Name: Delegation: Leading Teams By Letting Go
Uploaded: 2026-03-19T18:30:07.093Z
Duration: 1 h 12 s
Description: Delegation: Leading Teams By Letting Go

Transcript for "Delegation: Leading Teams By Letting Go": Hello to everyone. Hello. Hello. Hello. I am Jennifer Allen. I see many of you already saying hello in chat, so please continue to do so. Where are you in the world today? I see Michigan, New York. I'm gonna scroll just a bit. I'm gonna go up to Valerie, 60 miles north of Grand Central Station. I love that specificity. Everybody, welcome to Culture Club. You're here with today with LifeLabs learning for this session. We're gonna be covering our tipping point skill today of delegation. My name is Jennifer Allen. I'm a facilitator here at LifeLabs. I have been here now almost four years. I'm very quickly approaching my anniversary. My expertise is in helping people do something different on purpose. And what that really means is behavior change. How do we take all the information readily available to us through a browser search and move it into actual implementation leading to those moments that matter? So you're gonna be getting a bit of a sample today of our two hour session that we have about delegation skills. We're gonna invite you to do a bit of practice today as well. So we'll be engaging through chat, as many of you are doing right now with your introductions, and we'll also be giving you some time to reflect and think about this actual behavior. Now I have a copilot today with me. Her name is Courtney. She's in the background. Courtney will be sharing with you and make sure that you know that she's here. Please orient yourself to the chat. Look at the top of chat. You'll see the docs tab. Please note, there are two forms of our worksheet available to you, both a Google Make a Copy and Microsoft Download. There's another doc there called possible tasks to delegate that you can have available as you would like. Please do post your questions in the chat. Courtney is gonna be keeping an eye on the chat, and she'll be able to kind of pull some of those out as needed. And, typically, we try to indoor index toward more specific q and a, towards the end of the session. Now I'm gonna share with you this. I was listening earlier today to some performance by a favorite conductor I have, a conductor and a composer, and his name is Christopher Tinn. And I was also thinking about you at the same time, thinking about this moment together. Christopher as a conductor and a composer, I was watching him kind of a behind the scenes footage, watching him lead a choir through one of his pieces. So, basically, you know, he had delegated this score to these individuals in the choir to sing and deliver. And during their practice, he paused and said, hey. You know what? I love everything that's happening. And, oh, by the way, those sopranos, you added a crescendo in a place where I didn't have one in the score. And, by the way, I love that. So in a way, delegation being that we don't just hand off tasks and walk away, we wanna enable our results through others and also be willing to kind of let them also find their way in some ways, bring themselves to the things that we delegate in much the same way those sopranos brought that crescendo. End of the day, the piece ended up and the performance ended up being as impactful, and they were able to contribute as a result. Our focus today then is going to be on a few key skills with delegation, give you some time to interact with one another and reflect, and hopefully give you a sense of walking away with, some momentum and clarity around delegation as well. I'm going to move into sharing our screen now, everybody, and let's start talking about this topic as we get started. You can see what we strive for here, everybody, at Culture Club and even at LifeLabs Learning. We strive for a high NPS score. We strive for retention retention of learning three months after a session. Right now, wanna pause and ask this. If this is your first time your first time ever at a culture club, I'm gonna ask you to please post a party emoji of choice in the chat. A party emoji of choice in the chat. If this is your first time at a culture club, you have some autonomy with whatever that party emoji might be to you, a party emoji of choice if this is your first time at a culture club. We kinda get a little emoji happy here in our culture club as a way of signaling our responses here easily. I love the party emoji. Someone put Katie. I see the dog. I love that choice. I'm gonna wait for this to slow down just a bit. Okay. My next question, everybody, next question then, is if you are a return learner here, this is your second or third or fourth or fifth time or more in a culture club, what I'd like you to do for this one is just choose the happy emoji of choice. So one of those faces in the face library, the happy emoji of choice. This is a return opportunity for you. Lovely to see you all as well. So for those of you that are new, please know that in the chat, it usually gets pretty active with people sharing their LinkedIn links, their profiles, or their websites just to simply connect with others that are in the space. So maybe you might find someone who's facing the same challenge that you are with delegation skills today. You might wanna make note of their name and see see if you can connect and simply follow-up, after the fact at all. The goal today is to think about delegation toward team performance, towards supporting others and their individual growth, and also you to be more strategic about your own growth as well. And we want to name. We know there are limitations. If delegation were easy, we wouldn't have developed this workshop. It wouldn't have been one of our most high demand topics to develop. We might all have a sense of what to do, but really being good at it takes some time and some effort on our part. So we wanna know, like, sure there can be limitations and resources. There might be skill gaps to navigate. Lots of different things might impact our ability to do so, but when we can, let's make sure we do it as effectively as possible. Take a look at your worksheet, please. Right now, there's a thought generator question for you. I am gonna ask you to post in the chat then a response. When you think about delegating, what feels most challenging to you? Take a moment. When you think about delegating, what feels most challenging to you? Erin, I see trust. Giving up control, Katie. The struggle is real. Lots of answers coming in. Independency, quality of work. Trust as well. Release and control. Right. You know, part of our title today is about the ability to let go through the art of delegation, urgency, quality of output, effective follow through. Thank you, everybody, for weighing in. Keep posting what is coming up as a challenge for you. I hope you know that or can recognize that you're not alone by seeing what's showing up in the chat. And, also, there might be some challenges here that maybe you've not thought of but you might encounter. So let's kind of start to open up our mind fully to this conversation today. Now let's work from a shared definition. What is delegation? We have a very concise, definition today for this, the act of entrusting tasks or responsibilities to others. Okay. That's concise. It seems pretty straightforward, and yet there's kind of a bit to unpack or to pause on here. First of all, the act of delegating. What does that literally look like? How do I actually delegate? What do I need to do to set this up for success? Ali, to your point here in chat, how do I engage in delegation so that I can adapt to potential changing priorities? Entrusting. So trust showed a lot up a lot in chat here. Like, the challenging piece is to trust others. So entrusting others is fundamental. How do we move into that space and feel good about it? And then finally, tasks or responsibilities. What are we delegating? How do we know what to delegate actually? And I'll give you a bit of a tip that we really work from today. Ideally, you're going to delegate tasks that you already know really well, ideally. Now there could be some nuance to that. There's some adaptations we can make, but, ideally, you're going to know it well enough that you can trust to set it up for success well enough that it happens as needed. Why is delegation important? There's a couple of key reasons. Less and more. Less overload, less burnout, less bottlenecks. Now, this might be solo to you. Less overload for you, less burnout for you, less of you feeling like a bottleneck. And more broadly for the team, what do we gain when we delegate effectively and consistently? More engagement, more retention and impact. In fact, research shows that when people are able to derive meaning by leaning into opportunities through delegation, through their discretionary effort, etcetera, it decreases the likelihood that they'll leave by 50%. So a pretty big impact here when we can really put all the pieces together and have delegation be comfortable for both the giver of the delegation, if you will, and the person or the team receiving delegation. We're going to first talk about mental traps. How do we get in our own way? Because it's very real that this will happen. Then we're going to touch on what to delegate and then how to delegate. But listen, If we move right into what to delegate and how to delegate and give you structures and frameworks, but we really don't pause on how we might get in our own way, it's kind of a bit of one step forward, one step back. So let's make sure we get started on the right foot. Mental traps. There's three of them we name explicitly here. The first one. If I want it done right, I'll have to do it myself. How many of you have ever thought this? Just jump into the chat and say, yep. That's me. Do a hand up. Whatever you'd like. If you have ever thought to yourself, if I want it done right, I have to do it myself. That's me. Absolutely. What is driving if I want it done right, I have to do it myself. Typically, it's having high standards. Nothing wrong with high standards, by the way, but there's a cost to those sometimes. Lack of trust and then reputational risk. So listen, I'm going to encourage you to take some explicit notes right now because I'm going to share with you what is the cost. What is the cost to you if you stay in this trap? So the cost of high standards is that you might in fact experience burnout. The cost of lack of trust is that the team actually doesn't end up really growing at all, or it grows in a very unhelpful, disconnected kind of a way. We get people showing up through compliance more so than commitment and collaboration. And then reputational risk, we're worried about what if I delegate a task? This came up actually just last week in this workshop. What happens if I delegate a task and then it's presented to key stakeholders and it's missing some key pieces? Reputational risk. How might my reputation be impacted? The cost to staying in that trap, though, is that we do become the bottleneck. So we have to be mindful of the mental trap exists. What's the cost if we stay in it? And understand that this is the trap of quality, essentially. Our next mental trap then is I don't have time to delegate. Anybody here? I don't have time to delegate. I don't have time to delegate as part of you as well. All three of these traps, by the way, might be relevant to you. I don't have time to delegate. Delegation does take time, by the way. So that's a very real feeling, and we have to find a way to move past it. What's driving this? Time scarcity. You're already overloaded. And then finally, friction of handoff. So time scarcity. The cost of time scarcity thinking is reactive work behaviors to you. The cost of already overloaded is fundamentally that your long term capacity for growth is limited if we can't manage and shift already being overloaded. And then finally, the friction of handoff. The cost in this case is we end up underutilizing our team if we avoid delegating because of the time it will take to actually set it up for success. Now, interestingly, in this session, I had a young woman. She went through the entire two hours. And at the end, she said, you know what? I realized today that I haven't actually pursued growth opportunities for myself toward people leadership because I think what I actually probably intuitive but didn't have clear articulation for till today is that to delegate takes effort and work. And I think probably I've been shying away from that, that the roles that require delegation because I didn't know how to do the effort and the work, actually. It was a pretty big moment for her. This quality this trap now is urgency. So quality is first, urgency is second as a mental trap. Third, has anyone ever said I'm happy to do it? I have absolutely said this. I know I'm happy to do it. It's all good. I'm happy to do it. What's behind this trap? Caitlin, I got it. Validation, protection, and comfort zone. Brian, I see the initial yes, but I regret it later. I feel you. Yeah. Validation. You know what? It's nice. It's nice to do work that you really know and understand and get validated for it and to feel like people appreciate you for it. The work that you know and you understand, you have a clear scope of impact through it. I'm happy to do it. Also, protection. So, interestingly, we might actually want to protect our team who is feeling overloaded, so I'm just happy to do it. And it keeps us in our comfort zone. Ultimately, when we start to delegate tasks, we're gonna open up space for our own development, and that means we're probably gonna be challenged to stretch ourselves a bit. So interestingly too, in this moment, last week, a gentleman said, I'm always worried that when I delegate tasks that now I'm kind of not doing anything and, like, is that even right? Like, suddenly, he's not doing as much work, and he gets a little bit of a sense of, concern about that. This is our ownership trap. You'll notice that the first letters of each of these words, q, u, and o, spell quo as in status quo. So our mental traps can keep us stuck in our own status quo here. So we really have to be mindful of which mental trap are we most likely to encounter. So for you all, I know you've been saying, yep, that's me or I relate to this in the chat. But right now, please name which one of these probably is your primary mental trap: quality, urgency, or ownership? I'm just gonna pause and watch what you're doing in the chat here. We've got a bit of ownership showing up. Ownership, a thousand thousand percent. Right? I see that ownership, urgency, quality. Okay. Fair enough. First step to anything, right, is recognizing first step to any behavior actually is recognizing how we might be getting in our own way or what are what are our behaviors within this space. So once we've identified our mental traps, this now gives us our momentum to get out of the trap. And we're gonna use a lesson from the Apollo eleven mission for this. This is Buzz Aldrin. He's walking on the moon, and you'll notice he has that left arm bent. Now maybe he's balancing himself. He might also be looking at what's called his cuff checklist. So you'll notice that little all the little items of, data and information there on that cuff. This is interestingly on display at the Smithsonian. Now think about this. This is remote work, truly. 238,000 miles from home office. You're out on a mission, if you will. You need to execute to make the mission successful. We need to execute to make projects and work successful. So checklists matter. Sometimes we get busy, distracted, tired, and we need to make sure we're literally following those steps. Think about high stakes teams. Surgical teams have checklists. Airline pilots have checklists for a reason, just to keep us doing things with consistency. I have to ask you all this. How many of you love a good checklist? How many of you love and benefit from using checklists of some kind, digital or otherwise? Yeah. I kind of call them my second brain sometimes. I can take something out of my brain, put it on my checklist, frees me up. So how do we basically set ourselves up for success on this mission of delegation by creating our own version of a checklist? Right? What is our next step, so to speak? So we take this idea of this cuff checklist, and we move it into this TRAP and MAP framework. So let me talk through this because this is essentially about a one second decision, if you will. This is rooted in the process of implementation intentions, which is a very, long standing behavior change approach. Implementations are also called if thens. So if this happens, then I do what? When you plan ahead for if this happens, then I do this, it drastically improves improves and increases the likelihood that you'll do the thing you're planning to do. So imagine you're thinking of a task to delegate and you realize that that quality trap is coming up in your mind. You're thinking about standards, trust, and reputational risk. Then you're going to make a decision to tell yourself what's the benefit of you moving past that trap. That's your map, if you will. I'm in the trap of quality. I'm gonna remind myself I'm here to develop others to scale success. Or maybe remember quality, reputational risk? Maybe the reminder to you is, I don't wanna be a bottleneck, so I'm gonna make sure I move past this trap. Urgency, if we notice ourselves there. So we we hear that time scarcity, the overload, and the friction of a handoff language coming up in our mind. Remind ourselves, invest now to save time later. Maybe I remind myself that I want to get out of reactive mode. Remember, Jen, you don't wanna be in react reactive mode. Plan a way out of this. And then finally, ownership. My value is enabling others. Now listen. I wanna name something about ownership here. Remember that this was about validation, being protective of your team, and and comfort zone. A key thing for ownership is if we don't map our way out of it, we get valued for what we do but not for how we lead. We get valued for what we do, ownership, but not for how we lead. So really important to appreciate the value of mapping our way out of these traps. Understand what our defaults are. First, recognize that the mental trap language wording is going through your mind. Pause and think, what will I gain in moving past this? Have that be a reminder that really has traction for you. We're gonna shift now, everybody, to what to delegate. And there's a framework we can use that creates some reliability in our thinking, and it's called the give and grow model. Now in this case, we think about the tasker responsibility. Right? We've we've done our trapping and our mapping in that case. We're ready to move forward. And then we think of who will we delegate to, how will they grow, and then how will you grow? So you think through both individuals or maybe multiple individuals. Let's say we're wanting to delegate facilitating that weekly team check-in and Riley is the person to whom we wanna delegate. How might we think Riley will grow as a result of that delegation? Now, ideally, this might be something that Riley is already vested in. It's a career path for Riley. It represents a skill gap narrowing. It's simply an interest Riley has. So, ideally, we can pair that with how do we expect the individual to grow. And then, of course, naming for yourself. I get time to prepare for a client meeting next week. So name how you expect to use that time that you're freeing up for yourself. Another potential task here. And, again, give and grow. Think through it explicitly. Now let's let's name this. First of all, you might think that this person's going to grow in a way that maybe they don't see, that maybe they don't recognize. That's okay. There's a time and a place to talk about that with our next step here. But it's also valuable if it can be tied to something that they do value. Right? A direction they want to go in. Now what happens, though, if we want to, say, draft the product launch FAQ and there's a couple of people that come to mind? In this case, Alex and Jordan are both seemingly equally positioned to take on this task. Again, how will they each grow? How will you grow? And also thinking through, really, who's gonna potentially stand to benefit the most from that growth? Who's gonna potentially stand to benefit the most from that growth? Who has the highest value in this case to delegate to? That might not always be easy to determine. It's also a process we're thinking through. I had a gentleman several weeks ago, 11 direct reports. Some of them newer team members, more junior, some of them very tenured and experienced in their role. So for the people that were tenured and more experienced, they didn't necessarily have a career development plan. They're very happy. They're very, situated in their role. They perform really well. They're not necessarily closing a skill gap. He had his own criteria for delegation, but he but he was gonna add this and bring the framework of it might be best to delegate some things to the individuals who maybe don't have a career development plan in front of them, a clear skill gap to narrow simply to expand their capabilities. Now we're not talking about handing off work just because. We're giving them work just because. We have to have the element of thinking through how might they grow here. What I'd like to do right now is give you a few moments to think about this. Just reflect a bit. Write down a task or responsibility you want to delegate, to appear to a colleague, to a direct report, and just make some quick notes to yourself who that person is, how they will grow, and how you will grow. Remember, everybody, in the docs section at the top of chat, there's a document there that is possible tasks to delegate that might give you some ideas here as well. Just gonna give you a moment, just kind of some solo thinking time for a bit. Ryan, I see your comment in the chat about your dog. Thanks for letting me know. Sometimes this means you need to take some reflection time, everybody, too. It's not uncommon in a longer session where people are thinking through, I'm not sure what I can delegate right now, and that's okay. Think through those prompts in that doc, the document that we've shared with you. Maybe ask some colleagues and friends what they are delegating, people that are doing same similar work, just to build out that idea of what you might and or could delegate. Give and grow. Once we've worked through our mental traps, we're mapping our way out of it. We're talking through what to delegate, the give and grow model. Now we're moving into how to delegate the act the act of entrusting others with tasks and responsibilities. And so how to delegate, again, a framework here to use. This is really a way to check our thinking and also to really think about if I am delegating a task that I really know very well, there's probably a lot of implicit knowledge that we know. There's a lot of implicit assumptions that we make. This is gonna be a way to really pull those to the surface, make them very explicit. It's gonna demand that you bring clear visibility to the task that you're sharing. And when we are using GEMS, something like this, and everyone on the team is aware of it, people who are receiving delegation can think through this as well and ask for information they feel they are missing potentially. So there's a nice kind of two sided use of GEMS. Let's go through it. The first is goal, which simply means what does success look like. Now that might be a SMART goal. That could be a deadline, reaching a deadline successfully. It might be simply moving to a particular milestone along a longer term project we're working on. But have a clear definition. Here is what success looks like. Here is how we will recognize it. Empower then goes to clarifying resources, ownership. Notice this is also about authority, decision making, access, etcetera. This is the part I want you to think about. What do you implicitly know and take for granted with the task you're delegating? What do you need to really make explicit, including authority, decision making? Do they need to use DACEY, RACI, Rapid, or any other framework for decision making? Do they need access to certain platforms now that they have not had otherwise? How will they take the lead with important stakeholders? How we communicate that with them? What resources do they ultimately have available? Who might they reach out to? Also, with empowerment, I wanna name this explicitly. Empowerment actually can surface as well when people might be feeling a bit hesitant to take on what you want to delegate strictly out of the fact that they're feeling a bit uncertain about their capabilities. They're struggling maybe with a bit of confidence. Empower is also the place to stop and just check-in with someone about their motivation toward taking on the delegation, about their sense of confidence, about their sense of clarity in what needs to be done here. Monitor literally goes to how are we gonna check-in? Just very simply, how are we gonna check-in? How are we gonna make this explicit? Can we trust one another? You'll let me know if I'm overmanaging you or undermanaging you. Do you feel like I'm there for the right amount of time? Here's how I plan to check-in. Will that work with you? What is our escalation plan? What does escalation even look like with this particular task or responsibility? What are the early warning lights, the early warning signals you might need to pay attention to? Make sure someone is familiar with those. And then finally, the strengthened piece is either along the way or at the end of this delegation project, reflect and improve. So do your retro. Think back. Do your feedback. What could have done better? What could have been done more helpful? 10% improvement toward process iteration. So remember, this is for you to to look through and be consistent with how you set yourself up for success with delegation to think through clearly with what you're going to delegate. And when we might use this as a standard for our team, people receiving delegation also know that they can listen through this lens of gems and ask for what they need. Now let's pause here and talk about AI for a second because think about for a moment that you have a task you want to delegate. You have an idea of the give and grow model. But, essentially, you can go to AI of choice, type in that task, give as much information as you need, provide this framework, and have AI ultimately support in filtering through setting up a GEMS framework if you'd like to have a thought partner like that on board with you. Here's the thing. AI is great for being a partner towards efficiency and effectiveness here. And at the end of the day, we still need the human beings in the room talking to one another to effectively delegate. So we can run through these frameworks using a bit of a digital partner, so to speak, and we still have to be able to be in the room where that conversation happens. So we can blend that in as needed. Streamline and optimize delegations through the use of GEMS. So right now, we're going to give you a chance again to reflect for a few minutes. Think through GEMS here. You have a prompt here on your worksheet. If you go to, I think, page three, let's go to actually page four of five here. You have a GEMS grid there. I'd like you to take a few minutes and think through what does success look like for this task you have in mind, What does empowerment need to look like? What does monitoring what's one idea about what monitoring will look like and that you'll share explicitly? And then what might a strengthening action be? How will you plan for it? How will you make sure that they know that there will be a bit of a strengthening window? And as we're having you think through this, I'd like to have a few of you if you'd like to share maybe what comes up maybe under the monitoring piece here. What questions might you ask within the monitoring element? Right? We're gonna check progress by checking in with one another, having one on ones, having stand ups or stand downs beginning of the end of the week. Does anything specific come to mind for you for the monitor section that might stand out and that you might be able to share with us? Ben, you're thinking about this within the context of less of lean, nimble teams without many direct reports delegating amongst peers where swim lanes are ambiguous at times. Absolutely. Everyone doing their best to lead. I'm gonna pause here for a for a second, Ben, to your point. Sometimes with and, Ben, I don't know if this is relevant to your experience. But sometimes when we're delegating amongst peers, first and foremost, of course, we have to have a super solid foundation of trust and mutual respect for that to happen. And then couple that with, in this case, probably ongoing explicit conversation, especially with the swim lanes are ambiguous at times. Everyone's doing their best to lead. Explicit ways to check-in and ensure what people are working on, making sure we're not maybe getting out of our lane, etcetera. Kristen, we've got shared documents. Thank you. When we think overall about delegation, everybody, we have our mental traps. Right? We first have to start there. And I'll give you a bit, again, of of some interesting things that have happened since we first started sharing this workshop. Mental traps show up in most every session that we have now, this idea of how do we ultimately get in our own way. And so while it has been specific today to delegation, mental traps in general can show up in our hesitancy in maybe giving feedback sometimes or hesitancy in coaching in certain moments, etcetera. So maybe elevate that just a bit or expand that scope of window here about mental traps. Identify those tasks responsibilities. Look for those things you already know to do really well. Think about the individuals who could grow from this. And then use your GEM structure to facilitate the act of delegation. One final piece to this I'll name is oftentimes we have to make space for in both give and grow and in GEMS for people to sometimes push back with, why am I getting this? What's in it for me? This seems a little bit outside of what I'm supposed to be doing. So we have to be aware of in delegation that there are going to be times when resistance or a big why shows up in the conversation. And in that way, the more you've thought through this, very typically, you're better able to navigate resistance and questions that might come up or hesitations that might come up in the process. What I'd like to do right now is make some time for us to have a bit of q and a. So I do see some questions showing up, in the comments section. I'm gonna make time to go through those right now. Technically speaking, everybody, we are closing out the content review. We always like to make some robust time here for q and a as needed. So if you'd like to hang around and talk through some questions, we will do that. Also, want to reiterate, if this is interesting to you, please make sure to reach out to us. Make sure you request a meeting with one of our consultants so you can talk over more about this particular workshop and how it might be useful for your teams. I'm just going to jump into the chat. I'm going also jump into the q and a section. How do you mitigate perceptions of micromanagement in the monitor phase? Jamie, I see your question there. So, Jamie, what I would first of I'd like to do, how do you mitigate perceptions of micromanagement? Jamie, this feels like one of those moments when we first want to get very clear on what micromanagement might look like to the individual receiving the delegation. How do they tell you what micromanagement is to them? That's a word that in LifeLab's language we call a potentially blurry word. It can mean different things to different people. So how do you mitigate perceptions of micromanagement? First, talk about what your perceptions are of micromanagement. What have been your best case scenarios with working being managed by someone? What have been the things that maybe have not gone well? Can we have an open conversation about that and then set ourselves up for success? I'm gonna keep scrolling here, Betty. How do you monitor without seeming like you're micromanaging, Julia? I think, again, the best way here, how do you monitor without seeming like you're micromanaging? There's a willingness that kind of has to show up with delegation, which means we might, at first, monitor a little bit too much, and that might be felt as micromanaging. We have to be able to have that underlying trust for someone to say, hey. This is what this feels like is happening. Can we talk about this? And or you can proactively pull for that feedback. I wanna check-in, make sure there's not a felt perception or feeling of micromanaging happening right now. So how can you monitor without seeming like you're micromanaging is literally collaboratively come together, talk about how you perceive your monitoring will need to happen. Does that seem reasonable to them? Great. Let's start. Quick check-in. That strengthening element can happen at any time. A quick check-in. How's our monitoring working for you? Doing fine. Keep going. And continue to check-in. I'm gonna be going to Andrew, how can you coach an employee who could benefit from delegation? Andrew, I'm going to make some assumptions here, but you're free to jump maybe into the chat if you would like. I'll keep an eye on that if you're able to respond. But, Andrew, to your questionnaire, how do you coach someone to be comfortable with delegation? It really starts with those essentials of coaching, are those open ended questions, someone being willing to receive or be comfortable with delegation, checking their level of confidence, checking their level of certainty or understanding about what they're going to be doing, letting them know you will be there and available to them is key. And then, ultimately, there's a comfort zone for them to explore as well. Right? Being willing to nudge people just a bit if they're willing to stretch themselves just a bit if that's in fact what's it's gonna be involved. There's a a bit of a terminology I use sometimes where delegations should should ideally stretch people but not really strain them. And so what do I what do I mean by strain is when it becomes a little bit of a heavy burden for them, cognitively heavy, stressful. That's a little bit maybe too much, but stretching their comfort zone, that's ideally what we wanna kind of nudge people toward, and those open ended coaching conversations can help. I'm gonna check the chat because I do see some activity there. I see some, Melody, hi. Thank you to you. Andrew, I wanna check-in with your question. I really appreciate we need to hop off. I'm off the list. I'm just gonna scroll here, everybody. Give me a moment, and thank you for your patience. I am gonna go back to the q and a. Courtney directed, you there. That might be easier for me to make sure I see the content in full or the question in full. Let me just scroll here for a bit. Serena, I've been a manager of a small team for approximately three years, and I started with no knowledge of how. It looks like to delegate now that I'm learning how to delegate. Are there useful tips or tricks to help the team adjust to the new way of working, or I will be delegating to them as I anticipate resistance to change. So it's a new way of working involving potentially more delegation to them than typical, maybe, and you're trying to help them better navigate useful tips or tricks to help them navigate and adjust to the way of working. I'm gonna maybe I hope to not sound too redundant here, but ultimately what we have found is that when you are able to share very relevant context to a change in the way of work, here's why we're doing this, this is how it will likely feel. I'd like to set you up for success for this. So this might involve even Serena doing a bit of what we call listening tours where you simply name the fact. Way of working is gonna change just a bit. I'm gonna be delegating just a bit more. And I wanna hear from you. What concerns do you have? What sounds great to you about that? Etcetera. And make sure they have a chance to weigh in. There's a favorite phrasing I heard once from another leader that was when people don't get a chance to weigh in, they're not likely to buy in. And when we think about things that way, we wanna give them a chance to weigh in with how they're adjusting, and then we're gonna pivot into listening really well, leaning into our coaching, our open ended questions, and seek to better understand in that moment. But this might be, Serena, more than like a one off conversation. This might be just ongoing for a bit of time as they continue to adjust. I hope that was helpful. Elam, I wanna look at one of my struggles in delegation as you delegate while providing coaching and one on one check ins, but then you have to constantly do reminders and follow ups. It's like they only work and think in silos. Any detailed recommendations are appreciated. Okay. You have to constantly do reminders and follow ups. It's like they only work and think in silos. I'm wondering if there's been feedback given about that. Because, essentially, what you're naming right now, I delegate while providing coaching and one on one check ins, but then I have to constantly do reminders and follow ups. That's a bit of a behavioral expectation we might have that we need to actually name and bring visibility to, better understand why it's happening, so get some context from them, and then coach toward them making small changes in their behaviors so that they don't need the constant reminders and follow ups. There's a bit of and, Elam, first of all, I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. There's potentially a risk of what you've shared here of that of a little bit of that dependency showing up if they know that they can rely on you for the reminders and follow ups. So it might be that we have to have just a very clear conversation about what the expectations are and the behaviors that they're going through and how to start to shift those behaviors ultimately. I'm gonna keep scrolling here, everybody. I wanna make sure I haven't missed any questions. With recurring tasks, how would you distinguish when to delegate versus automate? Elsa, if you're still here, I would say, honestly, if there's no grow anymore for the task, I would shift to automation. I mean, in truth, the fundamentals here is if we're gonna delegate, we have an expectation that that person's gonna get a sense of growth and development out of it. If it's a recurring task that is no longer providing that, maybe it did initially, but it no longer is, let's try to see if we can automate that and then maybe open up space for a new delegation. That might be my first tip-off. Delegating versus automating with recurring task. Is there an element of being able of someone being able to grow through the task? And if not, automation might be that best choice. Hold on then. Anne, what if you're not good at the thing you're delegating? So you don't have if then statements, hidden knowledges that you need to capture. You need someone who's going to be better than you ever were. And there's a bit to unpack here. And the hard thing about this particular, platform is sometimes the the challenge in dialoguing back and forth, successfully. This reminds me of a question we had last week in this session where someone said and I actually I'm gonna pull the question up here so I do it justice. This young woman said, sometimes a barrier to delegating for me is that I second guess my own understanding of the task. If I were to do the task myself, there'd be some muddling through, and I often take the time to figure it out as I go. Those tasks are harder to delegate because I can't always give clear direction. There is during the workshop itself, we talk about what to not delegate. And one of the things we say when when there's certain criteria we discuss. And one of the counterbalances to that, if in fact I'm thinking of delegating something that really doesn't meet the criteria in in full for delegation, I can invite them in a conversation. I can bring that person in to talk about the task, to walk through the opportunity or the responsibility, and get their input, their point of view, etcetera, versus just delegating it in full. If you're not good at the thing you're delegating, Anne, there's a bit of a challenge there. I'm very hesitant to say declaratives like, well, then you should never delegate. I'm hesitant to say that because I think there's probably potentially some nuance here to be mindful of. I'm thinking of specifically, I'm thinking of managers who tell me that they have direct reports, and you have different subject matter expertise. If you're not good at the thing you're delegating, it's gonna be very important potentially to understand how are you gonna know what success is, how are you how are you gonna make sure that the outcome and the results are gonna be effective, how are you gonna know what to monitor for potentially? So it's a bit of a risky space there in that case as far as making sure that delegation feels balanced and like an opportunity versus maybe just something else to have to take on. I'm gonna maybe wrap up here, everybody, with about one more question, and then we'll make sure that you have everything you need today and maybe be able to also give you back up a little bit of time. How to solve for a staff member who refuses to accept the delegation or has a bad attitude about receiving it. Tasha, I'm gonna simplify this. This sounds like a good old feedback conversation. Maybe not an easy one. Maybe not an easy one. But there's going to sometimes be, to your point, resistance and hesitation that comes up. We're gonna have to be able to name that behavior, talk about that impact of the behavior, talk about how to solve for that together, and then see if there's a way to move forward together or not. And then if there's an or not, then that might involve some other conversations with the more the team more at large. I am going to pause for a second. I wanna go back to the chat, everybody, and also make sure Jessica, I see you. How do you build up employee confidence that they respond well? I find that delegate my employees feel the need to constantly confirm their knowledge or that they are on the right track. K. Jessica, my wonderment there is I'm kinda wondering if it's confidence. This could potentially be someone who is maybe a little bit more hypervigilant with their work. This sounds this could be someone who leans toward a bit of perfectionism. Right? The constancy of or reduced risk taking, the constancy of needing to know that they're on the right track, that they're doing the right thing. Again, first of all, can we better understand what's creating that behavior? Is it confidence? Is it hesitancy of scared to make a mistake? Right? That's potential. That's a potential there. Figure out what exactly is going on to better understand that moment, and then maybe try to decide on one thing they could do, one element of a task that you'd like them just to do without checking in and continue on and build that confidence that they're moving in that right direction. But start with maybe those super small wins to build that confidence and that capability. But I also would really get very clear on what it is we're looking at with that hesitation that might be taking place. I'm gonna pause for just a minute here. Ryan, I'm an HR team of one. I have managers that have a problem with delegating tasks to others. How can I help that manager be more comfortable delegating tasks that they aren't so overwhelmed on a daily basis? Ryan, my first question, I'm gonna go to those mental traps. I would really wanna understand. They have a problem delegating tasks to others. I would really understand what's maybe getting in the way there. Why are they hesitating? Do they want to hold on to the work that they're doing really well? Because that's gets them recognized. What is actually the impediment that's happening here? Basically, get kind of diagnostic there. And then to help them be more comfortable delegating tasks, try as best as we can to start with kind of a low stakes task for them if we can find that, something that's kind of low stakes for them. They're comfortable in letting it go. Work through give and grow, work through gems, etcetera. Try to set themselves up set them up for success in that way. How to coach up leaders to delegate more, Caitlin. Caitlin, I'm I'm curious. Your your coaching I I and I don't know. Courtney, I don't remember if we have the bring on the stage option. I'm not even sure I remember how to do that. But how to coach up to leads Caitlin, if you don't mind dialoguing with me here for a second. Similar to Ryan, how to coach up to leaders to delegate more. Let me ask you this. First of all, do you have an idea of work they have that you think could be delegated? I'm gonna stop talking for a minute. Yes. Okay. Kaitlyn, have you had conversations with them about, like, recognizing, hey. I noticed that the work you're doing here, have you ever thought about delegating? Does delegation show up for you? Have you, kind of then leaned into the work you know that could be delegated? Have you had a bit more of a discussion about that? Seems to be some mental traps. Okay. I will say this. I didn't say this yet out loud. It's super interesting to try to navigate through someone else's mental traps when they don't know they have the mental trap. Right? Maybe you see that mental trap in action. So okay. Caitlin, I would wonder so sometimes what this comes from another workshop. We oftentimes ask people to get to know, particularly maybe people that are up of them, if you will, leadership, project managers, supervisors, is to find out what work they do that they just don't necessarily love to do. So for instance, the delegation work that you recognize that is available for them to delegate but they're not, is that work that they really love? So are we in the space of they're gonna hold on to it because it validates them? Is it work that is kinda like, meh. So can we open up a conversation to better appreciate I know there's a lot that you're doing. I'm just curious. Is there any work that you do that is really not that motivating to you perhaps? Not the most exciting work for you. That could be an avenue to them potentially delegating to you, maybe remove something from their workload that is not that exciting to them. Now the trade off is you might be taking on delegated tasks that you may not want to do either, but that's an element of trying to understand them, their mental traps. Are they open to delegation? I would be curious to ask if I would actually even maybe approach that conversation with, can you tell me how you delegate to others? I'm looking to try to delegate myself to my team managing up. Can you tell me can you give me advice on how you actually delegate? And just see if you can see how they're thinking through it, and that might give you the ability to lean in just a bit more. I hope that makes sense. Regina, some people are unaware that they are unaware. Yes. Vanessa, I'm gonna come back to you for a moment here. Whoever's supporting while maintaining boundaries has to avoid constant questions and check ins. Okay. Here's what I'm gonna do. Grace, I'm gonna come to you as we wrap up. Vanessa, I'm looking at our time. We have a little over seven minutes left, everybody. So, Vanessa, fintech team often faces gender or age bias from clients, so external facing, if you will. Direct reports recently shared she is shake that is shaking her confidence receiving so being on the receiving end of bias is shaking her confidence. How can I use delegation as a tool to empower her and establish her authority with difficult clients rather than accidentally protecting her by taking tasks back? Okay. This is not a super straightforward thing to navigate. But I would be, again, wanting to lean into here. So to your point, you don't want to take tasks away. I would be first I would be very interested in knowing, first of all, that even with her confidence being shaken by the bias through gender or age, if she is comfortable, feels psychologically safe, and or willing to lean into authority, what might that look like in that space? So I wouldn't try to make a decision about whether to delegate as a tool to empower her or to remove tasks until I know about her level of, again, ease, willingness, psych safety to start to work on establishing authority. And that might be where I start with that. And if she's willing to lean into that, then potentially, you know, delegating, maybe even, certain aspects of leading those conversations. If you have if you have even even some routines to those conversations, you know, at certain moments, there's a there's an there's a time and place always in a particular meeting where we can lean in a bit and establish what we call our power versus our warmth in a given session or or an interaction. Vanessa, this is one of those questions, by the way, that I wish we could grab a crap of coffee together and talk through it with a little bit more detail, and so I apologize that I can't get into that with a bit more specificity here. I'm gonna wrap up with Grace's question, everybody. How do you balance being accessible and supportive? There for support and guidance while maintaining boundaries so to avoid constant questions and check ins. How to get out of constant loop of empower and monitor for those needing, expecting, being overseen being overseen. Okay. Grace, I'm gonna ask you for yourself just to get really clear on those key those clear examples. So if we could share with this is, again, a bit of a feedback conversation. Can we share with our team, hey. I'm noticing x y zed. Constant questions and check-in reminders. Here are some examples. So have some clear examples of when that has happened. The impact for you, of course, is the kind of constancy of needing to be there, but also wanting to help build a bit of self direction likely without that constancy. So the key is being able to name that behavior that you're seeing and experiencing, sharing that with them in the form of that feedback conversation, the proverbial situation behavior impact. Open up that conversation. Tell me how you see it, talk to me about the check ins that are going on, and then try as best to solve for it together. What might help them feel less like, they feel less needing to check-in with you. I didn't phrase that very well. But and how can they take more of a sense of not needing to double check or triple check with you for that? But, Grace, in this case, I think for so much, right, when we're working with other human beings, so much of it has to come down to we first have to start with really understanding what's happening in the moment. Why is this behavior going on? Do you recognize it? Can we talk about the impact? And then how do we start to, redirect this behavior and see if it's possible to do so? Grace, I hope that was helpful. K. I'm pausing for just a minute. And I tell you what, everybody, I am gonna probably we have about three minutes left. I'm gonna take a drink of water for a moment. Caitlin, I like what you're naming here. Think we've been trying to label projects as second set of eyes level so they can pick who they want to review their work, but it's that it should be a peer reviewed, so it's not being staffed. Peer resources should be a solution. Caitlin, lovely. Thank you. Caitlin, if you're here, I don't know if you've left. Any unintended consequences to that? Has anything come up from that that you're like, oh, that, oh, this might be the only one thing that could happen? I don't know. Kaitlyn, I don't know if you're still here, so I'm not sure if you're able to reply to that. I would I think that's a great idea, the second set of eyes. Pure resources. And then we always wanna think through potentially unintended consequences, but there may not be any. Favoritism clicky. Yeah. We'd wanna make sure maybe that the peer input or the peer resources are going to be effective or helpful in the way that we need, but I think there's definitely a way to do this successfully. Okay. Everybody, we have one minute and forty seven seconds left. I am going to start to close the session more formally here for you. Again, if you would like to request a meeting I don't know. Courtney, do they have a link to that that you could share before we get to that button that they can click, or do they need to hang out for that? I don't remember. Okay. So, everybody, if you'd like an easy way to click the button, you can request the meeting. Click the button at the top. You could do that. That's right. It's active right now. You can smash that button, as I like to say, the request the meeting. That way you can talk to someone else about potentially setting up. And remember, it's a two hour session, so we spend time on talking about a few other things that we didn't cover today that actually kind of round out some of the discussion we see in the q and a. I thank you all for your patience. Q and a can sometimes get a little bit interesting in a session like this. So if I didn't get to your question, I apologize. Make sure to maybe send that into our team as needed. Also, there's a hive mind here in this chat of people who have great ideas and great experience. So make sure you're grabbing ahold of people's contact information. Follow-up after the fact with them. And I hope the dog Riley, who was in the session today, is still napping or doing well. Hi to Riley. I don't remember who I don't remember who's Riley who Riley's parent is here, but he's snoring. Great, Ryan. Good to hear. Alright, everybody. Thank you so much. We are at about seven seconds left. Listen. Have a great rest of the week. Thank you so much for being here. It's always just such a thrill to have you all here with us. Have a great weekend.