Episode 114: What No One Tells You About Delegating (And Why It Keeps Not Working)
ITUNES | SPOTIFY
If I had a dollar for every time someone told me to "just delegate more," I'd be retired by now. But how do you actually delegate when it's faster to just do it yourself?
That's exactly what I'm digging into in this episode, because delegating has been coming up constantly in coaching sessions lately. The truth is, most of us aren't failing at delegating because we're control freaks. We're failing because no one ever taught us the actual mechanics of it. In this episode, I walk you through the specific steps I give my own coaching clients: how to audit everything you're holding (including all those "quick questions" people keep pinging you with), how to build a process so delegation doesn't create more work for you, and how to start small so you can actually build trust instead of burning it.
If you've ever said "I'll just do it myself", this is for you.
Links and resources mentioned in this episode:
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You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode. Hey, hey. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How are you doing? I am Back at my desk with a normal week of work and camp this week. But as I've been sharing with some friends, we have quite a bit of travel spread out throughout the summer, and so I'm finding it kind of hard to get into a routine And starting to think that maybe the lack of routine is my summer routine right now. I'm grateful for some of the flexibility that we have, but also sometimes I just wanna do my normal things at their normal time. You know what I mean? So anyway, this is a, quote-unquote, "normal week" at the office with summer camp and all of our usual things, I should say, for now, , before we head off on another adventure. On the upside, I am getting through lots of books right now because with travel, what else is there to do but listen to audiobooks? So if you have any great audiobook recommendations, definitely hit me up. Send me a DM on Instagram at Love Mother Nurture. I would love to hear what you have been listening to lately. So that's my little update, what's been happening in my world. Would love to hear from you as well. But today we're gonna talk about delegating because we can't not talk about delegating. How many times have you been told that you just need to delegate more, right? You say, "I have too much on my plate," or, "There's too much to do and too little time," or, "I can't get to that," or, "I'm so overwhelmed," and you hear that you either need to drop some things or you need to delegate more. You need to get more help. You need to outsource. You need to let some things go and let others pick up the slack. True, and where do you start? How do you do it? Who are these people that are gonna pick up and do the things? What I hear so often when the idea of delegating more comes up is that it takes just as much time, if not more, that it is faster to just do it yourself than it is to delegate it to someone else. Or I don't know who to delegate it to, or I don't trust that someone else is going to do it right. So you keep everything. You keep doing it all yourself. You stay up late. You wake up early. You don't sleep as much. You don't do the things that you know you want or need to be doing for yourself, and you just keep doing it all Well, I I think delegating doesn't actually have to be that hard. I think it is a simple problem that with some analysis, with some information can be solved I think it can be something that you feel confident doing because you are clear on what should be delegated and what you should still continue to own. And I think it's possible to trust that the other person or the team is going to get the job done, and you won't have to babysit them or redo it afterward. But there are some very specific things that you have to do in the practice, or we should say the art of delegating, that creates a situation where you do feel confident and you do trust. And so today I wanna talk about what those steps are. And I'm gonna use examples largely through the lens of our professional lives, so delegating at work in a professional setting. But as with most things, these skills and these steps are transferable to your home life, to your partnership, to other settings So I knew I wanted to come on the podcast to talk about delegating, as I was sharing last week in the episode that this has been another very frequent topic lately in coaching sessions. I have a couple of clients right now who are drowning in work. Maybe that's you too. There's not enough staff to do it all, or there are too many projects, or the expectations are too high, or maybe, like my clients, you are the go-to person for way too many things at work And these clients, and maybe you too, feel like there is more work than they will ever be able to get done, and it is costing them in other parts of their lives. They're not sleeping as much or as well as they would like. They certainly don't have time for exercise or movement. It's costing them time with their families because they are working longer hours, or they are distracted when they are with their kids. And it's costing them time with their relationships because as many of us do when there's too much work and we can't fit it all in, we stay up late, and we sit on our laptops instead of relaxing and connecting Now, these clients that I'm thinking of, they do both have teams at work, either that they manage or are a part of, right? Teams that are doing similar work that they share the work with, but they are not fully utilizing their colleagues or their direct reports. They are instead killing themselves to do it all, to answer all of the questions, and honestly, it's not their fault. They are just moving so fast. They have so many spinning plates, if you will, that - they feel like there is no time to stop and figure out what it could actually look like or how they would even delegate any of the work My coaching challenge to them and to you, if any of that rings true or resonates with your situation as well, is to start to challenge those stories that no one else has the capacity, that it will take too long to delegate, and that no one else will be able to do it correctly Whenever I come up against a quote-unquote story like that that feels very true, I always remind myself, you can come back and repeat that story if after you've tested it out, it actually is true. But unless you've done the work to check on capacity for the team, to make it so that delegating doesn't take long or that it won't be done correctly, then at this point it's only a story So that's what I would say to you as well. You can always come back and reclaim these stories, but for now, unless you've proven them to actually be true, you're gonna have to set them aside to be open enough to make the changes needed to delegate some of the work. So a very obvious starting point , and one of the first homework assignments that I've assigned these clients is to take an inventory of all that you are currently doing. List it out , on paper, in a document, in a spreadsheet. What are the projects you're managing or are a part of? What are the recurring tasks? What are those one-off projects that have come across your desk in the last couple of weeks? What are the meetings you're required to attend? What type of support, like with one-on-ones or check-ins, do you have with team? What is the admin work that you are holding And then also inventory what you are being asked. So like many high-performing women, you are seen as an expert, as a go-to, as someone who has the answers or who can find the answers. And so what I know from my own experience and what I hear from my clients is that Teams or whatever chat tool you use in your office is one of the top interrupters for focused work. People are always pinging you, wanting an update, asking a question, "Do you have a second?" "Can I get your take on this?" "Can I pick your brain?" start to document or analyze what kinds of questions are you being asked, because that is another piece that takes up our time. It's not just the tasks and the projects and the people that we manage, but it's also the communication, the things that are being asked of us, our knowledge, our expertise. And so what are those questions? Because those are also opportunities for delegating. It's not just the task work. So this is another important piece of the inventory work that is so often missed But I want you, with all of this, to really start to notice where your time and attention is going. As I said, I really do think the best way to do this is to write it out so you can actually see it. It's like when you start to declutter your closet. The standard is to pull it all out, dump it all on the bed or on the floor so you can see that big pile of clothes. I want you to see all that you are holding, how much you are doing, and how much is being asked of you Now, the biggest gap in delegating is not having a clear process or a set of parameters So if you feel like it's going to take more time to delegate than to just do the work yourself, that likely means you have a training opportunity. If you think about loading the dishwasher at home, unless you train or teach your kids where to put the glasses on the top rack and how to stack the bowls and what things should be rinsed out versus not, you will always be able to do it faster because they don't know I was talking with a client this morning about calendar management. She happens to have an admin who could help support with this work, but a lot of times she just does it because it's faster. The admin is always coming to her with questions and, "Well, is it okay?" Or, "Can I move this here?" Or, "What do you think about this invite?" Or, "What should I do with that?" That's an opportunity to train and to set some parameters for that person around how they can own and manage your calendar. If they know that they should never reschedule over this block of time on Thursday mornings, or that you only wanna have five meetings maximum in a day, they can start to make those decisions on your behalf because they have the information and the training And if you feel like you need to come along behind someone, so maybe you do pass off a project or a task, but you just need to come in and check their work, make sure it's done correctly, well, then the opportunity there for you is to clearly set the expectations and the defined consequences If I think about that dishwasher example with my kids who are in the habit of loading their dishes most of the time into the dishwasher, and they do know where things go. But my daughter in the morning has been eating yogurt, and she was just finishing with her bowl and putting it right into the dishwasher. And I was constantly coming behind her, pulling it out of the dishwasher, and rinsing it off, because I know that if the yogurt-covered bowl sits in the dishwasher from 8:00 AM until when we run the dishwasher overnight, you know, X number of hours later, that yogurt is gonna be dried on there like glue, and I have a very good dishwasher, but even it cannot get that off of a bowl. And I realized I just needed to set the expectation that when you have yogurt, it's different than when you're eating cereal or you're just putting a plate in the dishwasher that had a piece of toast on it. It has to be rinsed first, because if you don't, this is what happens, and then I have to hand-scrub it and blah blah blah. Now that she knows, she can just rinse it, and I don't have to come along and check or redo her work In order for someone else to be successful with a task, they need to know what it is, they need to know how to do it, what your expectations are, and what the consequences are if it is not done or not done in that way. That actually serves both of you. The other person can be successful and do the job and feel good about it, and you can let go and start to trust. You don't have to feel like you're sneaking along behind to check, and they don't have to be looking over their shoulder to see if you're micromanaging them But too many of you are not willing to take the time to articulate what your process is, how the work gets done, what your expectations are, and what the consequences are if those are not met. You intuitively know it for yourself, or you're able to make those judgment calls on the fly. It does take extra work to outline all of that and define that for yourself, and to think through the different scenarios when it doesn't go according to the instructions, how do you know what to do next? You do have to decide that. But it feels so good to have all of that outlined and shared with someone else, who then can do the execution of those steps, , and meet those expectations Now, maybe from the audit phase you have this long list, and suddenly the floodgates have opened on all of the things that you could potentially experiment with delegating. Well, just like in training a new employee, if you've ever done that or brought a new team member on, we wanna start with a manageable amount of work. We wanna start maybe with one task for both of you to feel out what it is like for you to define the process and set the expectations and for them to be able to follow through, to build that trust. And so we start with one, and then we layer on from there alternatively, if you dump all of the things that you have been resentfully holding what I usually see happen is that The other person is overwhelmed, they are slow, maybe they make some mistakes, and you are then frustrated because you're coming along and picking up the slack or redoing things when it's not correct, and that proves your original thought that you can't delegate, that you can't trust anyone, that nobody does it as good as you, that it takes more time than if you had just done it yourself Delegating requires some time. It requires some training and some skill development on both sides. And maybe it requires some hiring if you realize that you really don't have capacity anywhere on the team to be able to delegate Just like with parenting, you are playing the long game. A long game that's worth it, I will absolutely endorse. It is worth it. But it is a long game But holding everything, the alternative, only leads to burnout. It stifles creativity and leadership. It impacts your health and your mental wellbeing. It costs you time with your family, your partner, and your other important relationships. Working moms who learn the skill of effective delegation are the ones who don't just manage work and life, they thrive. They have support, they trust, and they are not holding it all Even if you feel like there are no options for delegating, I would encourage you to check one more time, to truly take that full inventory, to look at what is being asked of you, and to think creatively about what it would look like to delegate even a piece of a project Maybe there's an opportunity for you to get creative. Maybe delegating isn't to team, but to systems or tools that can share some of that responsibility, again, with parameters and rules and expectations And if none of that is still available, I would say that you're probably at the stage where it's time to start doing less and creating stronger boundaries. And the good news is I can absolutely help you with that. I support my clients both at work and at home to find those opportunities that sometimes you are just too close to the way things work to actually see it as an opportunity. I'll help you decide whether delegating is the right next step, whether outsourcing, whether doing less or stronger boundaries is needed, what the next step is, and then I give you the tools and the scripts and help you think through exactly what that next step is so that you can start to slowly give yourself a little bit of time back while trusting others, whether that's people, systems, or tools, to do the work that you are not uniquely positioned to do If you're interested in learning more about coaching, I have a couple of one-on-one spots available to start yet this summer. It's the perfect time to get in and do some of this inventory work before we head into the end of the year and we get into goal setting and performance reviews and all of those things. So definitely reach out if this topic is one that you know you could use some help with. You can learn more and submit a short application to see if you'd be a good fit for coaching over on my website at themothernurture.com/application All right. Until the next episode, I hope you take care, and I'll talk to you soon Thank you for listening and as always, for being a part of this working mom community. You can find everything related to this episode in the show notes at themothernurture.com/podcast, you can also find information about how I support working moms just like you through one-on-one, and group coaching, as well as access a number of resources and articles all on my website at themothernurture.com. I will see you again next week for another episode of the podcast.
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