Holiday Delegating
As we head into the December season a lot of people are thinking about how much work has to be done before the end of the year and also thinking about holidays. But mostly my clients tell me they are thinking about how to keep their team or business running, while spending some time with family and friends. It’s not too late to delegate! Learn the four reasons we fail at delegating, and how to get your hands on the Delegation Playbook.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] As we head into the December season a lot of people are thinking about how much work has to be done before the end of the year and also thinking about holidays. But mostly my clients tell me they are thinking about how to keep their team or business running, while spending some time with family and friends.
[00:00:19] This is such a common challenge that people have, particularly when you feel if you're the only person that can do what you do. Now, if you've been tuning in this month, November has been at delegation month. And it wouldn't be delegation month, if I didn't talk about how to delegate over your holidays.
[00:00:37] So today's episode is sponsored by my Delegation Playbook. It came out a week ago, and it has a lot of tools to help you start delegating today. I'll be talking a little bit more about it at the end of this podcast episode, if you're interested in becoming a better delegator.
[00:00:53] So today's episode, we're talking about holiday delegation. And specifically four reasons that we fail at delegating. Now the tool I'm going to talk about today is one of my most favorite tools, because it is a tool you can use in all different areas to understand what is really going on, what the core of the issue is.
[00:01:14] It's a tool that I've gotten from Dr. Phil. Jauncey a performance psychologist, and he tells me he has got it from William Glasser. So all good theories get passed on. And this one specifically, I'm going to apply to delegating and how we can delegate over the holidays.
[00:01:31] The particular tool or framework is called "Four Reasons We Fail". And if something is not going the way that you want it to go, it's going to be one of these four reasons that it's not working. Now if we put it through the frame of delegating, I'll go through what the steps are.
[00:01:49] The first reason we fail at delegating is we don't know WHAT to delegate. Now, specifically, this is, we don't know what tasks to delegate. And it particularly comes up, if we are the person that knows how everything is done and feel like nobody else is going to do it as well as we do it. So what can I delegate when it all relies on me?
[00:02:12] The Delegation Playbook that I mentioned earlier, the very first part has got a tool specifically for this. And it goes through a matrix of your current tasks to work out which things can you delegate? And it prioritizes them as well. So, if you feel at one of the reasons you are not delegating is you don't know what to do, this particular tool, the Delegation Guide in the Delegation Playbook is the one that's going to help you out.
[00:02:38] The second reason that we fail at delegating is we don't know HOW. And I often talk in this podcast that we're not taught how to lead. It is something that we pick up along the way, which seems absolutely crazy because the success of a business relies on a person being able to lead other people. So it is really common that people don't know how to delegate.
[00:03:03] In the Delegation Playbook, they is a five-step delegation formula, which helps you to set expectations for your team straight from the beginning. And it takes you through the five steps of how to delegate.
[00:03:16] For example, you want someone to run a marketing campaign or there's a project from a client that needs completing. You know that this is something that somebody else can do. You know what to delegate. But you're not sure HOW to go about delegating in a way that you're not just frustrated that it doesn't get done to your standards or the deadline looms, and you don't have a result. This particular part, "Part B the five-step delegation formula" takes you through the steps and even includes the agendas for the meeting to check in with your team along the way, and also to debrief, to make sure that the project went exactly how you wanted it to go.
[00:03:53] The third reason we fail at delegating is we don't have the skills. Perhaps you might think if you don't know how to delegate and not having the skills to delegate the same thing. Well, actually it's a little bit different. The first step was knowing WHAT to delegate. That's knowing what the task is. The second step is knowing HOW to delegate, and that is knowing what the steps are to reach that goal.
[00:04:17] This third reason that we fail that delegating not having the SKILLS. Is about being a skillful delegator. I think of delegating like a muscle. Over time and practice of delegation that you get better at delegating. And so perhaps, you know what you need to delegate, perhaps you know, how to delegate. But you don't yet have the skill set of delegating and as something to refine over time. Sometimes people feel that don't have the skills, but it's actually that they don't know HOW to delegate.
[00:04:49] And if you have an efficient formula for your delegating, like the five-step formula. You'll find you will get better at delegating and polish these skills of delegation faster. So this third reason that we fail at delegating is that we don't have the skills. And honestly, when you're learning something new, a lot of things about leadership is learning something new. It feels clunky.
[00:05:14] And I always recommend just be open and honest with your team to say, Hey, I'm trying something new. This is how I'd like to go about it and you're developing your skillset, but you're also showing to them that you are someone that is interested in continually learning and growing, because I'm sure you want the person in your team to also be interested in continually learning and growing.
[00:05:35] And the fourth reason that we fail at delegating. And this one's a real kicker, is around want. It might be that we don't want to delegate. And there can be all sorts of reasons behind this. "Don't want to delegate" that could be conscious or unconscious. And they might sound like " if I get someone in my team to work with my client, then my client might not value me as much". That one can be a really common reason to not want to delegate.
[00:06:07] Or it might be around some perfectionistic tendencies, which I absolutely have these. So you're in good company. But it could be that you feel that by delegating to somebody, it won't be as good as you will do it. And so you don't want to delegate for fear that that might happen.
[00:06:25] What I can tell you is while you have that mindset, you will never be able to progress beyond the amount of hours you have in your own day and beyond the work you can do yourself. So it is something that you can learn to delegate and also to get confidence in other people, through small pieces of delegation over time, you can build up that confidence and that's one way to combat that challenge of not wanting to delegate.
[00:06:51] Another reason people might not want to delegate is, you actually just don't want to, you don't want to work with anybody else. You want to just have the job yourself or just have the business yourself. And you were very happy with that level. And if that is the case, then fantastic. It's just, you need to know that will be where you are capped because you've only got so many hours in the day.
[00:07:15] Another reason you might not want to delegate is it takes too long. By the time you teach someone to do it, you might as well do it yourself. Now I would say for this, have a listen to the episode last week, episode at 27, where I talk about "the rule of three, except for me". If you were doing something more than three times, you should look at delegating, except if it is in your genius zone.
[00:07:42] So they are the four reasons that we fail at delegating. And I want you to know that you can use this framework for anything. I often use it for clients when they say someone on their team is not performing. So they're going to send them to some training.
[00:07:55] And through our conversation and what we realize is, well, it's not that third reason that they don't have the skills that they need to develop it. It's actually that they do not want to do this job, the job is not a good match for what they want in their career progression. So if you send them to skills training, you are not going to solve the problem. So it's a great way to unpack what the real problem is when something is not working and then work out how to go about it.
[00:08:21] Another example is I had a client with a really experienced staff member that they had put on that wasn't doing well in their new roll. There were swapping industries. And so my client felt they should be able to transition their skills across. She thought, well, this person is just not a good performer, but what we realized is they know how to go about things, they're very competent, they have the skills, they have a really strong desire.
[00:08:46] But they just don't know what to do in this new industry. And so our conversation came to, instead of terminating, or deciding that this is not going to be the right person for the role is how can we help them to decide what needs to be done? How can we work with them to come up with an annual plan? Because once I know what the plan is, they have all the skills to be able to work out HOW to do it., And they have a complete desire to follow through on it. So we managed to have a look at that conversation from a termination conversation, to a strategy conversation and helping them to come up with what needed to be done, because it didn't quite translate across industries. And they've now become one of the top performers.
[00:09:29] So be really conscious that you can use these four reasons we fail as a great tool across any area that something is not working.
[00:09:39] So if through this podcast, you've realized that perhaps there is an easier way for you to do your role and that you were interested in starting to delegate, it's not too late to learn how to delegate for the holidays. So you can get your hands on my delegation playbook by going to campus.zeinthjouney.com/playbook.
[00:10:01] All the link is in the show notes and it comes with four different things. One is a delegation guide. so you can work out what projects you should be delegating and to whom, which is really great if you don't know what to delegate. The second part it comes with is this five step delegation formula, so exactly what that step is that you need to do to set the expectations, how do you check in on them? How do you make sure that everything is going on a track prior to when that project is due, and this is great if you don't know how to delegate. The third thing it has is a delegation script, so that five-step delegation formula, I give you the script on how to have the conversation with a person or a team, on exactly what you need to get done, and you can also build in this constructive feedback. Right into your process. And the fourth thing that the delegation playbook has is a project tracker. Everybody has got a lot going on it's hard to keep track of who's doing what? So in the project tracker, you get to know exactly who was doing what project and when, and also a Trello template that you can copy into any other piece of software that you use to keep track of things.
[00:11:15] So it's everything you need to delegate seamlessly for better results and way less stress, and perhaps have a break over these Christmas holidays.
[00:11:23] So you can find that delegation playbook at campus.zenithjourney.com/playbook or jump into the show notes. It is currently on an introductory price, but come a December, that price will be going up. So if you're interested in getting better at delegation, whether it's for the Christmas holidays off the new year now is a great time to get your hands on that delegation playbook.
[00:11:48] So that's it for delegation month in December, we're going to be talking a little bit about if you should hire employees or contractors, how to set boundaries over the Christmas holidays and some mindset shifts you need to carry through the holidays and into 2023. If you've enjoyed this podcast, you can also jump on and leave a review or forward it onto somebody else who also might love to learn how to delegate, because the saying for today's episode is "it's not too late to learn to delegate".
[00:12:22] Thanks for listening and see you next week.
