[0:06] Your ability to leverage your team completely determines your quality of life as a leader. I had two conversations today, back to back. The first conversation, this person completely trusted his team. His team performed at a very high level, and this person had complete confidence in their ability to execute and deliver great work. The very next day, I had a conversation that was the exact opposite. In this case, the person had been out of work for a couple of weeks, and when he came back, he found that everything had fallen apart. The day-to-day operation was for the most part okay, but none of the opportunities were being pursued. The team was not performing at the level he expected. And as a result, he had to lean in and work harder. I'm Rusty Gaillard, and this is Do Something Different, a leadership podcast.

[0:56] I want to talk today about what I call the success trifecta. And the success trifecta is when you have three things all happening at the same time. Number one is you're more successful at work. You're having a bigger impact. You're more recognized for the contribution you're making. Number two is you're not working as hard. And most people can't see those two things going together, that you can have more success and not work as hard. And the third element is that you're actually enjoying work more. You're getting more of that fun and you're doing the things that you enjoy out of work. I have coached multiple clients to this place where they're not working as hard, they're enjoying work more, and they're getting better results. They're delivering better and they're being recognized for their leadership in the company. How do you do that? There's a number of things that come together, but one of the key elements is leveraging your team. You have to be able to delegate and manage your team effectively.

[1:56] I always talk about two elements of your success and being able to change your behavior, and it's skill set and mindset. You need to have the right skill set, of course, but you also have to have the right mindset. The way this often works is if you don't have the skill set, then you don't even consider taking this new action. But if you do have the skill set, oftentimes there's still a barrier to taking a new action because you've got some uncertainty about how it will work out. That's why both of these things are important. You have to have the skills and you have to have the mindset to be willing to move forward and do something different.

[2:36] So we're going to talk today about delegation and how to really empower your team so that they carry more of the workload and you carry less of it. Now, that is not a selfish move. That is actually in the best interest of your team. Because if your team is staffed with people who care about their career and they want to grow and improve, your ability to fully empower them, to delegate to them more meaningful work and projects is important. That is going to increase their satisfaction it's going to accelerate their career growth and it's going to make the overall results of the company better because when your team elevates their performance it allows you to elevate your performance and your contributions you no longer have to be fully consumed with the day-to-day operations of the company you can now step up and do more meaningful work, more strategic work, better build better relationships and influence other people, you can have a broader impact on the company because you're not stuck doing the day-to-day work. But it requires your team elevating. What are some of the skill sets you need in order to do that? There's fundamentally two. One is setting clear expectations and the second is holding the team accountable to those expectations. These are not difficult concepts.

[3:59] Setting clear expectations is really about helping people understand what it is that you want out of the work that they're doing. Now, this is often hard for somebody to articulate. And so it's worth spending the time to reflect on what matters in this work that you're asking the team to do. Oftentimes, there's a specific part and there's a nonspecific part. The specific part is the actual quality and content of the work deliverable itself. The non-specific part is a little bit more about how strategic they are, whether they're taking the right perspective, whether they're considering multiple viewpoints that are relevant to this particular work project.

[4:40] It often is this intangible kind of quality of do they feel like a leader? Are they strategic? These things are often very intangible. And so I encourage you with your team to break it down, to help them understand what does it mean to be a leader? Help them understand you want them to see not only where the opportunities are, but you also want to see where the pitfalls are. You want them to address both of those things and demonstrate to you that they've thought about them and identified where they believe the focus should be, what things are not worthy of consideration, and develop a plan to address it and move forward. That is the kind of thing that you would expect a leader to do. They have a good perspective of the business environment and can identify risks and opportunities and make appropriate decisions about where to focus.

[5:29] Articulate that kind of thing to your team. If you expect them to be out building relationships so they can influence and bring other people along in the process, how they reach a decision about what they think is the right path forward, you need to be explicit with your team about these kinds of expectations because that is what is setting the bar. Set the bar for them, be very specific, and the more clear you can be, the better off you are, because when it comes to holding them accountable, you need to tie back to those expectations. It is not helpful feedback to say, well, you just weren't strategic enough in this project. If you give someone that feedback, it is very hard for them to action it, and your goal is for them to improve. You want them to get better because when they elevate, it gives you space to elevate. So you need to set very clear expectations. Do the hard work of thinking about what does success look like? Not just that it's, you know, if they're delivering a piece of analysis that it is numerically correct. It's not just about that. It's not just about being correct, but you want formatting to look good. If it's a presentation, you want to make sure that they reviewed it with the right people, that they've considered the right viewpoints and perspectives. All of these things you have to articulate.

[6:47] Then take that and have the accountability conversation. And most importantly, don't fix their problems for them. Give them the problems. Have the review conversation. This is what's good. This is what's missing. Send them back to go do the work. It's important to give them specific feedback that they can action, tie it back to your expectations, and let them fix it. Too many leaders fall into the trap of doing it themselves, And that is not a way to grow your team.

[7:15] So those are some of the skill set pieces that you need to develop. But I want to talk about the mindset that you need to be successful in creating a team that you can fully trust and empower to deliver on the work that your team is responsible for.

[7:32] The first question is, what is the real goal? What is the real goal? Most people in their job think the real goal is to deliver the work. And I'm going to argue that is not right. The real goal for you is to build your team. Building your team has multiple benefits. Obviously, it benefits the team themselves, the individuals on the team. It's going to benefit you because you've got a stronger team. And of course, it's going to benefit for the company because now your team has a bigger capability. And when your team has more capability, the company can deliver more. You can your team can deliver more for the company. Okay.

[8:09] Your goal is not delivery of the work. You've got to really work on drilling that into your head. Your goal is to build your team. And when you remember that, it makes it much easier to spend your time focusing on the getting clear expectations and holding them accountable to those expectations. Because those things take time and energy. And that's okay. Because that should be your big goal. The second part of this, though, is once you, even if you are clear on that goal, there's a second part, which is, what if my team's not up to snuff? What if they're good enough? What if I feel like they're not performing at the level they need to be performing? Then I need to step up and support them and do some of the work and polish their work so that it's good enough quality to be passed on and presented to others. Don't do that. That thought, that belief right there is a mistake.

[9:03] You don't want to hold the belief that it is the ultimate standard of quality falls to you, and it's your job to fix things. Whenever it's your job to fix things, you are stuck in that job. It is your job to hold others accountable and tell them what they need to do in order to improve, and then let them carry that forward and take the risk and the reward of owning the quality of their work. Now, this is likely going to feel risky to you. If you say, well, if I know that this work, despite some multiple iterations, is not up to snuff, it's not meeting the quality standards that I expect, and I let it go forward anyway, that's going to reflect poorly on me.

[9:43] This ties back to the first question. What is your primary goal? Is your primary goal to deliver quality work or is it to build your team? Now, of course, you can have both of those goals at the same time. But if your primary belief is that you have to deliver quality work all the time, you will never let your team step forward when there's some risk associated with that because you will try to protect them. And ultimately, you're doing that to protect yourself and your reputation and the quality of work that comes out of your organization. You've got to break through that barrier. Don't let your belief that everything rests on the quality of the work stop you from empowering your team and giving them the opportunity to go out, do some work, and learn from that experience. You have to be willing to tolerate the risk.

[10:34] And that brings me to the third point, which is resilience. You've got to understand what is the primary goal. You've got to be willing to take tolerate some risk. And the third point is you need to be resilient. You need to recognize that even if someone on your team carries a piece of work forward that you have hesitations about, and it fails, you've got to be resilient in that situation and use it as a learning opportunity. Because if the primary goal is growth for your team and for you, then you need to use every opportunity as a way to learn. A failure is not truly a failure unless you fail to learn. A failure is really a learning experience. So take these opportunities where something doesn't go the way you want it to and learn from it. Capture it. Get all of the richness out of that that you can because next time you will be better. That is true resilience. It is a willingness to look at the things that don't go well, to address them, to learn from them, and pick up and go back and do it again.

[11:41] So much of what I'm talking about on the mindset side here ties back to what are your core beliefs about yourself and the role that you're in.

[11:51] If your core belief is that you have to perform, you've got to be the best, you can't make any mistakes, you can't look bad. If you've got these kinds of beliefs, they are going to be holding you back. So I encourage you to shift your belief set because once you start to shift the beliefs, everything else downstream changes. What you're thinking about, how you prioritize things, what you see as a risk or an opportunity, all of those things change based on your belief. That's why I keep hammering this point of if your belief is you have to deliver quality work all the time, and that is the paramount objective, then you are going to be undermining yourself and your team. If you shift that belief and say, building my team's capability is the most important thing I need to be spending my time on, that's going to drive a complete different set of actions. Think about what is the belief that is driving you. Think about your beliefs, not only about your team, but think about your beliefs around failure. Think about your beliefs around work quality. Think about your beliefs around making a mistake. Way too many high achievers have built their career based on not making mistakes, based on looking good, based on having the right answer, based on being the fastest or the smartest or the best. If you believe that that is the source of your value, you are going to hold yourself back because you will be unwilling to take risk to move forward.

[13:20] Identifying what some of your beliefs are can be very tricky but take what you hear in this conversation and apply it to your own life just question are there beliefs that i'm holding about success what does it mean to be successful what is my purpose at work how perfect do i have to be, challenge those beliefs and start to think about something different form a different belief and And this is something you're going to have to work at because all a belief is fundamentally is it's a repeated thought, something that you think over and over and over again until you no longer have to think about it. Somehow it just becomes something. And if I keep telling you your primary goal at work is not to deliver quality work products, but it's to build your team. If you hear that over and over and over and over again, at some point, that's going to start to sink in and it's going to form a belief in you. And now it's going to drive a whole different set of behaviors.

[14:18] Think about the beliefs that will be more empowering for you to help you be more successful in your role, to help you deliver more impact, to help you elevate your team in a way that requires you to work less and enjoy your work more. And what does that mean to enjoy your work more? It means you do more of the things you like doing and less of the noise. Every job has noise and nobody likes taking care of the noise. But when your team is elevated, when you have invested in them and they perform at a level where they can take care of a lot of the things, then you delegate those things to them and it gives you the time and the space to focus on the things that you're good at and the things that you enjoy and

[14:57] are going to add value to the company. It all rests on your ability to have the skill set of setting clear expectations and holding your team accountable and the mindset that allows you to implement that, that gives you space to invest in the growth of your team, to tolerate risk, to learn from mistakes and demonstrate resilience when things don't go well.

[15:23] You are capable of so much more than turning the crank in work. And so many of us get stuck in this place where all we're doing is turning the crank. We're busy, we're overwhelmed, there's a flood of work, and we're just trying to keep up. Just trying to keep up, if you stay in that mindset, if you hold that belief of, I just have to keep up and I have to get all of the big stuff done before I can focus on growth and learning, that is going to lead to you being stuck. Once again, that's another belief that you can shift.

[15:58] You have the power to impact your environment. Most people think that the environment controls us and the environment is a constraint around what's possible, but that is not right. You can change your environment if you're willing to step forward and change your perspective, to take a different belief that is more empowering, that allows you to see the situation differently. Because when you see the situation differently, it feels different and you act differently.

[16:27] I think that one of the great examples of this is Michael Jordan, who shot tons of final shots in the game, right? Like the bulls may have been down by a point or two and the ball goes to who? Of course, it goes to Michael Jordan to take the final shot. And I wish I had the quote right top of mind, but I don't have it right here. But he says something like of all those final shots that he took, he missed somewhat less than half, but, you know, on the order of half, something like 40% of them. But he said it never thought about, he never thought and worried about missing the shot. He always said, I'm a great shot and I am fully confident and capable of making this. And so he brought this sense of belief to the situation.

[17:12] If your belief in that situation is, oh man, the chips are down, everything, the stakes are high, I've got to do this thing. I've got to succeed or fail, and this is it. It's all or nothing. If that's your belief set about a situation, you're going to be stressed and worried and risk averse. Of course, if you change your perspective and say, this is just one situation in the grand course of my career, and it's an opportunity for me to learn and try something different and grow from the experience, That is a much better perspective for you. How can you bring that perspective into more of your interactions day to day? It's going to allow you to change the way you control your schedule. It's going to change the way you empower your team, the way you delegate to them, set expectations and hold them accountable. It's going to change the way you show up in executive reviews and executive meetings. It shows up in every aspect of your work, how you manage your schedule.

[18:08] Take the opportunity to change your perspective change your belief and say i am here for growth i am here for learning i'm here to become a better leader i'm here to do something different today, with the goal of growing as a leader with the goal of growing my team with the goal of not getting mired in the day-to-day churn and noise of the job but to do something different to grow and elevate my impact. You can do it. Do not wait for the situation to change. Do not wait for permission from your boss. Do not wait for something outside of you to change. Look inside and see how can I shift my perspective about this situation that gives me a different belief. And when I come from that different belief about what's important and what my goal is here, When you come from that different belief, you will take different action. This is where the mindset is so important. It doesn't mean the actions are easy necessarily, but there's far less resistance because you're not focused only on performance. Now, all of a sudden, your perspective is broader.

[19:19] I'm sharing this with you today because I believe that you have the ability to shift the way you're performing at work in a way that you add more value to the company. in a way that is recognized by the company while working less and enjoying it more. That is 100% possible for you. It requires a change in mindset, but make that change in mindset, do something different and see what happens.