUDD: Right. That is the maintenance of leadership so that we can do the work of leadership.
[00:24:08] BEN LOY: Hmm. what's the antidote to aimlessness?
[00:24:12] ALEX JUDD: I, I Vision? Right, and, and I would say for leaders in particular as it relates to this topic of. Delegation. I think you're gonna have to have vision in three particular areas.
[00:24:25] ALEX JUDD: Uh, you need to have vision for the future of your role. So, you know, sometimes I tell people like, what if you could delegate, you know, all administrative activity that you're doing right now. It's like 25% of their time, sometimes 50% of their time. They're like, whoa, that's amazing. 25% of my time sign me up.
[00:24:47] ALEX JUDD: They're viewing it as a time management thing, right? And, and then they don't do it. Why do they not do it? Because what are they gonna do with that 25% of their time? And they, they don't know what a CEO actually does, and they want to feel meaningful, so they're just gonna keep doing the admin work, or they're gonna micromanage the admin that does the admin work.
[00:25:08] ALEX JUDD: So, you know, particularly, we often coach business owners and CEOs, you have to have a vision for what a really effective, healthy, sustainable model of playing the CEO role actually looks like. And CEOs of established businesses focus on four to five things. The vision of the company, the culture of the team, the leadership team being led, managed, and held accountable, the profitability of the business.
[00:25:35] ALEX JUDD: And that's like it. And you've gotta have this vision, not of just what it looks like to do that adequately. You gotta have a vision of like, that is your full-time job. That's the thing that you love. That's the thing that you do. Doesn't mean we're gonna teleport there overnight, but if you can't even envision what that looks like for all of your time to be spent in that way, you're never gonna take steps to move towards that direction.
[00:25:55] ALEX JUDD: So, so vision for your role inside the business, vision for your life outside the business. A lot of people that I know that work 80 hours a week, they do it just because their work is better than their life, right? Or their work is their life, right? And they've done so much to establish goals and direction and ality and vision and aim for their business that it's such a exciting place to go.
[00:26:20] ALEX JUDD: And so that's where they go. And then you ask them about what are your goals for your marriage? What are your goals for your relationship with your kids? How are you growing spiritually? What is the type of community member you're trying to be, and all the intentionality that they have in their business.
[00:26:35] ALEX JUDD: Is just absent in those areas. And no wonder we're working 80 hours a week. 'cause it, this is like the adventure of a lifetime. Meanwhile, the thing that's actually your lifetime, it, it looks comparably boring. And so we have to have a vision for what life looks like outside of work. So that delegating work doesn't feel like delegating all the things that give you all those dopamine hits.
[00:26:58] ALEX JUDD: And then finally, vision for life after the business, or vision for life without the business. This is why, I mean, it's why Brian and Shannon, uh, I'm so excited about their session at our long game leadership experience in Austin is because they are on this never ending adventure. Right? But the never ending adventure that they are on is not tied to one particular asset.
[00:27:24] ALEX JUDD: Right. I want to lead in such a way that my life being an adventurer is not inextricably linked to me being the CEO of path for growth. What if at some point it looks best for me to delegate the role of CEO at path for growth to someone else, and tactically I could do it, but from a pride or aim perspective, I can't because I don't know what I would do without this place.
[00:27:53] ALEX JUDD: That's such a shame, because that's like all of the enemies we're talking about now, wrapped into one. But the thing that we have to remember is Jeff Bezos delegated the C EShip of Amazon. That happened, right? He's now chairman of the board or something like that. Like he delegated to someone else being president and CEO.
[00:28:12] ALEX JUDD: Meanwhile, we say, well, you can't do that in my company. Okay. Right. Like if he can do it, it's possible. There's just things that get in the way.
[00:28:20] BEN LOY: Yeah. What's the next one?
[00:28:22] ALEX JUDD: Yeah. The next one is, uh, perfectionism of the leader. So, I think, uh, effective leaders often have high standards, high standards, often flirt with perfectionism.
[00:28:34] ALEX JUDD: And the thing that's really challenging is that any time you hand something off to someone, it's gonna be very rare for someone to be as proficient or as good as you at that thing on day one because you weren't nearly as proficient or as good at that on day one. And so you kind of have to expect mistakes.
[00:28:55] ALEX JUDD: And I think if you, if you are in an unhealthy way falling for the delusion of perfection, you won't do that and therefore you won't delegate.
[00:29:04] BEN LOY: Mm. yeah, how does that standard of perfectionism reflect internally as well as externally?
[00:29:12] ALEX JUDD: I, I would say you start to adopt, uh, everything's a game mentality instead of everything's a practice mentality, right? So, when you have, an everything's practice mentality. You know, Hey, I'm delegating this responsibility. It's a process. People are gonna make mistakes.
[00:29:30] ALEX JUDD: We're gonna coach them through those mistakes and learning and growth, right? We either win or we learn is kind of the attitude of the everything's practice mentality. And therefore, when mistakes inevitably come up with some of the responsibility that you've delegated, you look at that and you say, oh man, we, we didn't nail it in that practice opportunity, but we're gonna get better from this because I'm gonna handle this really, really well.
[00:29:55] ALEX JUDD: the everything's a game mentality. If everything's a game, then every mistake becomes a micro failure. And internally you feel like you failed and you're gonna make them feel like they failed and you're gonna beat yourself up, and then you're gonna beat them up. Right? And it's not like, oh, this is part of the process.
[00:30:13] ALEX JUDD: This is how we get better. This is how we grow. This is, how could we do this? What were we thinking? And that's just like puts a lid on all future development on growth. puts a inhibitor on any positive thinking about what could occur. And it just devolves so fast. And so what I would say is, uh, when you go to practice something, you're anticipating that mistakes are going to happen.
[00:30:38] ALEX JUDD: And you know that all of the gold, all of the growth, all of the improvement comes in how we respond to those mistakes.
[00:30:45] BEN LOY: well, I think you already spoken to this a little bit. Yeah. Like offering grace both to yourself and to the people around you. as an antidote to that.
[00:30:55] ALEX JUDD: I was once on a call with, there was a handful of CEOs and the topic of delegation had kind of come about and the reason why it had come about is there was a particular leader that was saying, Hey, I need to focus on my time management again, he was viewing it as a time management tactic.
[00:31:10] ALEX JUDD: and it was a great call of CEOs and, you know, they kind of asked him some questions and basically it kind of come out in the course. Their questioning that he was spending about 30% of his time on administrative activity, he owned a real estate brokerage. And they said, well ma'am, what if you even delegated like half to 75% of that administrative activity to, you know, a 20 hour week virtual assistant or something like that, maybe even an in-person assistant.
[00:31:40] ALEX JUDD: And he said, oh no, you don't understand broad, right. You don't understand. I can't do that. I, there's no way I can do that. And to their credit, they, they just ask curious questions. They say, well, why, why can't you do that? And he said, because like in our line of work, these forms are so detail oriented and like you have to dot every I and cross every t and it's a pretty lengthy process.
[00:32:04] ALEX JUDD: And you get, if you get any of those things wrong. Like, it's not like you can just make up for it. You have to start all the way back at the beginning and do it all over again. So that's just something I've gotta do and I can't delegate it. and someone asked the question brilliantly, they said, well, how do you learn how to do that particular task?
[00:32:22] ALEX JUDD: And he said, oh, trial and error. And it's like, oh, there it is. Like, so you're willing to allow to yourself to make mistakes on the route to learning and growth. You're just not willing to let other people
[00:32:35] BEN LOY: it. Hmm.
[00:32:35] ALEX JUDD: And it was crazy. I, it's one of the gifts of what we get to do is you have these moments where you just see without the person receiving a direct answer from anyone, the light bulb goes off in their head and you're like, that mo, that singular moment is going to change their life.
[00:32:49] ALEX JUDD: And that happened for him in that moment. He was like, oh, he's like, I just heard what I just said. And he said like, my perfectionism is getting in the way of allowing other people to walk the exact same process that I walked through, which was trial and error.
[00:33:03] ALEX JUDD: in
[00:33:04] BEN LOY: lot of ways they'll probably make less mistakes with your guidance through that process, right?
[00:33:09] BEN LOY: Like, yeah, you're not really, you're, I mean, you're not trusting your team to, to learn in the same way that you learned.
[00:33:17] ALEX JUDD: That's right. I, I heard it recently and I thought it was so good. We might have actually talked about this on another podcast in a radically different context, but it was Brian Houston that I heard say, he said, Good. Mistakes are ones that other people make that you learn from. Bad mistakes are ones that you have to make, but then you learn from 'em. And then tragic mistakes are the ones we make, but we never learn from. And, you know, delegation is this powerful thing and it's like, Hey, I wanna share with you some of the mistakes that I made that you don't have to make because you can learn from me.
[00:33:48] ALEX JUDD: But then also you're gonna make mistakes and that's okay. Right. We never expect, whenever we're teaching our kids to ride a bike, we never expect that, Hey, I'm gonna share with you all the mistakes that I made the first time I rode a bike, and you'll never have to fall. None of us expect that. We all expect, like I can share with them some things that they could do to benefit them in the riding of this bike, but they're still gonna have to fall and work their way through it.
[00:34:13] ALEX JUDD: And that is true about anything.
[00:34:15] BEN LOY: Is there anything else you wanna say on that before we move on?
[00:34:18] ALEX JUDD: I would say like, you have to figure out your tolerance for this as a leader, and you should be wise in, in terms of who it affects and the ramifications and the mistakes you allow people to make. But, I know leaders, I literally worked with a leader once that he said, you know, sometimes I just take my hands off the wheel and let it burn and see what happens.
[00:34:38] ALEX JUDD: And the reason why he did that is because over, and this guy was like, had been in leadership at wildly successful for a very long period of time. And uh, the reason why he did that is because he said people learn so much faster that way. Right? And as long, I mean, like, we're still gonna be here, right? So we'll just see what fires occur.
[00:34:57] ALEX JUDD: We'll coach on the backside of those fires, and then we will get better on the backside. Not everyone has that tolerance for that, but what that's really describing is, you know, I've heard people say if someone can do it 80% as well as you can, then it's time to hand it off. I've heard Craig Rochelle is a leader of probably the largest church in America right now.
[00:35:17] ALEX JUDD: He says if someone can do it 50% as well as him, then that's when he hands it off. Right? And so you have to define your tolerance level. The thing that we're really dispelling here is do not wait till a hundred percent because that day will never come.
[00:35:31] BEN LOY: Yeah,
[00:35:32] ALEX JUDD: Okay, so the Fifth enemy is distrust of the leader. And the thing that we need to understand is if the leader. Distrust the members of their team for rational or irrational reasons, uh, they will not delegate.
[00:35:48] ALEX JUDD: And you know, I, I think we oftentimes look at distrust and it gets painted in like, well, you're being a micromanager and you're struggling with trust issues and that's why you're not delegating. Sometimes it's like you're actually being very wise, like maybe you don't trust people and maybe you have a hiring problem, right?
[00:36:06] ALEX JUDD: Where it's like you're not bringing the right people on board. And so then you're like, I don't trust these people. And it's like, you don't actually have a delegation issue at that point. You have a hiring issue because you don't have people on board that you can trust. And so I think it's helpful to think.
[00:36:23] ALEX JUDD: And talk about like, what are we actually trusting in whenever we're delegating, we're trusting in people's integrity and we're trusting in their competency. So integrity is their character to be able to do it in a manner that's honest, to own mistakes whenever they do make them. And to make sure they handle sensitive information in, uh, an appropriate manner, right?
[00:36:43] ALEX JUDD: That's integrity. Uh, competency is their proficiency and ability to do the thing the way that it's supposed to be done. Do they have the equipping? Do they have the knowledge? Have they been empowered? All of that, right? And so it's helpful to think about like, what do I not trust about this person? And then to think about like, am I distrusting that for rational reasons or am I distrusting it for irrational reasons?
[00:37:06] ALEX JUDD: Because that's gonna really focus your energy.
[00:37:08] BEN LOY: Hmm. so
[00:37:09] BEN LOY: you were talking about character and then you were talking about, uh, or integrity, and you're talking about competency, not to backpedal on perfectionism, but what, how does that play into your trust in an individual and, knowing when competency has reached its limit with the individual you're working with versus, maybe you're, you're making a mountain out of a molehill.
[00:37:32] ALEX JUDD: Yeah, that's interesting I'm trying to remember what the principle is actually called. For some reason I think that it might be called the Peter Principle, but I could be wrong on that. It basically says it's a rule in management that has been discovered to be true in large organizations, that people often get promoted to the level of their incompetence.
[00:37:51] ALEX JUDD: Which is wild. Like they're, they're proficient and competent and effective, so they get promoted and in that arena, they're proficient, competent, and effective, or at least they grow into that. So they get promoted, and then they're proficient, competent, and effective. They get promoted again. And now they have reached a spot where they, they cannot crack the code on how to become proficient, effective, and competent.
[00:38:13] ALEX JUDD: And that's where they, they stay. Right. And so we've got organizations of a bunch of people that have risen to the level of their incompetence, essentially, which is, man, that's like, oh, that's sucks that, that's the way it often works, right? Yeah. And, and so there's, there's a handful of ways we could take this, but I love the Danny Meyer framework of can, can't, will, won't.
[00:38:38] ALEX JUDD: And so if someone can take on new responsibility and they will take on new responsibility, man, celebrate that person and gift that person because the will is essential for growth, right? Like the learning and growth. And even if they're not fully competent now, so they're at that 80% level, that's how we bridge the gap of 80% to a hundred percent is the will, right?
[00:39:02] ALEX JUDD: can't, they can't do it, but they will again, if they will. They just don't have the skills and abilities. You gotta have training in place to get them to where they're gonna go. You gotta have feedback, evaluations, skill development, all of that. But we can get them there If someone can, but they won't, then you've got an attitude issue. And if it's an attitude issue, beware of promoting that person because you're like, oh, they've got the skills and abilities to lead effectively or to perform at this level. But they, they don't have, in some ways, this is our integrity L language.
[00:39:34] ALEX JUDD: They don't have the character to want to adopt that responsibility or certainly to want to grow in that responsibility. And what often happens is we only look at people's abilities. We promote them based on their abilities, but then we don't at all look at their internal character and their desire to constantly learn, grow, adopt new skills.
[00:39:52] ALEX JUDD: And so that's where I think we often delegate or promote to the level of people's incompetence.
[00:39:59] BEN LOY: Hmm. Is there anything else you wanna say on distrust before we move on?
[00:40:03] ALEX JUDD: Well, I would love to know from you, like you've worked in a wide variety of different avenues and atmospheres. Are there any patterns you've noticed about distrusting leaders versus trusting leaders that you think it would be helpful for people just to be aware of?
[00:40:17] BEN LOY: yeah, I think one example that comes to mind, uh, is actually when I was in the Coast Guard and um, we. Had started training for Inland Search and Rescue as well as offshore. Um, so one of the ways that the Coast Guards was growing and, and in many ways they were already doing, um, there just weren't policies or things written in place that were creating initiatives and funding around the idea of, of mountain rescue and inland rescue.
[00:40:44] BEN LOY: so I was in Oregon at the time. Oregon is rural. Um, we were one of the only hoisting assets in the entire state. And so we would get a lot of calls, um, into the mountains, into the hills, um, on the cliffs. And uh, our chief at the time started, training to do. Inland, uh, inland rescue. So we would do overnight, um, survival training.
[00:41:09] BEN LOY: We would do land navigation training. And the first time we ever did the land navigation training, they were just dynamics and things that I really disagreed with, like, like passionately about how it all, how it all played out and the logistics behind it. And so I was actually pretty vocal about, the things that I didn't like about just how the training played out and.
[00:41:37] BEN LOY: Um, the way that it was planned and the instruction that was covered. And for a while it felt like I was just being this obnoxious, squeaky wheel. And the following year he made the decision to delegate the responsibility to me, um, and to help plan, plan the event. And so I went from being this like, I mean loud, like, Hey, I, I have these gripes and complaints about, and like feedback about how this should have gone versus how it went.
[00:42:07] BEN LOY: And I mean, he delegated and gave me the tools to at least take steps towards a training, an inland, uh, land navigation training that would be beneficial, that we could welcome other units into and did welcome other units into to train. And so I think that's a good example of, I think him. Maybe planning the, the first one to get the ball rolling, realizing that he was already at capacity with the million other things that he was doing at the time.
[00:42:36] BEN LOY: And then identifying, or at least, I mean, in some ways, me even identifying myself as like, oh, this is someone who has the potential to possibly improve and run with this, uh, where I don't have to be as involved.
[00:42:49] ALEX JUDD: Man, There's so much in that. First of all, like the resistance to delegate is often a resistance to seeing our own deficits or shortcomings.
[00:42:59] ALEX JUDD: We've already hit on that at length. And, uh, we kind of have two ways we can respond to seeing or being faced with our deficits or shortcomings. And sometimes in this case, it was like someone was making him aware of his deficit and that person happened to be named Ben, right? And, and we can either be like, no, you're wrong.
[00:43:18] ALEX JUDD: It's all good, or It's going to be all good. Or we can be like, Hey, you know what? It seems like you've got a vision for what this could be. Knock yourself out. Go for it. And I think that's actually a, a sign of a competent, competent and confident leader to be able to say, okay, I'll, I'll let you take this a little bit.
[00:43:36] ALEX JUDD: It's, it's kind of, it brings up something to me that, I hadn't really thought about when we are thinking about taking on more, I think oftentimes, like if you asked me, Alex, could you take on this new project, this new commitment, this new responsibility, I envision what I could do within that responsibility over the course of time that I have.
[00:43:56] ALEX JUDD: And I'm like, yeah, I could do that. I could do that. And, and here's all the things that I could do to make that better or to launch this product or to, you know, pursue this responsibility in a really effective way. Maybe make things better than they are right now. I could do that. And when we're answering that question, we are not, sometimes we're not at all acknowledging the other commitments and responsibilities that we're, we're already attending to.
[00:44:23] ALEX JUDD: But the other mistake that I think we make is, and this one's a little bit more tricky, we assume stasis in all of our existing commitments. And therefore we say, yeah, I could commit to this new project commitment, responsibility. Here's the deal. You're a growth oriented individual, assuming stasis in everything you're currently doing, like just believing.
[00:44:46] ALEX JUDD: Like the way the time, energy, money, manpower, effort that I'm investing in every other area of my life is going to stay the same. It's not going to increase. That's stasis, that's stagnancy. So if that's the case, I can now attend to this new area in brand new ways. That's just not true ever, right? And so what we're really saying, what we really need to be intentional about is oftentimes something's gotta give.
[00:45:15] ALEX JUDD: And so if you're gonna take on new. or you're, you are saying, I'm gonna add more to my plate, then what you've gotta do is say like, okay, what in the existing do I need to hand off? Do I need to automate? Do I need to delete so bad I can take on this new responsibility and do it well? And I, I wouldn't be surprised if that was behind the story that you're talking about, where it's like he probably envisioned the training that he needed to do and looked at it and said like, yeah, I can do that.
[00:45:40] ALEX JUDD: Not fully acknowledging all the other things he was gonna be committed to. We're probably gonna grow and have hiccups and problems of their own that he was going to have to deal
[00:45:49] BEN LOY: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, let's move on to the last one.
[00:45:52] ALEX JUDD: Okay. The last one is impatience of the leader. And so this is baked into.
[00:45:59] ALEX JUDD: Every single enemy that we talked about is delegation, is choosing to play the long game, right?
[00:46:05] ALEX JUDD: It's, it's that choosing to forego the instant gratification of doing something yourself so that you can see another person become proficient in doing things. The illustration that I really love, Zach shared this with me originally. He, he said like, think of it as an Allen wrench, and like the further you pull back an Allen wrench, the more leverage you have to pull it forward, right?
[00:46:28] ALEX JUDD: And anytime you're delegating. You're pulling back the Allen wrench, which feels counterintuitive, right? It feels like the screw's supposed to go that way. Like, why am I turning this this way? And it's like, well, it, it's because you're getting leverage to be able to pull forward even further than you ever could before.
[00:46:46] ALEX JUDD: And that's what we're doing whenever we're delegating, is we're no longer playing addition. We're playing multiplication. Because think about this, if you can truly teach someone to, uh, to reach 80% of a skill in route to becoming a hundred percent proficient in a skill, you have now doubled capability on the team for that skill.
[00:47:07] ALEX JUDD: But not only that, if one of the skills that you train them is training to train, well now we're talking not multiplication, we're talking exponential growth because now they can. Learn the skill. They can train the skill to others and then they can train the training of the skill to others. You know, and then they can train To train.
[00:47:28] ALEX JUDD: To train, to train, right. You
[00:47:30] BEN LOY: just
[00:47:30] BEN LOY: this is starting to sound like a pyramid scheme. That's right.
[00:47:31] ALEX JUDD: that's right. Yeah. I think of Michael Scott on the office being like, it's not a pyramid scheme, and then they just draw a triangle. He is like, oh no, it's a pyramid scheme. Yeah. I mean, we, we see what we're talking about here though, and yeah, I'll leave
[00:47:44] BEN LOY: it there.
[00:47:45] ALEX JUDD: But oftentimes, you know, we don't have the patience that it takes to help people develop
[00:47:52] BEN LOY: Yeah. Why is it so hard sometimes to step back and, and see the bigger picture when it comes to, like you said, creating leverage so you have more strength going forward?
[00:48:02] ALEX JUDD: I, this is at the front of my mind right now.
[00:48:05] ALEX JUDD: I think because it's so different from what we often expect. I think we often expect that if I just tell people and if I just show them, they will get it and they will do it the way that we want it to be done, and that's how we grow this thing. People learn best by doing and, and the doing hands on the skill development, like the actual, them taking the responsibility, receiving feedback, receiving, coaching, evaluating themselves, adopting new skills and abilities, that takes time.
[00:48:37] ALEX JUDD: We just never accommodate for that. We live in a culture that thinks of leaders primarily and only as teachers, people that speak. And, uh, speaking is certainly a part of it. Right. And I'm a, I'm a obviously a big proponent of really effective, intentional communication, but it's in the doing that people actually learn.
[00:48:56] ALEX JUDD: So the reason why this is so front of mind for me right now is my dad has worked for NASA all of my life. And one of the things that. Aspen and I just did on the most recent trip to visit my parents is my dad is gearing up for retirement. Um, and so like this was a really good time to be like, can we now get the like behind the scenes tour that like, of all these things we hear about?
[00:49:17] ALEX JUDD: And he was like, yeah. And so he took us into mission control and all of that, which was really, really cool. We got to see all the amazing work that they do at Johnson Space Center. But the thing that actually blew me away the most is the amount of time, energy, money, manpower. I mean, so many people, uh, invested into, mock training.
[00:49:38] ALEX JUDD: Like the JBL is actually right down the street from my house. It's the neutral buoyancy laboratory. It's a massive pool. It's a hundred foot deep pool that has a mock space station in it, and that's where they mock every single thing from. Like, we need to add a new part to, we need to fix something to, we need to learn how to use this drill to tighten this screw everything.
[00:49:59] ALEX JUDD: They mock it, and then we walk to this massive facility. I don't remember what it was called, but it was this huge building with an entire team dedicated to it that was strictly dedicated to mock scenarios for astronauts in training and. Astronauts are some of the smartest people on the planet. If there's anyone where we could just say like, well, it's screwing in a bolt.
[00:50:21] ALEX JUDD: It just happens to be in space. I think they could figure it out. It would be these guys. And NASA doesn't trust that. They say no, every skill has to be learned. Everything has to be practiced. We're gonna put millions of dollars into making that happen. And the reason why they do that is because the stakes are so high.
[00:50:38] ALEX JUDD: But it's like, why would we just think, oh, if I just tell someone, they'll figure it out in some ways. Like, if rocket scientists don't do that, why would we do that
[00:50:46] BEN LOY: that? Yeah, man. Now I want to go tour. They
[00:50:50] ALEX JUDD: dude. Come on. Ask. That's gonna be Brian Judd's next iteration of his career. It was so interesting. It
[00:50:55] BEN LOY: so
[00:50:55] BEN LOY: oh, that's cool. so I, I think one of the things I keep thinking of is, when you're like skiing down a hill through the trees, if you focus on the trees, you're, you're gonna hit the trees.
[00:51:06] BEN LOY: And, uh, something you mentioned at the beginning of this episode was the things that a leader maybe needs to be aware of or to be really focusing or putting their emphasis on that will just by nature combat a lot of the things that we've talked about. Can you just in closing, reiterate those things?
[00:51:25] ALEX JUDD: Let, let's just, uh, sum it up by making sure people have a vision of what they could be, right?
[00:51:32] ALEX JUDD: As the leader in your organization, as the owner of your business, here's what's possible for you through healthy delegation. you wake every up every morning and you do not feel like you're behind. You feel like you're right where God has placed you and you have a morning routine that looks like order in health, where maybe you think about the work that's coming up that day and, and you invite God, uh, into some of your thinking around that through prayer.
[00:52:02] ALEX JUDD: And you study the words so that you can store up and become a man or woman of wisdom before you go into the workplace so that you're going in to contribute. But what we're really talking about there is you have time for a morning that really looks healthy and sustainable, and then you have breakfast with your family before you go into the office and you just enjoy being with them.
[00:52:23] ALEX JUDD: And then maybe you go into the office or onto the job site or whatever it is that you're doing. And it's not like. You get there and fires have to be put out, you just press go and then you look up and it's five o'clock and you don't know where the day went, and you're like, man, I was really busy the whole day, but nothing actually got done.
[00:52:39] ALEX JUDD: No. It's like you see a lot of people that are happy to be where they are and they're engaged because they've got meaningful work and, and you've worked with a lot of people that have been there for not months, but years they've been working there and you think back to the person they were five years ago and you're like, oh my gosh, I've seen this person grow, improve, expand so much, and they're still growing, improving and expanding.
[00:53:01] ALEX JUDD: And those are the people that you're surrounded with every single day. And, and then you just think about your contributions to the community and, and your contributions to your team and your contributions to your family. And the way people experience you is as a non hurried presence that is focused on investing into the lives of others.
[00:53:21] ALEX JUDD: That's how they experience you. that's why I'm so passionate about delegation and what I want people to hear is like, that's possible. And if you're not there, it can feel like it's not possible. It can feel like, man, I have to do all this. I'm always frantic. There's never gonna be a reality where I own this business, or I have this role and I'm not just pulling my hair out and running around like crazy.
[00:53:41] ALEX JUDD: You have to believe that something different is possible, because if you believe that something different is possible, then that begs the question, okay, well how could we get there? And that's where all the growth begins.