0:00
Eric, welcome to episode 57 of the achieve workplace culture podcast, where we help you our listeners and viewers find actionable ways to improve your workplace culture. Today, we're going to talk about how we as leaders view delegation. But before we do that, let me introduce myself. I'm Eric Stutzman, one of your regular co hosts. I'm together with my regular co host, Wendy Lowen, hi, Wendy.

0:27
Hello, Eric. Great to be here. How you doing? Very good. Yes. Looking forward to our time.

0:32
I'm glad to hear it. Yeah, Chris, our other regular co host is enjoying some fun in the sun somewhere. So good for him, and that means you get Wendy and I today as we talk about delegation and whether or not that should actually be on your leadership agenda, as you think about your work, the work of your company and your workplace culture. But first, Wendy, let me ask you this question, isn't delegation just a great way to reduce your workload, like, is it laziness, or is it something else?

1:04
Oh, well, I've come to see delegation in a very different light. I do appreciate that for many leaders, we have moved into a position where we are overseeing a team, because we typically did a lot of different things. And so our skill set is diverse, and we know how to do a lot of operational things. And so that tends to have people move into leadership roles. But when you move into a leadership role, you cannot, physically, emotionally, mentally, with your energy, keep doing all of those tasks and at the same time be able to be the kind of leader, or actually inhabit the position that you've been given and do it well if you keep doing all of those things. So delegation is a really important, a critical part of a leadership role.

2:03
Yeah, it really is. I, you know, I'm in agreement there, and yet, I think a lot of us struggle to delegate effectively, efficiently, or at all. So, I mean, why is that like? What is it that holds us back from delegating, and what are some of the fears do you think that are going on behind the scenes? Yeah, I think

2:26
the fears that people have mine might have been different than yours. Would be different than you know our listeners. I think there's a fear of being seen as well. I want to look competent in my role. I know how to do these things. I don't want to be seen as lazy as offloading my to do list. Sometimes it's I just know I can do it faster, so I'm just going to do it and get it done and get it out of the way. So it takes a couple of hours after work, or, you know, I got to spend a bit more time doing that. I think people sometimes may even feel insecure in their leadership role, and that if they elevate the stature of some of the people on their team, that they are diminished in their authority. So I think there's a variety of reasons why, and maybe people don't even know how to delegate. I think that's another piece. It's not because delegating, as you said, it's, it's not just a thing, it's, it's a skill, it's an art. It's not just about giving someone here's an item on my to do list. Now, can you take this off my plate next week and going forward?

3:33
Yeah, you talked about delegation being a skill and an art, and it is a skill and an art, but maybe it's also an essential leadership competency. If we saw that as a leadership competency, then we would train for it, and we would be rewarded for it, essentially within our organizations that delegation, if we see delegation as a way to build the organization, to build our culture, to build up individuals that we supervise and that it's a core leadership competency. I think some of those fears will start to go away because, oh, it's not about me being less competent. It's actually about me demonstrating competence by delegating or growing the people that report to me that I support as a leader.

4:19
Yeah, I think that's absolutely critical, that it isn't about diminishing our authority. It's actually about doing what we're supposed to do in a leadership role, and allowing other people to grow in their skill set, for them to feel empowered to do their role. And actually, if you think about that, people are motivated by learning, by growth, and that leads to engagement. And so delegation isn't about offloading it actually is about building the team, about building the organization.

4:55
Yeah, right. So sometimes I think delegation gets a bad rap because people. Goal as sort of the way you said it is. It's like, I just don't want to do this, so I'm going to pass it off to somebody else. And if we see what we're doing as that maybe delegation should have a bad rap, right? But if we reframe delegation as this is about growing my team, the people around me. This is about perhaps enabling other people to do things that I've done in the past in better or different ways that will enhance and strengthen our workplace culture. Then it feels different.

5:36
It feels very different. Yeah, and our systems need to align with that kind of mindset around delegation. Because delegation, as we get into the practicalities of it, it takes some time to onboard someone, even to a very simple, something that I may think of as a simple task. I think of it as simple because I've been doing it for years and years and years, you know, like I watch, you know, my son, when he was younger, wanted me to play basketball with him at the neighbors. Well, he could just throw the ball, and he made it look so easy, and he had to actually instruct me on how to dribble, how to hold my feet, how to toss the ball. And delegation is a little bit like that. We intuitively know how to do things because we've done it so often. So when we delegate as a leader, and especially for new leaders, you've got to slow down and say, I've actually got to give this the amount of time it requires to help someone understand why and how and how I do it might not be the same as how somebody else does it. So there's conversation, there's dialog. It's a bit of a process. It's not just

6:47
here's the thing. I think we should get into the process of delegating and how to do it effectively. We'll do that shortly here. But first, Wendy, I think it might be useful just to talk a little bit about our own personal experiences either having been delegated to or delegating to someone else, and where we've seen real successes in that where do you have any recent examples that come to mind for you?

7:10
Just yesterday, sat down with a team member, and we have been working as a team on redesigning a process for months, and I had spent substantial amount of time, so I didn't delegate it initially, just looking into it and trying to figure it out. And I realized this is outside of my particular skill set, and it's not something that I even need to learn. It's not even something that I need to know how to do going forward. And so I tapped a team member, asked them if they would be interested in doing it. They were excited about it. They spent a bit of time, met with them yesterday, and the team and oh my goodness, we have just created an efficiency within the process. He feels really good about what he's put together, and I will also add that the initial product that he put forward needs some tweaks, but what we realized was there was a lot of learning that we're going to take to apply to other processes as well. And so they did it. They created the process in a very different way than I would have, and it's actually better.

8:27
It's better. Yeah, interesting. I, you know, for me, I when I think about delegating, I actually think about something that used to be a core part of my role as CEO here at ctri and achieve which was creating a marketing schedule. And for years, our CEO role, the person in the role before me and then me, would create the calendar, the sort of the master calendar of marketing events, everything from social media to email marketing. What kind of video content we're going to produce, and lots of different kinds of ways we thought about content. And I initially thought of that as a really key part of my role, and it was, but I also started to see that I had a team of really intelligent people around me, and that as the organization was changing, growing the time pressure on me was such that I was finding it difficult to do that. And I also was watching one of my team members and realizing that she was really good at creating calendar, you know, thinking about events planning, excuse me, so I sat down with her, and over the period of about a year to a year and a half, I taught her what I knew about this marketing system. And over. Over time, she started to take the marketing system. Initially, I would sit down and show her what I was doing, and then we sort of did it together, and then she would create the schedule and show it to me. And over a period of about a year and a half, we transitioned this major task, a very important task in the organization, to somebody else. And initially I was a bit afraid, right? Because I wondered like, well, you know, what if? What if she doesn't do it as well as me? Or what if she misses things? But that fear was really misplaced, because what ended up happening was she saw things that I didn't see, and she brought in a new eyes and vision and creativity to it. And the whole process was additive, rather than subtractive, like she didn't just forget some things that I did instead, she may have done some things differently, but she added a bunch of stuff. She added to what I had done before to make it even better. And so in some ways, that delegation process was a collaboration process and the growth process for the organization overall. And to me, it changed my role in a really positive way, and it elevated

11:09
her, yeah, and hearing you say that, I mean, there's a key things that just kind of pop out for me. One is, is it, is it your role? Is it the thing you should be uniquely doing right? Or is that task, if it's delegated to somebody else? Would that give you time, opportunity, energy to focus on other things, and also, as you said, empower somebody else to build their skill set? And I mean, if you think about scaling and growing as an organization, not delegating is a recipe for burnout and not being able to scale as well.

11:51
So true. Yeah, if we're not delegating, we're not growing essentially, as an organization, you can't always, as you said earlier, continue to do the things you've always done and just add and add and add and add. Maybe if you're shrinking as an organization, you're gonna have to take some things back. But yeah, probably that's not the case.

12:11
And you saying she saw things like two things can be true at the same time. She saw things that were she had a different perspective, maybe a different way of doing it, but there also is a learning curve along the way, and so to anticipate, you know, some bumpy spots, maybe some mistakes that can be learned from. I think that's also part of what a leader needs to acknowledge and recognize and be comfortable with in the delegation process.

12:39
Yeah, it's not always going to be smooth. It's going to take time. It's an education process. There's going to be some things that don't go right every time.

12:48
Yeah, yeah. And so to think about, what are your steps when you are delegating a task to break down, what? Why is this task important? How have I done it? What are the steps and what is the impact of this task on the larger organization, and to be able to communicate that. Another example that comes to mind is we've just brought, I've just brought someone we've just brought someone new onto our team, and I had mapped out, and they're taking substantial responsibility supporting me in that. And I'd mapped out a year. I thought it would take a year to onboard to all of these processes. I showed them the whole year. We started systematically working through it while we're four months in, and we've got through the year.

13:30
So that's great and and I suspect you've developed confidence in this person. I know you have, because you've told me about this, and yet they'll probably be checking points throughout the year, Oh, absolutely, making sure that he's supported. Yes, knows what he needs to know. And it's not just a one and done delegation. Here you do this, but it's an education.

13:54
Yes, yeah. We have daily check ins, we have weekly check ins, and then we have, you know, larger check ins with the extended circle of people on the team on a regular basis as well. Yes, it's not a one and done

14:07
for our listeners. If we were to sort of summarize some of the key points that we think are important in delegation, what are they? Wendy, maybe you could take a crack at this name, 234, things that you think a leader really needs to pay attention to if they're going to build a great delegation process.

14:27
I mean, first of all, I think we need to assess our own skill level. What am I uniquely good at? What is my unique contribution, and what are the things that I can delegate that are taking more time, more energy that would empower somebody else and allow our team, our organization, to grow. So I think there's a self assessment piece that starts Secondly, I think we do need to assess the people on our team who is the best fit to delegate to, and also to assess their interest. You know, will they be engaged? Will they feel empowered? Will they be motivated to learn the new task? They have aptitude, interest? Yeah, all of those things we need to spend time educating them, as we've talked about already. What are the steps involved? And give them time to practice it. And I think delegation, if we have a list of things we're going to delegate. Sometimes we delegate too many things too quickly, where the first skill or first task project whatever is not consolidated. So we need to give people time to consolidate their own learning. We've educated that we've assessed, we've educated, we've given them time to consolidate their learning. So that idea of going slowly, not going too quickly, right, checking in with people along the way. How's it going? Not being too critical of when they do things differently than we would to think of it as additive, not subtractive, as you, as you mentioned. And I think our responsibility is always to be checking in and to be available when there are questions where people don't have to create their own workarounds, rather, they can use their own creativity to enhance the task.

16:11
So I think that brings us to the end of this particular episode on delegation. So if you're a listener out there and you're thinking about leading and building your workplace culture, and you're thinking about, how do we grow the people and the organization? Think about delegation. Think about it from the perspective of this is actually a key competency of leadership, and I need to be assessing what's most important for me, and what are the things that others can do as well or differently or better than me, who has capability, who has interest, and then build a process. Delegation is not a one and done. Delegation is a process of educating, working alongside and then releasing somebody else to flourish. And with that, we're going to wrap up this episode on delegation, and we'll see you next time you.