Feedback from My "Delegate to Accelerate" Survey
Below is a video and transcript detailing preliminary feedback from my recent "Delegate to Accelerate" survey.
To share your own insights, please visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/delegatetoaccelerate. It’ll take 2-3 minutes to complete.
00:01 Hey, I am so excited to report back on some of the survey feedback I've been getting for my upcoming "Delegates to Accelerate" Masterclass. The feedback has been incredible. So many of my friends and connections - thank you if you are one of them - for taking the time to complete the survey, and just to answer a few critical, though simple questions about delegation. One question was, what is your biggest challenge? And we all have challenges when it comes to delegation. So what is your biggest challenge? And what must this Masterclass include if it's going to be most impactful for you? What questions, what concerns, what issues must it address for it to really deliver? So even though it's dreary outside, you may be able to see behind me and you kind of hear the rain coming down and all of that, I am juiced. And I want to share this with you.
00:57 What ultimately has emerged so far, and if you haven't answered by the way, or completed this survey, please do it. We're reading every survey. We want to make sure that we get your feedback and input because that's going to drive a lot of the content that comes forward, including some really neat free content that's going to be shared this week. But, breaking it down in effect into categories, we've got nine. Category number one is Trust. Trusting in the delegate, the delegatee, the person you're delegating to, in their ability to do the job and to do it well. One quote is, "fear that the project outcome will not be what I want." Right? We have to trust our people that they can do the right job. And so often we don't trust them because we don't feel that they have the goods. And we feel that we are better. We feel that we are more capable. That's probably why we have our job in the first place. And so, how can I get other people to a level where they can produce a similar outcome and a better outcome perhaps even though we can do, so we can do other work.
02:09 Number one is trusting our people. And that is probably the hardest one because so many responses come back, come back to the issue of trust. Can I trust my people to do the work and to do it well? Just going to read one quote over here. "Letting go and trusting that the person will do the job correctly and that it doesn't have to be exactly as I would have done it." So we have to let go. We have to be able to trust others. We have to be able to say to ourselves, "it may not be exactly how I would do it, but if it's done well enough or perhaps differently, but still qualifies as an effective job, I'm going to let that go. I'm going to be satisfied with that." That piece so hard for so many of us and we're going to unpack that very deeply as we move forward.
03:02 Another one is the need to follow up. I want to be able to give it over and walk away. But most people, we know we can't do that. We know that we have people who need our support, our follow up. They're busy, too. They wish they could be delegating more. So here's one quote that, "the job doesn't get done unless you follow up and then you might as well have done it yourself." Right? If I have to follow up again and again, so why am I even bothering to delegate? It's one of the most important questions we ask. And, of course, the answer is because follow-up is very different than actually doing all of the grunt work time and again. But, in our minds we often think that it's one in the same, and maybe even requires more time and mental bandwidth.
03:46 So that's another concern. Here's one is the attitude of the people you delegate to, right? "Are they willing to embrace the new responsibility? Are they willing to do the work? Do people understand the importance of the task? People taking the initiative to do it after I feel that we have clearly set the expectation." So attitudinally, are they on board. And are they prepared to work with you to get things done? Personal blocks is another. That's number four. Right? We all have those blocks. "Butterfly effect in my stomach." "Getting flustered when people don't accept my ideas." So, it's easier to keep it to myself because I don't have to worry whether other people are going to embrace it, like it, do it the way I want to do it because I own it at that point. But that's a personal block. Because I have to be willing to get past that if I'm going to be able to scale. And that's a critical piece because the whole process, the whole goal here, is to clear our plates of the things that we should not be doing.
04:46 Focusing on the right work so that we can get the right work done, reduce stress for ourselves and for others and get out of the office at a decent hour. And we cannot do that unless we're really willing to take a hard look at what are my own blocks and how do I get past them. Another one is having the right people. Finding them or having them or perhaps developing them. Right? We need the right people to get the work done. So it's the capacity of our staff, it's having good manpower, having people who are properly skilled, having efficacy and capacity to do the work. The next one is time. It takes so much time, often, to train people. We'd rather just do it ourselves. I'm just going to read a couple over here. "It takes more time than doing it myself."
05:33 "The time to do it effectively." "I find that I could do it faster." And sometimes that's true. But that's if we're playing the short game. If we're playing the long game, we MUST, MUST, MUST involve other people if we're going to ever really take control of our time and get the right thing done. So that already is number six. Number seven: communication. The ability to communicate what needs to get done. Make it clear so that everybody is on board. For example, "being able to communicate with another person what I'm trying to delegate, so that it gets done the way I need it to be." So, they're all related, right? It's having the right person to do it. It's setting the expectations. It's communicating them effectively. It's all this stuff. They all kind of come together, right? How do I get what's in my head into somebody else's head and in their skill set so that they're getting the work done.
06:24 Here's another one. We talked about blocks before. "What will they think of me when the people who reached out to me want or expect my personal involvement and I want to delegate it to somebody else?" Or, "how do I make it look as a new leader, like I'm trying to offload it onto others." So, there's an issue of, "do I look like a freeloader, somebody who's just trying to get rid of it and pass it on to somebody else?" That's one concern that's common. Another one is, people want my participation. They want my involvement. And if I delegate it to somebody else, clearly I'm not providing that. And then finally, and here's the biggie, in many ways, in terms of pulling it all together. And that's "how?" "How do I delegate?" "How to delegate certain jobs in my organization to others." Identifying job roles and responsibilities. That's so important, right?
07:11 If I don't even know what my job is or haven't identified what other people's jobs are, how could I possibly delegate effectively because I don't have a clear sense of who's doing what and how and why and how it all comes together. Delegation of authority. Balancing work and personal responsibilities. And on and on and on. So, this feedback has been awesome. Please keep it coming. The main thing is we are going to address all of these issues and more. This is going to be a Masterclass that will blow your mind in terms of the value in content. But I really cannot deliver everything you need until you continue to tell me what it is that you're looking for. And of course, this is an ongoing process. It's not a one and done. But this is a great start. So, thank you for engaging with me on this dreary-day-turned-awesome-day. This feedback is going to really drive things forward. Please continue the conversation in the comments. Please pass it along and share with other people that you know that also want to weigh in on this conversation. Let's keep it going. It's going to be awesome.
Thanks for joining me.