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Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Australian Small Business Show.

If your team brings you every problem, every decision and every disagreement, the standard advice is that you need to delegate better. In this episode we argue that delegation usually isn't the real problem, and that delegating more can leave you doing even more hand-holding. We compare it to a trapeze: you hold a team member's hand to swing them to the next platform, then you have to catch them again for the one after that.

We unpack the three underlying reasons business owners end up as the bottleneck. The first is not understanding how you naturally operate as a leader. We walk through four boss styles: the Driver (direct, wants people to get on with it), the Cheerleader (makes work fun and inspires the team), the Peacekeeper (avoids conflict and wants everything calm) and the Perfectionist (loves data, analysis and detail). Every style has blind spots. A Driver, for example, will often hand over a task and then swoop in and fix it because that's quicker, which only teaches the team to wait to be rescued.

The second reason is structure. Most small business teams get Frankensteined together, adding a person here and another there to solve whatever problem is in front of you. What works with two people falls over at ten, and the org chart ends up looking like a spider's web with reporting lines crossing everywhere. When nobody is clear on who makes which decisions, everything lands back on your desk. We also talk about how good intentions, like giving people extra responsibility so they feel valued, can create double and triple reporting lines that confuse everyone.

The third reason is the people themselves: lovely people hired for roles that no longer exist, the wrong personality for the job (a big-picture Cheerleader as your bookkeeper, for instance), or gaps where nobody on the team has the skills you need. We finish with the order to fix it in: get to know yourself as a leader and put practical hacks in place, build the structure your business needs right now, then find the right people to fill it.

Have you been asking yourself, why does every problem still end up on my desk, no matter how much I delegate? This episode shows you where to look instead.

Key Takeaways:

• Why delegating more won't help if the team is still relying on you for every answer
• How the four boss styles (Driver, Cheerleader, Peacekeeper, Perfectionist) shape the habits you create in your team
• Why a Frankensteined structure with unclear reporting lines sends every decision back to you
• How to match people to roles based on what the role actually needs, not just who you like
• The order to fix it in: yourself first, then structure, then the team
• Why taking the slower route and coaching your team to bring you solutions is a gift to your future self

Free webinar: Want to go deeper on this? Join a free one-hour webinar on 13 October that walks through all three reasons in detail and helps you work out which one is affecting you most right now. Register at https://www.peoplepoweredbusiness.com.au/delegation

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Disclaimer: The information shared on The Australian Small Business Show is general in nature and does not constitute professional advice, legal or otherwise. We recommend consulting with your advisors on your specific circumstances.