58. How to Make Delegation Easy
Delegation is something that often comes up in coaching conversations. Many of my clients are in a position where they’re delegating, being delegated to, or both.
It’s an important part of the flow of work.
And yet, a lot of people have resistance to delegating. And some have resistance to being delegated to. I’ve seen it over and over again, both back when I was in corporate and also with my clients, and sometimes it still comes up for me even now.
So, why don’t we like delegating?
For one thing, people are creatures of habit. If we’re used to doing something, we often keep doing it, even if it isn’t the best use of our time. And if we’re not in the habit of delegating anything, getting started can take extra work that we may feel resistant to doing.
Even if it’s easier to delegate a task in the long term, it doesn’t actually feel easier in this moment.
Another reason many resist delegating is our old friend, perfectionism. If we want things done a certain way, we may keep doing those things, even if they’re not the best use of our time, energy, brain power, etc.
But refusing to delegate often leads to a stressful, overwhelming work life that we don’t like at all, so I think it’s worth it to do the work to learn how to delegate.
And that’s exactly what this week’s podcast is all about: how to create a better experience with the art of delegating. And as a bonus, I’m including some insights about how to improve your experience of being delegated to as well.
If you want to supercharge your capacity to create a life that blows your mind, I have some one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Send me an email and let's talk about it or click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If there are topics y’all want me to teach and talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here! I’d love to hear from you!
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
Why it’s very common for people to feel resistant to the idea of delegation.
The upfront cost of building a new habit, like delegating.
Why it’s so important to break your habit and start delegating to others.
How to decide the quality and attention that a task actually requires.
The thoughts I see coming up for my clients who are being delegated to in their job.
How you can improve your experience if you’re unhappy with how work is being delegated to you in your job.
What you can do to make sure the person you’re delegating a task to has the support and information they need.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about delegation.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey, y'all. Happy Wednesday when y'all hear this. On the day I'm recording it it's actually a Sunday. I don't usually record on the weekend or do much work, but I wasn't feeling very well last week. It's kind of been a whole thing.
I was supposed to go up to Portland for a Friendsgiving. But we didn't go because my girlfriend and I got sick. And we did test negative for Covid, which we are grateful for. But we canceled our trip anyways because we just weren't feeling great, and we want to be respectful and not share our germs with everyone.
And so I was grateful I had some time off that was scheduled to go to the Friendsgiving, which I instead just kind of used to recuperate. But now I'm recording this podcast today to kind of get a little bit ahead, especially because I've had several days of rest now, because I had Thursday and Friday off last week.
And I think this is a great time for a little micro teaching, which is just that shit does not always go according to plan, no matter how well we plan. I think so many of us, me included, have this idea that if we’re just really smart about how we plan things and have really great forethought and foresight, then we'll be able to control everything. And that's just not the way it is most of the time, or at least some of the time.
Like we got sick, we didn't foresee that. I mean, I guess it's always a possibility. But it wasn't what we planned for. And then everything changed. And that can be a bummer, and I think it was for us. And it's okay to be bummed about things when they don't go according to plan. And if anything, I would say when we are bummed, just taking time to feel those feelings and move through those feelings is a really beautiful thing, it's like a beautiful gift we can give ourselves.
And then after that we can be like, “Okay, what do I want to do now?” So this is kind of like what we talked about in last week's podcast episode about when things are annoying or when we don't like them. Then the question is just like, okay, but now what? Now how do I want to think about the thing, because the thing is what it is?
So things didn't go according to plan. We didn't do our travel, we did get sick. And interestingly, I've had a lot of other little things in my life not go according to plan too. So just kind of thinking about what do we want to do? And how do we want to love ourselves through it? And how do we want to care for ourselves?
And maybe sometimes there's something even convenient about things going the wrong way. And being able to notice that and enjoy that and explore that. Because sometimes when we're so like, “Oh, it wasn't supposed to be this way,” then we also rob ourselves of enjoying the surprise benefits of things not going according to plan.
Yeah, I didn't want to feel shitty, but the surprise benefit was just getting to be here and getting to do some stuff, like do some resting. But also get some other shit done and recording this podcast ahead of time so that I don't have to do it later. And so I can give my podcast team more time to have my podcast recordings in because it's the holiday season and they're taking time off, all that stuff.
Okay, enough about that, let's talk about delegation. Delegation is something I sometimes coach my clients on. Sometimes my clients are in the position where they need to delegate, sometimes my clients are in the position where people want to delegate stuff to them. But no matter what position you're in, I think it's a really useful thing for us to think through from the coaching lens.
So first things first, I'm just going to say a lot of people have a lot of resistance to delegating. This is something I've noticed and seen over and over again back when I was in corporate and then also with my clients and even with myself.
So let's first look at some of the reasons why people don't delegate. I think one of the number one reasons is we have habits, right? Whatever it's our habit to do, then we usually keep doing that because habits are habitual. We don't have to think about them so much, they're just the way we do things.
And if we're not in the habit of delegating, it would take effort and awareness to begin delegating. And if we don't have that piece, then we're just going to keep not delegating. And I think that is actually why we do so much shit we're doing in our lives and also why we think the way we're thinking most the time, it's just habitual. It's just the habit we have up to that point and whatever is already habitual feels easier, even if it's not easier in the long term.
That brings me to another reason why people don't delegate, which is that delegating takes an upfront cost to get a long term benefit. And the same thing is true of changing any habit. It's always easier in the moment to follow the habit because it takes less brainpower, it takes less effort. But often when we want to change our habits, it's because that habit is not working out so well for us in the long term.
But we have to be able to balance that front-end investment, that short-term investment in learning how to do it differently and overcoming the old habit and building the new habit. Or when it comes to delegation, doing the upfront work of the delegating.
Delegating can take time and so for a lot of people, they're like, “Well, I'm not going to take 30 minutes to delegate if I could just take 30 minutes to do the activity.” But then they're keeping themselves as the bottleneck and they're keeping themselves stuck as the only person who can do that work, versus spending the 30 minutes to educate someone else on how to do the work, and then reaping the benefit of not having to do it many, many, many more times in the future.
There's some other reasons I see that people resist delegating. And one of them is our friend that we always talk about, which is perfectionism. A lot of times people do not delegate because they want things done perfectly and they don't trust other people to do them perfectly or as perfectly as they could do them or as well as they could do them.
Since as we know, as humans, we're not actually able to do things perfectly. But we, a lot of us, me included, tend to like the way we do things, so we do them ourselves versus letting someone else do them.
Actually, a funny example of this for me personally is I could totally delegate grocery shopping to Instacart or something. But I like to pick out my own produce. I'm very picky about produce and so I have chosen at this point to just accept that I would rather go to the grocery store myself. And I would rather spend that time that I'm never going to get back and spend that energy because I want to be the one to pick out my avocados.
And that isn't necessarily logical, and I'm definitely not the only one who could do it. And I'm probably not even the only one who could do it up to my standards. But it's just a thing that for now I'm like, “I'll just keep doing it because I kind of like it.” And it's not enough of a pain point for me at this point for me to change it.
So I think that is important, in sharing this, everything I teach you all it's just stuff and information and tools that can make your life better and more enjoyable at work and at home. You don't have to apply it ever, you don't have to apply any of it. You could apply a little teeny bit of it.
It's all for you. It's not for you to use against yourself as a weapon to beat yourself up with, it's just something you can use for awareness and then making choices about how you want to design your life and your work life to be more yummy for you.
So I don't ever want you to feel pressured, like you have to be applying what I'm teaching. Because I think, first of all, that takes the joy out of it and then it just makes it one more should. It's just then socialization coming at you from me versus the current socialization you have in your head.
So everything I'm offering here is just for you if you want to use it. And I'm not doing it perfectly either. And I'm still doing my own grocery shopping, even though I know I could be delegating it, I'm just choosing not to. And we're always allowed to do that. But I think it's better when we have some awareness around it, and then we can just make the choice intentionally.
There's another reason I see people not delegating things, and it is related to the podcast, I think it's maybe number six, about why we overwork. And that is, for a lot of us we really attach the amount of work we're doing to our worthiness or our importance. Or we're like, getting kind of like an ego hit for me like, “Oh, I work more than everyone else,” or “I do more projects than everyone else.”
So if we are getting that kind of validation from how busy we are or how much work we're doing, that's going to make it very difficult to delegate our work because it's going to bring up an identity crisis for us. And in order to be able to delegate we have to be able to see our value differently and be able to have different ways of ascertaining how we're adding value without it being like, “Oh, I do the most tasks.”
If you doing the most tasks is how you define that you're adding value, then you're going to hoard tasks. Like it just makes sense, why would you give them away if those are the measure of your goodness at work?
And it's really interesting because a lot of times when people do hoard tasks, they're not adding as much value they're just really fucking busy. They might be busier than everyone else, they might be working longer hours than everyone else, but it doesn't actually mean they're adding more value.
I think it's harder to understand when we're adding more value. And I think that's why people look at how many tasks they're doing or how many hours that they're working. But I think it's well worth revising the narrative for yourself around this, because otherwise you're going to wind up in burnout again and again because as long as you think more work means you're doing more it's going to be really hard to cut back, to have boundaries, to end your workday at a reasonable hour and stuff like that.
Okay, so those are the reasons, just some of the reasons I see people not delegating. You might even have other ones. If you do, write in, and tell me, I want to hear all about them. And then from there, let's look at what to delegate and how to delegate.
So once you've overcome whatever your reasons are against delegating, and again, don't do that perfectionistically either. We can find some things to delegate and then if we have something we're really resistant to delegating, like me and my grocery shopping, you can always just be like, “Let me do this other shit first and I will deal with that one that I feel really resistant about later.
When we're considering what to delegate I think a question that not enough people are asking is, does this even need to be delegated? By which I mean, does this even need to be done at all?
I think, again, we are creatures of habit. And if there's a habit of us doing a piece of work, we often get this idea sort of implicitly that it has to get done. Versus assessing what is the value of this work? What is this work adding? Does this work actually need to get done? Would nothing actually change if it didn't get done?
So I want to introduce you if you've not heard of it to this principle called The Pareto Principle, which I first heard about just to give credit in Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Workweek. And the idea is that 80% of our outcomes come from 20% of our activities.
So I see this a lot where people are doing a lot of different shit. And then they're getting some good outcomes that they want, but they're not assessing, okay, what activities are these outcomes actually coming from? Are there actions I'm doing that actually aren't leading to the outcomes at all? And if so, would I maybe like to stop doing them?
So this is a little bit more advanced, right? This requires some analysis. Delegating is picking something and deciding how it gets done and how we educate someone else about how to do it. But I do think it's so useful before we do that to even ask, does it need to get done? Does it need to get done? Why? What are the outcomes of it? What kind of priority is it?
Because so often in life, we're trying to do so many more things than we ever will have like enough hours to. It's like if I gave you infinite hours, you probably still wouldn't be able to do all the things you want to do. Because as you complete things your brain just comes up with more shit for you to do.
So if that's the case, I think when we're prioritizing our activities, and even when we're prioritizing what we're going to delegate to other people, it's useful to ask ourselves, does this need to be delegated? Or could this be ditched all together?
I think another useful question is how good of a job needs to happen on this? I, as we all know, am a recovering perfectionist. So my brain wants everything to be done perfectly. But there's so many things in life that don't even need to be done like very well. They just need to be like done, they could even be done sort of haphazardly. If they get done, they get done. And then there are other things that matter to me about making sure they're done to a higher caliber.
So when you're delegating, I think that's an important question to ask, too. Does this need to be done at all? How well does this actually need to be done? And once you have answered those questions, it's like, who could do this? Who has the capacity to do it? And then what do they need to do to be able to do it to the level we want it done?
And that's an important question, and that's going to help you get the information out of your head and into either a conversation, or a document, or a process, or a system so that someone else can do it. So many people, this is actually another reason people don't delegate, is because all the information is in their own head, and it takes effort to get that information out. But I think that effort is worth doing. And once we do that once then often we can repeat it over and over again.
That being said, I also just want to point out that learning how to delegate, especially if you've been resistant to it, especially if you haven't been doing it is going to be a process and it's going to be a practice. And I want to really invite you to have grace for yourself and for the people you're delegating to.
Learning to delegate is like learning anything else, at first you will probably fuck it up and do the equivalent of falling on your face. And that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. And it doesn't mean that delegating is stupid and not worth our time. It doesn't mean that delegating can't work, it just means this is the process of learning how to do something new and it's not going to work perfectly until we figure out how to get good at it.
Kind of like riding a bike. First we have like the training wheels, and then even when we're done with the training wheels, we maybe fall down a lot. But eventually we get really good at it. And then we can do it without so much stress. And without so much deep thinking about it, it becomes almost habitual.
And when it's habitual then it's going to be much easier. But we have to move what's habitual from not delegating, to delegating. And then do the learning, that's going to help us figure out how to do a really good job at it.
We can learn by reading, and if you want to read a bunch of internet articles about how to delegate, have at it. I know I've read them. But also we learned by doing and then tweaking. When I worked in corporate, we had this idea of like test and learn. And I hear this idea on the internet all the time of like fuck around and find out. Which I think those are kind of the same thing, but just in different vernaculars.
So when you are learning the delegation system that works for you, yeah, this podcast can be incredibly useful. But it's also going to be you figuring out what works for you. And you are going to do that by doing it, noticing what happened, analyzing it, seeing what went well, seeing what didn't go well, and seeing what you'd like to do differently. And then taking those learnings and implementing them into your next round of activity with delegation.
Okay, one thing I mentioned earlier that I want to circle back to is the idea of giving the person we're delegating to the necessary information for delegation to be successful. And that can include a lot of different things from like, what is the activity? To why are we doing the activity? To when do I need the activity to be completed? To what does completed mean? To asking them if they have questions and to check in and things like that.
And then of course, seeing how they do it in activity, and then streamlining our process from our end, and then figuring out how to help them streamline their process from there into if that is necessary. And I want to point that out, because like one of my clients delegated something recently, and then the person like didn't do it.
And then the client realized that they didn't tell the person when the deadline was or what the urgency level was. And I thought that was such brilliant awareness on my client’s part to realize that they hadn't given enough information. And it didn't mean the other person wasn't doing their job. And it didn't mean the other person wasn't taking the assignment seriously.
They needed to give more information about that specific assignment, but also about like the delegation relationship there.
And this client said to their person like, “Hey, if I give you an assignment and don't tell you when it's due, please ask me.” Because that's an important part of delegating. If we don't tell people when things are due, they don't necessarily know.
So that might seem common sense, but a lot of stuff like that, I think, gets missed. And especially if we have underlying beliefs, like delegating is too hard or delegating doesn't work, we will often make it hard or make it not work by forgetting to have these clear conversations and set clear expectations and help the other person succeed. Because subconsciously, we believe it can't succeed so we don't try to make it succeed.
That's a big theme, with subconscious beliefs playing out. And they're like self-fulfilling prophecies because of how we behave when we believe them to be true. So we get to keep an eye out for that, and find ways to work around that as we're building our belief in the other idea, that delegating can work and be amazing and make our work life much better and make everyone else's work life much better too.
Okay, so most of this podcast so far has been about delegating from the side of the delegator, let's also take a minute to talk about if someone is delegating to you.
A lot of times in coaching I'm seeing people struggle with the act of delegating, but sometimes we might be on the other end of it, where someone's delegating to us. So I think if that's where you are and you're struggling with that kind of delegation, a lot of what we've talked about could already be useful.
It's also going to allow you to have some perspective about maybe what's going on on the other side of things and be able to see things from the other person's point of view. Which that can often help people have a better experience of something because we often get very caught up in our story of what we think the other person's doing versus what's actually going on for them.
And to explain that it's like when someone delegates to us or doesn't delegate to us we might be thinking like, “Oh, they're not delegating to me because they don't trust me.” But it really might be because they're struggling to let go of work because the work makes them feel more important. Or if they're delegating “too much” to us we may be thinking like, “They expect me to do everything.” But really they might just be thinking we're doing a really great job and not realizing if we're like at our limit.
So if you're on the receiving end of delegation I think there's a few things to keep in mind. Thing one is what's your bandwidth? And are you communicating your bandwidth? If you don't have as much work as you like or have more work than you can do, I think as the person being delegated to, it is important for you to have an understanding of that and of how much work you can do. And then to be able to communicate that back clearly to the person delegating to you.
And I know we can feel defensive if we're saying, I have too much work. But we can also, I think, tap into some interesting openness and curiosity here around like, “Hey, you seem to think I can do this many things. And I seem to think I can do this many things. Let me explain to you how I'm doing the things, and what I'm doing, and what each thing entails. And then you can tell me if maybe there's a shortcut or a streamlined way of doing this that I'm not seeing.”
And that can really help us have a valuable and beautiful conversation around workload. Because we all know I have my metaphor about sometimes we're trying to give $40 to work in exchange for a $20 bill.
And if that metaphor doesn't make sense to you, it's from another podcast where I talk about a lot of times people are trying to give more than an equal exchange because we're so attached with attaching our worthiness to how much we're doing and we are approval seeking et cetera versus saying like, “Hey, here's my limit,” or, “Hey, here's my turnaround time.”
But also, sometimes, we're taking a certain amount of time on something because we think it's really important that we do it a certain way or maybe we're trying to do it perfectionistically, and sometimes our boss wants us to be able to do it, or manager or supervisor whoever, wants us to be able to do it in less time. And they have an idea of how we could and that can be really useful to us long term.
So it might seem like those ideas are at odds, but I think they're really not. If someone expects us to do an amount of work that we think is twice as many hours as we have, what if we're just curious about what they think that would mean and look like?
And if it's something that could be doable and feel fun for us, we might actually enjoy our work better if we're able to do the work that way. And if we don't like it, then we can decide also we'd rather go work somewhere else where they aren't trying to make us do that kind of turnaround, et cetera, et cetera.
Okay, the other thing I want you to think about from the delegation point of view is what do I need to know to be successful? So I love to pitch this in both directions. If you're delegating, thinking about what is the person I'm delegating to need to know to be successful? And trying to get as much of that information as possible to the other person.
But from the other person's point of view, if you're being delegated to, I want you to be thinking the same thing. What do I need to be successful? What do I need to know? What do I need to tell the person delegating to me? What do I need to communicate about the amount of activities I’m working on and what the prioritization is? What do I need to know from them and what do they need to know from me?
And the thing is, I think, if both people are operating from that, that has the opportunity for the delegation to be really amazing because everyone's coming at it to help it be successful. A lot of times in life, though, we're going to be the only one thinking this way, just because other people have different thought patterns. Maybe they don't listen to my podcast, maybe they're not into coaching, or maybe they have other training that's also really interesting and helpful but it’s just not the same as what I teach.
So if at least one person is coming to the delegation from the point of view of what do I need to know to be successful? What does the other person need to know for this to be successful? And being willing to both ask questions and give feedback, that's going to set the activity up for a lot of success.
And if both people are doing that, that's going to set things up for even more success. So that's what I recommend, whether you're being delegated to or delegating. And for a lot of us, we're doing both. Sometimes we're being delegated to, sometimes we're delegating.
All right, so to review, delegation is amazing and can be really useful both in helping people get their time back, but also in helping people who work on your team up-skill and get opportunities to do really cool and exciting work. And it can be wonderful for everyone all around.
But there are some reasons that people don't delegate. And we often need to overcome those internally in order to be able to actually do the activity of delegating. And then once we're doing the activity of delegating there's a level of what needs to be delegated? Does all of this actually need to be delegated? Could some of it get ditched altogether?
And once we've decided what actually needs to be delegated, who's going to do it? And what do they need to know to do an amazing job? And is there anything I need to know from them for them to do an amazing job? And if we're the one being delegated to, what do we need to know? What does the other person need to know?
All right, I hope this makes your delegation experiences amazing, and that you have so much more space to work on the work that only you can do. And I hope you enjoy getting some time back once you delegate some stuff. And if you're being delegated to, I hope you enjoy these new things you're getting to do and that they help you move your career in the direction you want to go. All right, I'll talk to you next week. Bye bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey, y'all. Happy Wednesday when y'all hear this. On the day I'm recording it it's actually a Sunday. I don't usually record on the weekend or do much work, but I wasn't feeling very well last week. It's kind of been a whole thing.
I was supposed to go up to Portland for a Friendsgiving. But we didn't go because my girlfriend and I got sick. And we did test negative for Covid, which we are grateful for. But we canceled our trip anyways because we just weren't feeling great, and we want to be respectful and not share our germs with everyone.
And so I was grateful I had some time off that was scheduled to go to the Friendsgiving, which I instead just kind of used to recuperate. But now I'm recording this podcast today to kind of get a little bit ahead, especially because I've had several days of rest now, because I had Thursday and Friday off last week.
And I think this is a great time for a little micro teaching, which is just that shit does not always go according to plan, no matter how well we plan. I think so many of us, me included, have this idea that if we’re just really smart about how we plan things and have really great forethought and foresight, then we'll be able to control everything. And that's just not the way it is most of the time, or at least some of the time.
Like we got sick, we didn't foresee that. I mean, I guess it's always a possibility. But it wasn't what we planned for. And then everything changed. And that can be a bummer, and I think it was for us. And it's okay to be bummed about things when they don't go according to plan. And if anything, I would say when we are bummed, just taking time to feel those feelings and move through those feelings is a really beautiful thing, it's like a beautiful gift we can give ourselves.
And then after that we can be like, “Okay, what do I want to do now?” So this is kind of like what we talked about in last week's podcast episode about when things are annoying or when we don't like them. Then the question is just like, okay, but now what? Now how do I want to think about the thing, because the thing is what it is?
So things didn't go according to plan. We didn't do our travel, we did get sick. And interestingly, I've had a lot of other little things in my life not go according to plan too. So just kind of thinking about what do we want to do? And how do we want to love ourselves through it? And how do we want to care for ourselves?
And maybe sometimes there's something even convenient about things going the wrong way. And being able to notice that and enjoy that and explore that. Because sometimes when we're so like, “Oh, it wasn't supposed to be this way,” then we also rob ourselves of enjoying the surprise benefits of things not going according to plan.
Yeah, I didn't want to feel shitty, but the surprise benefit was just getting to be here and getting to do some stuff, like do some resting. But also get some other shit done and recording this podcast ahead of time so that I don't have to do it later. And so I can give my podcast team more time to have my podcast recordings in because it's the holiday season and they're taking time off, all that stuff.
Okay, enough about that, let's talk about delegation. Delegation is something I sometimes coach my clients on. Sometimes my clients are in the position where they need to delegate, sometimes my clients are in the position where people want to delegate stuff to them. But no matter what position you're in, I think it's a really useful thing for us to think through from the coaching lens.
So first things first, I'm just going to say a lot of people have a lot of resistance to delegating. This is something I've noticed and seen over and over again back when I was in corporate and then also with my clients and even with myself.
So let's first look at some of the reasons why people don't delegate. I think one of the number one reasons is we have habits, right? Whatever it's our habit to do, then we usually keep doing that because habits are habitual. We don't have to think about them so much, they're just the way we do things.
And if we're not in the habit of delegating, it would take effort and awareness to begin delegating. And if we don't have that piece, then we're just going to keep not delegating. And I think that is actually why we do so much shit we're doing in our lives and also why we think the way we're thinking most the time, it's just habitual. It's just the habit we have up to that point and whatever is already habitual feels easier, even if it's not easier in the long term.
That brings me to another reason why people don't delegate, which is that delegating takes an upfront cost to get a long term benefit. And the same thing is true of changing any habit. It's always easier in the moment to follow the habit because it takes less brainpower, it takes less effort. But often when we want to change our habits, it's because that habit is not working out so well for us in the long term.
But we have to be able to balance that front-end investment, that short-term investment in learning how to do it differently and overcoming the old habit and building the new habit. Or when it comes to delegation, doing the upfront work of the delegating.
Delegating can take time and so for a lot of people, they're like, “Well, I'm not going to take 30 minutes to delegate if I could just take 30 minutes to do the activity.” But then they're keeping themselves as the bottleneck and they're keeping themselves stuck as the only person who can do that work, versus spending the 30 minutes to educate someone else on how to do the work, and then reaping the benefit of not having to do it many, many, many more times in the future.
There's some other reasons I see that people resist delegating. And one of them is our friend that we always talk about, which is perfectionism. A lot of times people do not delegate because they want things done perfectly and they don't trust other people to do them perfectly or as perfectly as they could do them or as well as they could do them.
Since as we know, as humans, we're not actually able to do things perfectly. But we, a lot of us, me included, tend to like the way we do things, so we do them ourselves versus letting someone else do them.
Actually, a funny example of this for me personally is I could totally delegate grocery shopping to Instacart or something. But I like to pick out my own produce. I'm very picky about produce and so I have chosen at this point to just accept that I would rather go to the grocery store myself. And I would rather spend that time that I'm never going to get back and spend that energy because I want to be the one to pick out my avocados.
And that isn't necessarily logical, and I'm definitely not the only one who could do it. And I'm probably not even the only one who could do it up to my standards. But it's just a thing that for now I'm like, “I'll just keep doing it because I kind of like it.” And it's not enough of a pain point for me at this point for me to change it.
So I think that is important, in sharing this, everything I teach you all it's just stuff and information and tools that can make your life better and more enjoyable at work and at home. You don't have to apply it ever, you don't have to apply any of it. You could apply a little teeny bit of it.
It's all for you. It's not for you to use against yourself as a weapon to beat yourself up with, it's just something you can use for awareness and then making choices about how you want to design your life and your work life to be more yummy for you.
So I don't ever want you to feel pressured, like you have to be applying what I'm teaching. Because I think, first of all, that takes the joy out of it and then it just makes it one more should. It's just then socialization coming at you from me versus the current socialization you have in your head.
So everything I'm offering here is just for you if you want to use it. And I'm not doing it perfectly either. And I'm still doing my own grocery shopping, even though I know I could be delegating it, I'm just choosing not to. And we're always allowed to do that. But I think it's better when we have some awareness around it, and then we can just make the choice intentionally.
There's another reason I see people not delegating things, and it is related to the podcast, I think it's maybe number six, about why we overwork. And that is, for a lot of us we really attach the amount of work we're doing to our worthiness or our importance. Or we're like, getting kind of like an ego hit for me like, “Oh, I work more than everyone else,” or “I do more projects than everyone else.”
So if we are getting that kind of validation from how busy we are or how much work we're doing, that's going to make it very difficult to delegate our work because it's going to bring up an identity crisis for us. And in order to be able to delegate we have to be able to see our value differently and be able to have different ways of ascertaining how we're adding value without it being like, “Oh, I do the most tasks.”
If you doing the most tasks is how you define that you're adding value, then you're going to hoard tasks. Like it just makes sense, why would you give them away if those are the measure of your goodness at work?
And it's really interesting because a lot of times when people do hoard tasks, they're not adding as much value they're just really fucking busy. They might be busier than everyone else, they might be working longer hours than everyone else, but it doesn't actually mean they're adding more value.
I think it's harder to understand when we're adding more value. And I think that's why people look at how many tasks they're doing or how many hours that they're working. But I think it's well worth revising the narrative for yourself around this, because otherwise you're going to wind up in burnout again and again because as long as you think more work means you're doing more it's going to be really hard to cut back, to have boundaries, to end your workday at a reasonable hour and stuff like that.
Okay, so those are the reasons, just some of the reasons I see people not delegating. You might even have other ones. If you do, write in, and tell me, I want to hear all about them. And then from there, let's look at what to delegate and how to delegate.
So once you've overcome whatever your reasons are against delegating, and again, don't do that perfectionistically either. We can find some things to delegate and then if we have something we're really resistant to delegating, like me and my grocery shopping, you can always just be like, “Let me do this other shit first and I will deal with that one that I feel really resistant about later.
When we're considering what to delegate I think a question that not enough people are asking is, does this even need to be delegated? By which I mean, does this even need to be done at all?
I think, again, we are creatures of habit. And if there's a habit of us doing a piece of work, we often get this idea sort of implicitly that it has to get done. Versus assessing what is the value of this work? What is this work adding? Does this work actually need to get done? Would nothing actually change if it didn't get done?
So I want to introduce you if you've not heard of it to this principle called The Pareto Principle, which I first heard about just to give credit in Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Workweek. And the idea is that 80% of our outcomes come from 20% of our activities.
So I see this a lot where people are doing a lot of different shit. And then they're getting some good outcomes that they want, but they're not assessing, okay, what activities are these outcomes actually coming from? Are there actions I'm doing that actually aren't leading to the outcomes at all? And if so, would I maybe like to stop doing them?
So this is a little bit more advanced, right? This requires some analysis. Delegating is picking something and deciding how it gets done and how we educate someone else about how to do it. But I do think it's so useful before we do that to even ask, does it need to get done? Does it need to get done? Why? What are the outcomes of it? What kind of priority is it?
Because so often in life, we're trying to do so many more things than we ever will have like enough hours to. It's like if I gave you infinite hours, you probably still wouldn't be able to do all the things you want to do. Because as you complete things your brain just comes up with more shit for you to do.
So if that's the case, I think when we're prioritizing our activities, and even when we're prioritizing what we're going to delegate to other people, it's useful to ask ourselves, does this need to be delegated? Or could this be ditched all together?
I think another useful question is how good of a job needs to happen on this? I, as we all know, am a recovering perfectionist. So my brain wants everything to be done perfectly. But there's so many things in life that don't even need to be done like very well. They just need to be like done, they could even be done sort of haphazardly. If they get done, they get done. And then there are other things that matter to me about making sure they're done to a higher caliber.
So when you're delegating, I think that's an important question to ask, too. Does this need to be done at all? How well does this actually need to be done? And once you have answered those questions, it's like, who could do this? Who has the capacity to do it? And then what do they need to do to be able to do it to the level we want it done?
And that's an important question, and that's going to help you get the information out of your head and into either a conversation, or a document, or a process, or a system so that someone else can do it. So many people, this is actually another reason people don't delegate, is because all the information is in their own head, and it takes effort to get that information out. But I think that effort is worth doing. And once we do that once then often we can repeat it over and over again.
That being said, I also just want to point out that learning how to delegate, especially if you've been resistant to it, especially if you haven't been doing it is going to be a process and it's going to be a practice. And I want to really invite you to have grace for yourself and for the people you're delegating to.
Learning to delegate is like learning anything else, at first you will probably fuck it up and do the equivalent of falling on your face. And that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. And it doesn't mean that delegating is stupid and not worth our time. It doesn't mean that delegating can't work, it just means this is the process of learning how to do something new and it's not going to work perfectly until we figure out how to get good at it.
Kind of like riding a bike. First we have like the training wheels, and then even when we're done with the training wheels, we maybe fall down a lot. But eventually we get really good at it. And then we can do it without so much stress. And without so much deep thinking about it, it becomes almost habitual.
And when it's habitual then it's going to be much easier. But we have to move what's habitual from not delegating, to delegating. And then do the learning, that's going to help us figure out how to do a really good job at it.
We can learn by reading, and if you want to read a bunch of internet articles about how to delegate, have at it. I know I've read them. But also we learned by doing and then tweaking. When I worked in corporate, we had this idea of like test and learn. And I hear this idea on the internet all the time of like fuck around and find out. Which I think those are kind of the same thing, but just in different vernaculars.
So when you are learning the delegation system that works for you, yeah, this podcast can be incredibly useful. But it's also going to be you figuring out what works for you. And you are going to do that by doing it, noticing what happened, analyzing it, seeing what went well, seeing what didn't go well, and seeing what you'd like to do differently. And then taking those learnings and implementing them into your next round of activity with delegation.
Okay, one thing I mentioned earlier that I want to circle back to is the idea of giving the person we're delegating to the necessary information for delegation to be successful. And that can include a lot of different things from like, what is the activity? To why are we doing the activity? To when do I need the activity to be completed? To what does completed mean? To asking them if they have questions and to check in and things like that.
And then of course, seeing how they do it in activity, and then streamlining our process from our end, and then figuring out how to help them streamline their process from there into if that is necessary. And I want to point that out, because like one of my clients delegated something recently, and then the person like didn't do it.
And then the client realized that they didn't tell the person when the deadline was or what the urgency level was. And I thought that was such brilliant awareness on my client’s part to realize that they hadn't given enough information. And it didn't mean the other person wasn't doing their job. And it didn't mean the other person wasn't taking the assignment seriously.
They needed to give more information about that specific assignment, but also about like the delegation relationship there.
And this client said to their person like, “Hey, if I give you an assignment and don't tell you when it's due, please ask me.” Because that's an important part of delegating. If we don't tell people when things are due, they don't necessarily know.
So that might seem common sense, but a lot of stuff like that, I think, gets missed. And especially if we have underlying beliefs, like delegating is too hard or delegating doesn't work, we will often make it hard or make it not work by forgetting to have these clear conversations and set clear expectations and help the other person succeed. Because subconsciously, we believe it can't succeed so we don't try to make it succeed.
That's a big theme, with subconscious beliefs playing out. And they're like self-fulfilling prophecies because of how we behave when we believe them to be true. So we get to keep an eye out for that, and find ways to work around that as we're building our belief in the other idea, that delegating can work and be amazing and make our work life much better and make everyone else's work life much better too.
Okay, so most of this podcast so far has been about delegating from the side of the delegator, let's also take a minute to talk about if someone is delegating to you.
A lot of times in coaching I'm seeing people struggle with the act of delegating, but sometimes we might be on the other end of it, where someone's delegating to us. So I think if that's where you are and you're struggling with that kind of delegation, a lot of what we've talked about could already be useful.
It's also going to allow you to have some perspective about maybe what's going on on the other side of things and be able to see things from the other person's point of view. Which that can often help people have a better experience of something because we often get very caught up in our story of what we think the other person's doing versus what's actually going on for them.
And to explain that it's like when someone delegates to us or doesn't delegate to us we might be thinking like, “Oh, they're not delegating to me because they don't trust me.” But it really might be because they're struggling to let go of work because the work makes them feel more important. Or if they're delegating “too much” to us we may be thinking like, “They expect me to do everything.” But really they might just be thinking we're doing a really great job and not realizing if we're like at our limit.
So if you're on the receiving end of delegation I think there's a few things to keep in mind. Thing one is what's your bandwidth? And are you communicating your bandwidth? If you don't have as much work as you like or have more work than you can do, I think as the person being delegated to, it is important for you to have an understanding of that and of how much work you can do. And then to be able to communicate that back clearly to the person delegating to you.
And I know we can feel defensive if we're saying, I have too much work. But we can also, I think, tap into some interesting openness and curiosity here around like, “Hey, you seem to think I can do this many things. And I seem to think I can do this many things. Let me explain to you how I'm doing the things, and what I'm doing, and what each thing entails. And then you can tell me if maybe there's a shortcut or a streamlined way of doing this that I'm not seeing.”
And that can really help us have a valuable and beautiful conversation around workload. Because we all know I have my metaphor about sometimes we're trying to give $40 to work in exchange for a $20 bill.
And if that metaphor doesn't make sense to you, it's from another podcast where I talk about a lot of times people are trying to give more than an equal exchange because we're so attached with attaching our worthiness to how much we're doing and we are approval seeking et cetera versus saying like, “Hey, here's my limit,” or, “Hey, here's my turnaround time.”
But also, sometimes, we're taking a certain amount of time on something because we think it's really important that we do it a certain way or maybe we're trying to do it perfectionistically, and sometimes our boss wants us to be able to do it, or manager or supervisor whoever, wants us to be able to do it in less time. And they have an idea of how we could and that can be really useful to us long term.
So it might seem like those ideas are at odds, but I think they're really not. If someone expects us to do an amount of work that we think is twice as many hours as we have, what if we're just curious about what they think that would mean and look like?
And if it's something that could be doable and feel fun for us, we might actually enjoy our work better if we're able to do the work that way. And if we don't like it, then we can decide also we'd rather go work somewhere else where they aren't trying to make us do that kind of turnaround, et cetera, et cetera.
Okay, the other thing I want you to think about from the delegation point of view is what do I need to know to be successful? So I love to pitch this in both directions. If you're delegating, thinking about what is the person I'm delegating to need to know to be successful? And trying to get as much of that information as possible to the other person.
But from the other person's point of view, if you're being delegated to, I want you to be thinking the same thing. What do I need to be successful? What do I need to know? What do I need to tell the person delegating to me? What do I need to communicate about the amount of activities I’m working on and what the prioritization is? What do I need to know from them and what do they need to know from me?
And the thing is, I think, if both people are operating from that, that has the opportunity for the delegation to be really amazing because everyone's coming at it to help it be successful. A lot of times in life, though, we're going to be the only one thinking this way, just because other people have different thought patterns. Maybe they don't listen to my podcast, maybe they're not into coaching, or maybe they have other training that's also really interesting and helpful but it’s just not the same as what I teach.
So if at least one person is coming to the delegation from the point of view of what do I need to know to be successful? What does the other person need to know for this to be successful? And being willing to both ask questions and give feedback, that's going to set the activity up for a lot of success.
And if both people are doing that, that's going to set things up for even more success. So that's what I recommend, whether you're being delegated to or delegating. And for a lot of us, we're doing both. Sometimes we're being delegated to, sometimes we're delegating.
All right, so to review, delegation is amazing and can be really useful both in helping people get their time back, but also in helping people who work on your team up-skill and get opportunities to do really cool and exciting work. And it can be wonderful for everyone all around.
But there are some reasons that people don't delegate. And we often need to overcome those internally in order to be able to actually do the activity of delegating. And then once we're doing the activity of delegating there's a level of what needs to be delegated? Does all of this actually need to be delegated? Could some of it get ditched altogether?
And once we've decided what actually needs to be delegated, who's going to do it? And what do they need to know to do an amazing job? And is there anything I need to know from them for them to do an amazing job? And if we're the one being delegated to, what do we need to know? What does the other person need to know?
All right, I hope this makes your delegation experiences amazing, and that you have so much more space to work on the work that only you can do. And I hope you enjoy getting some time back once you delegate some stuff. And if you're being delegated to, I hope you enjoy these new things you're getting to do and that they help you move your career in the direction you want to go. All right, I'll talk to you next week. Bye bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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