Delegation Will Save Your Leadership (and Maybe Your Life)

Darius works 85 hours a week. When he isn't developing the new strategic plan and leading staff meetings, he's answering the phones, filing quarterly taxes, and processing customer payments. People outside say he's a rock star: a younger Elon Musk. Those on the inside know the truth. Darius can't delegate, and it's killing Darius and the company. 

Darius is an idea architect—an INTP on the Myers Briggs Type Inventory. He's excellent at creating a vision—almost a sixth sense regarding market trends. In the early days of his manufacturing company, he had to do it all. He hired a sales team and back-office administrative support as the company grew. But nobody has a job description. When the team pushes Darius to help them understand a change in focus, he gets frustrated, "Why can't you guys just get on board?" This is the story of how Darius and his company changed.

URL: Schedule a free consultation with a business coach.

Delegation Requires Honesty (and Humility)

Darius will never be a detailed administrator. Tax filings are late. Customer emails go unanswered. Requests from staff never get addressed. Instead of accepting his natural limits, Darius bought into the concept of the self-made man: an ideal built on a lie.

We can all point at the great men of industrialism—Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, and Thomas Edison. But these were not self-made men; they were opportunists. Change the variables—increase the cost of labor and wages, change the political system, augment the terms of industrial capacity or natural resources, —and these men and their companies fail, fading into obscurity. One example: working conditions at the original Ford plant were atrocious. (One girl lost a finger in the machinery and "just put a rag around her hand and quietly walked out" 5). By contrast, read how Pixar actively cultivates collaborative creativity.

No leader can be the structure, the support, and the visionary. Nobody is the conductor and the orchestra. Leaders that won't accept the limits that nature gives them will never achieve the levels of greatness business provides. After working with a business coach, Darius confessed to his team that he regularly failed to meet their basic requests because he didn't know how to delegate. He could only do so much: he was limited. And he was determined to change.

Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.

—Paul Batalden

Delegation Requires Trust

Darius was training Jonathan to take over some of the administrative details of the company. Jonathan was managing Darius' calendar, inbox, and phone messages and was taking over sales reports. One weekly report required an SQL generating a .CSV to .PDF conversion, uploaded to an internal drive—involving the database and three additional programs. 

If those acronyms don’t make sense to you, you’re in good company. It didn’t make sense of Jonathan either which is why he botched the first report upload because he needed to adjust the date range of the SQL. Darius looked at it and said, "I'm taking it back. I knew I couldn't trust you to get it done." Put the report in context: no sales were lost, no accounts flubbed, and no relationships were harmed. One shipment was delayed a few days, but the customer was okay with it.

The business coach had Darius identify why Jonathan's failure felt like a breach of trust. Darius ran through his dictionary of corporate jargon: excellence, quality, core competencies, best practices, impact, and scalability.

His business coach pressed in, "Sounds like BS to me." Darius got quiet, put on his moody eyes, and then sighed. "I just hate experiencing disappointment."  Leadership is disappointment. Any time a person or organization changes, resistance is expressed as disappointment. Ronald Heifetz and Martin Linsky wrote that "exercising leadership might be understood as disappointing people at a rate they can absorb." (Leadership on the Line, 142)

"We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior."

—Stephen M.R. Covey

Darius is also an Enneagram Type 8. His core fear of being controlled by others hinders his ability to trust. He agreed to name that fear with Jonathan. Now, every time Darius relinquishes a new task, he says, "I have a hard time trusting that you'll do this right, but I want to learn to trust people." (Jonathan always slyly replies, "And I'll try not to disappoint you…too much.”)

Delegation Requires Clarity

An introspective, intuitive, thinking type (Myers Briggs type INTP) gets frustrated when pushed for concrete specificity for the same reason an extraverted, sensing, judging type (ESFJ) quits without it: communication and relationship preferences. All personality types require clarity. Some know it and give it. Others assume it.

James Kouzes and Barry Posner found that "The people who have the greatest clarity about personal and organizational values have the highest degree of commitment to the organization…. People can be very clear about the organization's values and not be highly committed." (Leadership Challenge, 55). Your employees need clarity.

When Darius initially started to delegate, it lacked clarity. As his ability to articulate his vision concretely improved, people got excited. But something unexpected happened: Darius' vision changed. He saw his potential as a builder, not a manager. He hired a manager to run operations and shifted his time to product expansion. He is happier. His staff is more committed, and his company is more robust.

Mission: Delegate

Effective delegation is not simply about assigning tasks. Embracing your own limits invites others to become their best selves. This exploration of trust creates the relational capital you need to get from Point A to Point Z: building a stronger and more successful company. By mastering the art of delegation, you save your leadership and yourself. 

How to Set Goals in a Changing Environment

Setting goals is an essential part of team development. Traditionally, goals are often seen as rigid and fixed, requiring a strict adherence to predefined targets. However, in today's fast-paced and ever-changing world, flexibility is key. By embracing flexibility and setting goals with adjustable targets, we can foster a more adaptable and realistic approach to achieving success. We are going to explore the concept of setting goals with flexible targets and discuss how it can enhance motivation, productivity, and overall well-being.

1.    Rethinking Goal Setting: Traditionally, goal setting involves defining specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely (SMART) targets. While we still believe in this approach, it’s best used as a starting point, not a measurement along the way. Due to unforeseen circumstances, certain aspects of the plan might shift. By adopting a more flexible mindset, we can redefine our goals as dynamic and adaptable entities rather than fixed endpoints.

2. The Power of Flexibility: Flexible goal setting allows us to adjust our targets based on changing circumstances, new information, or personal growth. It enables us to pivot (remember March 2020?), take advantage of unexpected opportunities, and learn from setbacks. This adaptability fosters resilience, creativity, and a growth mindset, ultimately enhancing our chances of success.

3. Embracing the Process: Focus on progress. The actions and behaviors required to move forward should get a significant amount of our attention. Instead of fixating solely on the end result, setting goals with flexible targets encourages us to focus on the process.   

4.  Assess and Adjust: Flexible goal setting involves regularly assessing and adjusting our targets based on our evolving circumstances and priorities. This is the part of the process that usually falls by the wayside, yet it is one of the most important things we can do.  By continuously refining our goals, we can ensure that they remain relevant, motivating, and aligned with our mission.

5.  Communicate and Model: Leaders, hold tight to the mission and objectives, but model flexibility. When your team sees you are focused and also willing to adjust, they will be inspired to follow your lead.  Communicate regularly as a team about your objectives, benchmarks and the progress you’ve made. Make them a part of your common language and keep them on the forefront of everyone’s minds. 

6. Cultivating Motivation and Well-being: Flexibility in goal setting promotes a healthier mindset and protects against burnout. By allowing for adjustment and adaptation, we can set realistic and manageable targets that align with the overall well-being of the team as a whole. 

Remember, the path to success is rarely linear, and by embracing flexibility, we empower ourselves and our teams to navigate the ever-evolving path with grace and determination.

If you and your team are interested in putting together a plan for progress, email us at laine@laineschmidt.com.

3 Ways to Get Your Team on the Same Page

Your team is made up of extraordinary individuals.  Why then does it seem hard to get everyone working well together?  As a leader, you know it’s crucial that collaboration and communication are essential for the success of any project. Post pandemic work and the increase of remote team members has made this even more difficult. There are simple fixes to this.

3 Ways to Get Your Team on the Same Page:

1.Hold a reset meeting

As the leader, it is your responsibility to be sure the team has clear direction. Every team gets stuck in the weeds and rarely takes time to pause and reset. This leads to a few things:

• A lot of work with little return

• Lack of focus

• Tension

Schedule 1 or 2 hours to meet with your team to restate the vision of the company and the goals you have in place.  Without a clear vision, team members lose momentum.  They need to be reminded why their work is important.  According to a study conducted by the Harvard Business Review, leaders who take the time to explain why their team's work is important can significantly impact team performance and motivation. In the study, two groups of employees were given the same task, but only one group received an explanation from their leader about how their work was contributing to the overall mission and goals of the organization. The group that received the explanation showed a 30% increase in productivity and a 25% improvement in job satisfaction compared to the group that did not receive the explanation. This demonstrates that leaders who provide context and meaning behind their team's work can inspire and motivate their employees to perform at their best, resulting in increased productivity and satisfaction within the team.

2.Gather around a table for troubleshooting

You hired Jared 6 months ago.  He was given a thorough onboarding handbook, was trained for a few weeks, and was sent off to do his job.  Jared is still, most likely, struggling with some things and needs to be coached.  Business leaders pay loads of money for monthly mastermind groups - so they can sharpen their skills and gain wisdom. What if you offered that to your team?  If your team was able to gather once a month to discuss the bumps they are hitting, how much more quickly would issues get resolved?  Not to mention, this will do a great deal of good for team culture and confidence. 

3.Do a systems analysis 

Systems, also known as process, or workflows, are how you do what you do everyday. Companies are always changing and growing, and what might have worked for you last year, might not work for you this year. According to Gallup, 60% of employees feel their leaders are not aware of company challenges.  Setting aside time to get everyone in one place and saying “where can things run smoother?” will pump up team morale because they will feel heard, and it will give you a leader clarity on what needs to be addressed.  Careful, you don’t want this turning into a gripe session.  To prevent that, preface your time together with “you are the boots on the ground and see things we don’t.  Your observations are invaluable.  Let’s take some time to discuss what is working, and what isn’t working.  Our goal is to stay as objective as possible.” 

It takes time to build an excellent team.  Time spent with them, listening to and coaching them, will be well worth it. If you are curious about how our team of coaches can support you in that, email us today: laine@laineschmidt.com.