[0:08] High achievers have high standards and have a hard time letting go. They like to be in control to make sure things go well and the high standards are met. I'm Rusty Gaillard. This is Do Something Different. This is a podcast for high achievers to help you achieve more success at work with more flexibility in your schedule and more satisfaction doing it. Most people who are high achievers have become successful through hard work and more work and more control and staying on top of the details and the quality. This podcast episode specifically is about delegation. As you progress in your career, you know the shift in your focus goes from delivering the content of the work to providing an environment that enables your team to deliver the content of the work. That transition is tricky for many high achievers because they are used to the high standards, the quality, the attention to detail, and being hands-on. How do you make that leap to trusting your team, fully empowering them to take the lead, and trusting them that they will deliver the quality when your reputation has been built on being hands-on and ensuring that everything meets a certain standard?

[1:29] Delegation is really the secret that allows you to go from a manager to a leader, from someone who is day-to-day managing the work to ensure that it gets delivered to someone who is setting strategy, building relationships, influencing other people, and driving the forward progress of the team and ultimately of the organization or the company. Delegation is fundamentally a management exercise. It's about how are you managing the work and how are you managing the people? But it is the key that unlocks your schedule and gives you the time and the space to be thinking at the next level. Now, there's organizational benefits of this, of course, as well. It's going to benefit you if you're more effective at delegating because now your day-to-day schedule is less tied up with the delivery of individual projects and individual work. And you have more time to build relationships and influence other people and set strategy and think strategically, which is what a leader should be doing. It's also a benefit for your team because your team is going to be elevated. And when your team elevates, when their capabilities grow, it gives the space for you to grow. As long as your team is not growing, then you are not able to grow. And it goes the other way as well. When you are growing, you're elevating your role in the company. That gives space for your team to grow.

[2:56] I got excited about delegation many years ago when I first read the book, The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. That book, if you've ever read it, is not actually about life in the corporate environment. It's about creating an independent business that you can run and manage in four hours a week. But I was so interested in one of the tools that he mentioned, which is to figure out how do you really engage a support team and the people around you so that you don't have to answer every question. And I applied that to the corporate world. I said, well, hold on a minute. If every question is coming to me, then I'm the bottleneck. And then my team is also not empowered. They're not going to be as happy. How do I think about this differently so that I'm not working as hard and my team is more engaged? That was the beginning for me of thinking about delegation. And one of the questions and one of the areas of discomfort is how much can I give my team? How much leeway can I give them? How much freedom can I give them to go run with a project? When you think about delegation, you can think about that on a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum is you're delegating specific tasks. Go do this task and then bring it back to me and I'm going to review it with you. That's a very tactical kind of thing. At the extreme, you end up looking like a micromanager. But even if you're not micromanaging, there can still be task-oriented delegation.

[4:24] Another step up from that towards the other end of the spectrum is to delegate projects. Projects, of course, are bigger than tasks. There are multiple tasks associated with a project, but there's a beginning, there's an end, and there's a specific objective that is there to be accomplished.

[4:41] Even further up the spectrum is to delegate objectives when there's not even a plan for how to achieve it, where you engage someone on your team saying, we need to go create this kind of result, go figure out how to do it, and go drive it. Now, when you think about executive leadership, the CEO is going to engage the executive team at that level, where they have objectives. We have sales growth objectives. We have product objectives. We have marketing objectives. There are all these different goals that the company is going to have. And it's up to the individuals, the C-suite, to figure out how do you turn those objectives into ultimately projects that can be delivered and at some point tasks that get executed. That is what leaders do. They tackle these open-ended kind of broad objectives. As you think about delegation, where are you on the spectrum today? Do you tend to delegate objectives to your team? Are you delegating projects which are more defined? There's a specific path to execute and deliver on that objective already defined. Or are you delegating tasks to your team that are short-term, very specific, beginning and ending? Or even further down the spectrum, are you micromanaging? Are you at that point where each task you're delegating to them and asking them to come back and review it with you?

[6:03] Start by doing a self-assessment. Where are you on that spectrum? How are you delegating today? Now, the challenge with delegating further up the spectrum, much more towards projects and broad strategic objectives, is they're less defined and it requires more trust of your team.

[6:21] How do you know they're going to deliver well? This, of course, is where some of the learning and scaffolding models come in, which is first start by doing it on your own and showing it to the other person. And by that way, you're demonstrating this is the approach. You're teaching them, if you will, how to approach a problem. The next step is to do it together where you can collaboratively do it. You can then have them do it with you doing frequent check-ins. And then at some point, you, of course, you empower them to go off and run it all on their own. But fundamentally, that model is all about quality. It's all about how are you ensuring that the person is delivering the quality that you need them to deliver? Because if you go back to this premise that as a high achiever, quality is one of the things that sets you apart. If you're going to delegate to your team, that's also the biggest sticking point. How do you know that the team is going to deliver enough quality?

[7:18] The truth is you are responsible for the quality and it is part of your reputation. And if you build a team that's not able to deliver quality work, that is going to reflect poorly on you. Think about going in to pitch an idea to your boss or a skip level boss that you and your team has developed and reflect how involved are you in the preparation of that message.

[7:43] If you are hands-on crafting that message yourself, you're taking something away from your team. If you're at the other end of the spectrum, which is you go in and you sit in this presentation and you've never even seen the presentation before, that might demonstrate a very high degree of trust of your team, that you trust them well enough that they can prepare a presentation for your boss or a skip level boss above that and walk in and you are sitting there listening to it and hearing it for the first time. Could you ever get to that point? Think about that. It challenges you a little bit, right? Wow, would I ever trust my team that much? Or even is it responsible to trust my team that much? Now, there is no right answer to that question, but certainly for some things, it is responsible to trust your team in that way. And for other kinds of projects, of course, you need to be more involved. But this is the linchpin here about delegation. It's this question of how involved should you be?

[8:45] There are a couple of benefits to giving your team more and more accountability, more and more freedom, more and more responsibility for work objectives that you want them to deliver. And I'm specifically using that word objectives because we've talked earlier about the spectrum from delegating tasks to projects to objectives. And the more you can move up that chain towards delegating objectives, the more free time you're going to have and the more empowered and engaged your team is going to be.

[9:18] There's a model from Daniel Pink that talks about employee engagement, and there's fundamentally three elements to it. He says, employees, there's really only three things to engage employees. And it's one, they want a sense of autonomy, two, they want a sense of mastery, and three, they want a sense of purpose. Now, the purpose, of course, is related to the content of the work that you as a team are delivering, and specifically that person is delivering. But the other two, autonomy and mastery, are directly related to how well and effectively you delegate? Do you give them the opportunity to have autonomy over a project or an objective? And do you give them the ability to learn, to develop that mastery? One of the ways you most undermine someone's learning on your team is through the way you give feedback.

[10:07] If you're the kind of person who delivers feedback, which is tied specifically to how to improve something, You can be undermining someone on your team because the moment you give them feedback, telling them what to do, telling them this is how you need to improve this, you are taking away from them some degree of autonomy, some degree of responsibility, some learning opportunity for them to develop their own ideas and become better themselves at how to improve.

[10:40] So every time you give feedback, you should be asking yourself, am I giving a specific suggestion on how to improve or am I pointing out this is an area that could be stronger?

[10:56] Oftentimes, what someone on your team will do is they will come to you with a question and they'll come and say, hey, I'm stuck at this. I'm not sure how to move forward. What do you think? That is a trap. If you answer that question, you're undermining both their sense of autonomy and their ability to develop mastery and improve. Rather than answer the question, start with something very simple. What do you think? Get their opinion. So when someone comes with a question, ask them, what do you think? I was in a conversation with a senior executive that I know at a very well-known tech company, the CEO of a very well-known tech company. And he said that simple question was one of the most powerful things he learned years ago, which changed not only his effectiveness in delegating and managing other people, but also his approachability as a leader. Because as long as he always had the answer, then people were intimidated about going up to him because he was always right. He was, and he was a super smart guy because he's the CEO of a major tech company. But as long as he always had the answer, he was always right. People were hesitant to talk to him. That one simple change to change and say, instead of give an answer to say, what do you think? And then if they have a reasonable answer, say, great, run with that.

[12:19] There's always a temptation for smart, successful, ambitious people to tweak and add value and give a little bit of extra feedback. But every time you make a suggestion to someone, you are in some way, in either a big way or a small way, you are undermining their autonomy and their ability to develop mastery, to learn. Because now all of a.

[12:44] In that deliverable. And it's easy for that person to rely on you and depend on you and lean on you rather than come up with their own ideas. And that's going to make them more likely to come back next time with their question and say, hey, what do you think I should do? So before you ever give someone feedback with a specific suggestion, think, pause, ask them, What do you think? And evaluate, is it worth the cost of undermining their autonomy and sense of ability to develop mastery by giving them a feedback, this appointed suggestion on where to go next? Because if it's that important, then absolutely it's worth it if they're way off track. But if they're not way off track, if you ask them the question, what do you think? And they come back with a reasonable answer, let them go with it. You don't have to change them. You don't have to redirect them. And that simple act of trusting in them, believing in them, giving them the ability to move forward without your input or direction is wildly powerful.

[13:53] I am not suggesting here that you never give feedback. Giving feedback is critically important, but the feedback you give can be more in terms of whether or not their delivery is meeting expectations. Rather than tell them how to fix it, tell them they're not there yet and to go back and bring some ideas to think about it some more. Now, of course, you need to be specific about which ways they're not there yet. Is it in the presentation? Is it in the detail in which they've thought through something? Is it an analytical gap that they haven't addressed? You need to be somewhat specific about where it's not meeting expectations, but don't solve it for them. That's the difference. You can point out where the gap is and ask them to solve it.

[14:40] So as you think about delegation, I want to give you three different actions you can take to put this into practice. The first action is to think about when you delegate, where are you on the spectrum? From delegating tasks, delegating projects, delegating strategic or undefined objectives. Are you at the specific end of the spectrum? Are you more at the broad or undefined end of the spectrum? Consider that and see how can you move more and more towards the broad and undefined end of the spectrum. Give your team the option and the capability and the space to define the actions that need to be taken, not just take the actions themselves. That's the first thing. Where are you on that spectrum from specific to broad? And how can you move more towards the broad end of the spectrum? Number two, think about this question of ownership and feedback. Use this question. What do you think? Every time you're in a conversation with

[15:44] someone on your team who owns a project, be thinking about this. Think about, am I giving them specific feedback or no? Because the more you do that, the more you're undermining them and the more you're attaching yourself to the work rather than giving them the work to own and drive.

[16:02] Number three, quality. You still own quality. Be the standard for quality on your team. Stand behind that. Be explicit with your team that you have high standards. Then tell them when they're not meeting the standards, but don't fix it.

[16:20] These three things together, leaning on the spectrum from specific projects more towards broad and undefined projects. Number two, being thoughtful about how you give feedback so you don't undermine their ownership. And number three, being the standard and holding the standard for quality without fixing when it falls short.

[16:45] Those three things are going to move you a long way towards being more effective at delegating. And once again, the benefits of that are both for you and for the team. It's this idea of delegation that sits behind the four-hour workweek for me in the corporate world, as I think about this, because when your team is effective, that frees up your ability to think at a different level. You're no longer engaged in the delivery of the day-to-day work. Instead, you are thinking strategically. You're thinking about what do we need to be doing differently as a team, as an organization, as a company? How am I building relationships to get allies and be able to influence people about what I believe are the strategic things that we need to do? These are the kinds of things that you're going to be spending more and more of your time on rather than delivering the work but it relies on effectively delegating to your team.

[17:43] And once again it's good for them too not just for you so think about this and one last piece i want to say here before i wrap up is so much of high achievers approach is to do more to add more to figure out how do I get more effective at doing this? But part of this thing about delegation is actually doing less. It's doing less feedback. It's keeping your mouth shut. And for a high achiever, smart person with high standards and lots of good ideas, it can be hard to keep your mouth shut.

[18:19] But every time you open your mouth, you're taking something away from someone on your team. So realize that and recognize the answer here may not be doing more. The answer may be doing less, letting your team do more. And that's going to be uncomfortable for you. That's going to raise some question of, am I out of control? Do I really trust them? Are they going to meet the quality standards? So you still need to check in with them. You still need to have conversations with them, but change the way you're having that conversation. So you're not telling them what to do, which is the task end of the spectrum. You're giving them broad projects. you're holding the expectation of quality, but you're not fixing it. You're asking for their ideas and you're expecting them to address things, to own them, and to learn and grow. They will be happier, you will be happier, you will be more effective, and it's going to take less of your time and energy. This is one of the critical key steps on this path towards what I call the success trifecta. You're going to have more successful at work, more time in your schedule, and more satisfaction. You're going to enjoy your work more.

[19:28] You can achieve that. You absolutely can. It's going to require tolerating a little bit of discomfort. But find something in this podcast from today and put it into action. Practice not telling someone what to do. Practice asking them what they think. Practice saying, yes, that's great. Run with it without adding any more detail or suggestions to their idea. Try that. See where it goes and have a great week.