A lesson that I keep learning and relearning is how to let go

of control and trust people. I

struggle there. I struggle there big time. And

what I don't trust, I know I try to control.

I try to grab on with anxiety to situations. I get

calculated in my interactions. I try to control responses.

But I know I can't do life alone. I have to learn to

delegate. Delegation is a challenge for me. And that is

what we're going to talk about today. Effective Delegation

Three steps Every leader should know

I'm in a situation, well, a lot of situations where

I need to trust. Well, I can trust and open up to people or I

can try to control and there's a consequence to that. They don't flourish,

they don't feel trusted, and the relationship

doesn't grow. So it's trusting

people on my team, trusting people that do contract work,

trusting my accountant and bookkeeper and attorney,

trusting my friends and my family. It goes on and

on. So welcome to the Decide youe Legacy podcast. Today's

episode is three steps every leader must know for

effective delegation. By the end of this episode,

you are going to be inspired to see that you can have a lot of

freedom by learning to trust, that it's going to benefit you much more than cost

you, that the results, even if you delegate poorly, are going to be better than

not delegating at all. And that you can do some things, take

action to delegate and get better at this skill. And it is a

skill. I'm sharing this today because I am struggling greatly with

delegating and letting go. So I have the hope that this podcast will

help me to refine my process and to be reminded

of the importance of delegation. You have to do that to grow

a team. You can't go through life alone.

When I realize that delegation is not going to kill me, that the

consequences are not going to be so dramatic, that it's going to derail my business

or my life or my health, then I'm more willing to actually delegate.

It's not going to have huge consequences and I can do it incrementally with little

things and go to bigger things. That's what good leaders do. A lot of times

they test not in a bad way. It's just seeing if someone

follows through. They're going to see if they can trust them with more things and

more things. And that's how you can grow in your career, by being trustworthy

consistently at a very high level. Consistency is key. Consistency

in your integrity in your behaviors and your follow through and your communication,

you can work on that. And I'm going to challenge you to work on that

today. So I like to challenge everybody to face their fears. And. And I want

to share one fear that I faced recently as I went to a 50th

birthday party for a bunch of friends in Portland. Hadn't seen many of them in

10 years. Had a great time, but I was afraid. I didn't necessarily want to

do it. My inner roommate was talking me out of it. I trusted my gut

intuition, followed through on my values of intentionality, relationships,

connection, fun. Made the decision to go. It was a great decision. So

I'm Adam Gregg. I'm your host of the Decide youe Legacy podcast.

I'm the founder of Decide youe Legacy. I'm also a family Therapist of

over 25 years and a legacy coach. Do speaking as well.

My purpose in life and the purpose of Decide youe Legacy is to

help businesses and people live

courageously. You can take action to do so, and

it will help your life tremendously when you do so. I struggle

with delegating because I'm afraid that

they could fail, that I could be embarrassed, that I make the wrong decision,

that I trust somebody. They're not untrust, they're not trustworthy.

I am afraid of the negative consequences

when I delegate the cleanup, potentially if they don't do it well. And

even I get a little bit afraid of all the interaction that needs to

go on when I delegate. So I hire a new employee to delegate to them.

And that requires a lot of interaction to get them up to speed. I'm afraid

of that at times. I'll mess that up. I'll train them in the wrong way,

I'll offend them, they won't like me. I mean, all these things can go through

my head in those situations. But

again, the benefit far outweighs the cost

of not delegating at all. So it triggers a lot of fear in me.

And the thing about delegating, too, is it triggers fear because I have

been burned in the past. I have made bad decisions in the past to delegate.

I have trusted people, and I've also trusted people that have been extraordinarily

great assets in my life. And more people, as I look

back, have been trustworthy than untrustworthy. It's just

those few that have been extraordinarily untrustworthy can often get magnified

in my central nervous system to

protect me from getting hurt again. I don't want to live that way.

It's not worth it. So three steps that are essential for a leader

to learn how to delegate. Now, number one

is to define what trust looks like.

What does it look like specifically? So how would somebody know

that you trust them? How would you interact with them differently?

How would they behave in a trustworthy way that would tell

you that they are being trustworthy. So if you can write that

down, things are clear on paper, put it down on paper on

purpose and see, like, if you hired this employee, this is what trust

would look like. And, and for me, it would look like they're

openly communicating with me. They're willing to share that they're struggling. They're

willing to share that they don't know how to do something. They're willing to ask

questions, even interrupt me, because they're asking questions. I

like being interrupted with good questions from people on my team because

I know they're learning and growing, and I know that they're doing something even in

that situation that is uncomfortable. I don't always want to be interrupted. I mean, don't

get me wrong. But if they're mustering up the courage to say, I don't know

this, can you help me? That's a great thing. Define what trust looks like.

Does it mean perfection? Well, hopefully not,

because they're not going to be perfect in getting the project done. They're going

to make mistakes just like you would. So

does that definition require or does it mean that you are

lighthearted around them and having fun? I mean, when you trust somebody, you're bantering,

they're talking to you openly about their struggles. They're not looking for perfectionism.

They're not trying to be perfect themselves. All those things to me, build

trustworthiness. So. And then attention to detail. But admitting when you made

a mistake, that's huge. I mean, a trustworthy person is going to say, I messed

up here, I dropped the ball. I was wrong. No excuses.

Admirable quality that I see again and again in people that I build

trust with. Are they willing to own how they have made mistakes in

the past? Even to say, look, I did this in the past, but I'm not

going to do this now because I learned from it. And I had a

situation one time where my daughter pointed out to me that she had addressed a

sit. She had addressed a concern with me that

didn't help her trust in me. And. And then.

And I didn't necessarily recognize how impactful it was, and I did

it again. And it related to trust. In fact, it was

continuing to ask the same question again and again, not

just Asking her how she had done studying her four

finals. It was asking her multiple times. And. And she had shared,

dad, hey, well, you know, I don't need to be asked multiple times. I got

it taken care of. You can. I appreciate you sharing feedback with me, but I

don't necessarily need you to ask me so many times. And then I would go

ahead and do it again. And that would hinder the trust that she would have

in me because I would say it multiple times. I had to step back in

myself and say I don't need to be a nag.

And a nag. One of the ways I think of being a nag is that

I'm trying to control someone's behavior in that situation. So I

appreciate her sharing that I didn't correct it. Eventually I got the point message

and I started to correct it. Big deal. So define what trust looks like

so you can explain to them clearly what success looks like

in this relationship. So if it's a project that

they're working on, let's say I was just talking to our

graphic designer about developing a bookmark that I

give to clients that helps you shift your perspective. And we had to go through

numerous iterations. So success as I defined it is that

we have a deadline and that you're checking in with me midway through the

project and that it's me asking for clarity in those

areas. And then as I've worked with her and gotten to know her as a

contractor, we've had good communication and good check in and there's ownership

of when we make a mistake, both sides. When I'm too much involved,

she has the freedom to say, dude, back off and trust me. But I don't

want to just not give her the support she needs in the project because she

needs enough information to create and succeed and make a winning pro,

a winning completed project. But we had to define it. So that's what success.

If you can define it for people, as I do with clients, any kind of

contract, any coaching relationship, let's define specifically what success

would look like. If we engage in this and if we can define it clearly,

then we can focus on that and it's going to show you how much

progress we're making on the journey towards getting

that project done or establishing that employee employer relationship

reaching our goals. It's crucial. I recently

decided to revamp the whole Decide youe Legacy website. It needed a

revamp that requires me to trust and delegate because I can't

do the website. I think I can do some things and I'm pretty

dangerous, actually. I'll mess it up pretty bad. And I need to trust people who

have more expertise in this area than myself. So I hired somebody. He

did our website, his company, the company did our web, completed our website in the

past, they're gonna do it again, a great thing. And I have to let go.

And it's scary to me. I feel even silly

sharing how controlling I can be.

And go to the worst case scenario. It's going to bankrupt our business, they're going

to mess it up, it's going to look funky, I'm going to

have the brands destroyed. I mean, all these things. And if you're hearing

and listening to this, if you work for this company that I hired, forgive me

because I trust you enough to hire you. And

it's my problem, it's my issue. I am a control

freak in recovery and I've made

a lot of progress recently, but I got a lot of work to do.

That is me. So second essential step to learn how to delegate is

that you must provide clarity. And this is a little bit different

than defining what trust looks like. The clarity means that

you are taking the time to do the hard work that it takes to

delegate. Well, because they won't know what to do unless

you ask for what you want. And you spelling out what you want means

having a job description or a project description, explaining

to them what tools and resources they have, asking from them what

they need, asking what questions they have and need answers to.

So for this website project, he has to ask me

specific questions, some of which I give him that I want

addressed on the website and we talk it through. I have to take the time

to step back and send the content over that I want on the website.

I have to be able to share with him what ideas I

have for the branding, what our niche is,

who our target market is. Kind of the same thing, what makes

us unique as an organization, what our values are and how I want those things

expressed, and then to trust that he does what

he does best, which is the creativity. And his team is a team of writers.

I don't claim to be a skilled writer in that regard.

Business, professional writing. I'm good in some ways

maybe, but I'm not good in some ways. And the problem

with me at times is my ego. I don't want to let go.

That safety, ego function makes me want to control

and protect and protect what I have and what is

mine. And that's not healthy and good. And it creates a great deal of stress.

So all this delegation from for you listening, I hope to inspire

you to see that at the end of this episode, you're gonna see a path

to freedom and actually a path to more success in your business, a path

to more success in your relationships. You can do things specifically,

that's gonna save your life potentially because you're letting go of

things. So I was just talking to somebody today who's a friend and

he's in his 80s and he struggles with some health

areas and his spouse struggles as well. And that was the

question I had is what can you let go of? Because he admits he's a

control freak as well. And he has people trying to help him, but he's not

letting them help him. And so the assignment for him in our conversation was

what can you do to

get some help? You know, And I challenged him too, because he's a good friend.

I mean, it was like, hey, I had permission to push back and

saying, you know, my perception of you at times is that when people give you

a good idea that is requires getting help from somebody else, that

you quickly go on to a new topic. Maybe I'm wrong here, maybe I'm

off pace, but. And you have freedom to share with me if I am. But

it ended up being a very productive, positive conversation about how

to take care of aging family members in a healthy way without burning yourself

out. He wants to get out of his house more. And he went to the

casino with some people in his family and had a great time and was really

energized by it. And I'm like, he likes to go to baseball games and sporting

events and he can't get out because of his spouse at times. At least that's

what he tells himself. But he has all these family members that would like to

actually get him out and, and step in and help, but he's not and hasn't

by his own self admission, been doing so really crucial thing.

So you provide them clarity, and that can be checking in with

them and giving them more clarity, sending an email, asking for an update. And there's

a fine line at times between being nagging and controlling and being

informative and being healthy in your discussion of the project's progress.

Cause you're not gonna be a good leader too if you forget

what they have committed to doing because you're paying them to do a certain task.

So one of the big mistakes that I have made over the years in coaching

clients, former coaching clients, people that know me, I apologize

for this one, is not following up with clients on

their commitments, commitments that they have made. Part of that is because

I know there may be some pushback as to why they didn't get it done.

And they have some shame, potentially. It's not really justifiable

shame, but they're ashamed that they didn't get the project done that they committed to.

This is not necessarily contractors, but it can be. If you don't hear from a

contractor on an assignment, there's a good chance that they got sidetracked and

they're working on it to catch up and they don't really want to check in.

I mean, but that may be a good reason to potentially check in. Not to

shame them, but just to have some dialogue. Because maybe it opens up a

conversation about how they're not managing their time well and you still

believe in them, you still trust them, but you have a good, healthy conversation because

they can admit, and they will admit, hopefully, in that situation, that they're

not making the progress that they wanted to make. So the third

essential is to let go. This is all about letting

go, but to intentionally get to the point where you're making the decision

that I've gotten to the place where I can let this thing go and

give them a chance and believe in them. And when you let go, you gotta

really let go. I mean, like, it's really essential. They feel in

you, in your approach, that you're actually saying, I

know you can do this. I believe in you potentially even more than you believe

in yourself. I know you can do this. And I'm going to let go of

the situation. And I've just talking about this. I have a great

deal of areas where I need to let go more and to see what

happens, but I need it. I need to make sure I do that. I asked

one of the people on my team, a real key staff member today, like, what

can I do to better let go? And

the employees said they wanted to think about it. And I just got an email

from them because I'm in a studio right now saying, hey, I want to talk

to you more about that. I have more thoughts on it and I'm really excited

about the conversation because I think it'll help me tremendously because they have very

good insight. I need to let go. And so in recently, some ways that I

have let go are by spending some money

on things that I wouldn't normally spend money on. It's a letting go of my

finances. Because you can let go there. You can let go of plans by

letting someone else make the plans. And not that you're not sharing your opinion or

anything, but you're trusting that they can do it. Well, it's a good reason to

have a travel agent at times to trust them that they can do your agenda.

I like that. I don't like overjamming my days. You can let

go of your health, not to let go of your health and like not take

care of your health, but trust medical advice that people

give you. People that have more expertise on your health than

you do. Like your primary care physician or trusting

your financial accountant or planner on

decisions because you've delegated that to them and then taking their

advice on how to make that win and not thinking you have all the answers,

which I can at times, trusting your attorney if you have one.

Those are all ways to delegate. And then you learn in the process.

And so what it means to let go is going to

be. It's on the other side of anxiety. It's

sort of close to anxiety, but there's going to be a sense

of excitement with it. Like I'm letting go and I know they can do it.

This is gonna be big. I may be let down, but I know people don't

generally wanna let other people down. I mean, I find that if you delegate, there's

people out there, they just wanna win. I mean they wanna let you, they want

you to be excited about what they actually get done. Which will be

very surprising to you if you're a control person like me. I mean,

very surprising when you see somebody who, they see how you've

let go and then they over exceed your expectations and then the business with

them grows, the trust with them grows, they get promoted, they, they grow in their

position and you see them succeed and that's very exciting.

And so a little story here. I

decided that I was going to delegate something to

a person recently and it ended up

being that they, they did a really good job on the project but. And they

did a really good job in the situation. But they came back to me and

they were going off and moving town and I knew that it would be a

short term project but basically expressed that that

it wasn't the healthiest dynamic and just be short and

sweet. I hired my daughter and I said that on another podcast

and Emerson, she came to me and she said

and she's an adult and everything, but she had never actually worked as an

employee of Decide youe Legacy. And I feel like she would be a great employee.

I know she'd be a great employee and I think there's great

potential in the future and Everything. But she came to me and she expressed

that after I had delegated this stuff and she wasn't supervised by me, but

expressed that she was at a place where she wanted more of a dad than

a boss. She's going off to school. And I took that kind of hard. I

mean, it was like I delegated something I trusted something I fully trusted. It

was kind of. It was a risk and everything. And then it took me a

couple days to bounce back out of that and think, and this again, I'm

owning this right here. And then to just think, you know, that's really a valid

point and that's a mature perspective. And. And as I went into

it, I hadn't thought it through enough. I got overly excited about having her on

the team and I didn't think it through enough to go through the process that

I would go through in delegating to somebody else because I was so excited.

So you can kind of jump in too quick. And I don't think I did

jump in too quick. It was spontaneous. I'm really glad because I learned and I

believe she learned and I believe my team learned. Our team grew in

that whole process. So make a decision.

You know, indecision is a decision. The worst thing you can do is make no

decision. The best thing you can do is make the best decision. And

the second best thing is to make a decision that doesn't go well. That's better

than making no decision at all. So let that sink in. And if

you found this content helpful, hit the link to Shatterproof yourself

light. 7 small steps to a giant leap. To a giant leap in

your life. Period. It's a 20 minute video, 25 minute

video in a worksheet, four page worksheet you fill out as you watch the video.

You want to write your answers down. I would encourage you to. Or type them

in the fillable PDF. Download that. It's going to help you out and it's

going to help you in one area specific to delegation and it's the

emotional component. One of the sections is on how to own your

emotions because that letting go is an emotional fear thing

that you can actually do. There's an article that's linked that goes on with

this, goes along with this episode as well. And it's on.

It's on delegation steps. That article has not been written

yet, but by the time it's been, this podcast has been published at

least like a month after it's been published, there will be an article on this

content. So that's a challenge to myself. I just delegated

that to myself as I went through this episode. So nothing's going to make

me happier than knowing you took an action based on this content to delegate.

So please share with me in the comments how you have

delegated because that's gonna inspire me and take one action.

That's you applying something here that you learned in

this podcast. Share it with your friends. I wanna delegate to you. Give it a

rating and review on Apple or Spotify. Subscribe

as well. Share it with other people. That helps it reach more people

organically. And that's what we're in the business of doing, helping people

live courageously. Delegation is a courageous act.

Trusting is a courageous act. There's no positive change until you

decide to change. To decide means you are eliminating other

options and your legacy depends on you. Deciding the

impact that your life has on others is your legacy. I want to close

today the way I always do. Live the life today that you want to be

remembered for. Ten years after you're gone. You decide your legacy.

Nobody else. I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.

RA.