Delegating isn’t easy. While it can seem tempting to pass off everything about that particular job to someone, you can never pass the understanding of the work. This week, we talk about how to delegate tasks to your team in a way that keeps you informed and them motivated, striking a perfect balance between giving them freedom and maintaining control. We also share some tools you can use to hold your team accountable without micromanaging. Tune in to sharpen your leadership skills and create a productive and positive work environment.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• The difference between delegation and understanding
• Tools to help you hold your team accountable without micromanaging them
• How to conduct effective weekly 1-on-1 meetings
• Why self-assessment is important in leadership
• And more!

View full show notes here.

00:04 - Adam (Host)

Welcome to the 200% Life Podcast with Adam Hergenrother and Caitlin Frotland, where we bring you weekly insights into spiritual growth and business success. Today we're going to jump in and talk about how to know the difference in delegating your work product and delegating your understanding of the goals, of the vision, and making sure that people in the organization know what your vision, goals and clarity are and how that can't be delegated. How to know if you are in the right seat as a leader, and we're going to give you some tools to hold your team accountable without micromanaging. You know, I think there's a myth between what actually delegation means from a leadership position.

00:48

I think there are a lot of people believe, when they hire somebody, that delegating is you give somebody everything and let them run and own it, which is there is a component to that, and I think separating or bifurcating a couple things that we frame this conversation today is important. Number one is there's one thing of having somebody run and owning something and there's a difference between giving them and delegating the thinking or the questions or understanding around something, around something. So the way I would think about this is you, as a leader, can always delegate the work product, but you never want to delegate the understanding to somebody else. Does that make sense?

01:36 - Caitlin (Host)

I think so, but can you define understanding a bit more?

01:39 - Adam (Host)

So I think this is what I was going in. There's like this myth of like, when I hire somebody in leadership, that I can just let them run the thing and they can run with it and then go forever. To me, that is like vesting into a mutual fund, if that's what you're looking for. Specifically during challenging or hard times, everyone's kind of looking for an easy solution or an easy button for different things and they just want income to come in right, I was actually having this conversation with not somebody in my world, but they're related to me, and they go. I was like well, are you? They are, you're going to go back into the workforce and whatnot. They go. Yeah, I've been really thinking about it, like I just want to make money but I don't want to work. And I was like well, that's like a, you just need to build up investments, cause that's really what people are looking for is sometimes, when they hire somebody, they're like I want to hire them work. So if you and that's that's fine there's a, there's an element of the work you don't have to do, and that's the beauty about hiring. There's also a mistake people can make when they hire somebody that they end up doing their same work so they can show them that they know how to you know, create a marketing flyer better than they know how to create a marketing flyer. That's a that's its own issue. And you see that in like imposter syndrome, a lot with leaders and they hire somebody to do a job let's say marketing and then all of a sudden they're in there doing the same marketing. Just show them and they go. Well, I have to prove to them that I can do it better. No, you don't do that. What you're actually doing is you're allowing them to run within a framework, but you have to understand the area that they're running into. This is where delegating the work product, or delegating what actually gets done, versus delegating the questions that have to happen ahead of time, or the direction, or delegating the understanding of what is done.

03:10

If you're running a business, you're in some level. You need to understand what is happening in your organization. And if people, if you just again, if you don't want, if you want to be pure hands-off that is investing into a mutual fund, that is investing into public markets where you truly are just receiving dividends at the end of the month and it just shows up in your bank account, whatever it is. That is, to me, pure seventh level. You're not. Maybe you go to an annual shareholder meeting, right, whatever that is, but the reality is is you're not doing anything and money's showing up. It's really you get a much lower return for that than you can running your business. But that, to me, is like a true seventh level leadership, where you're just receiving money from there, even when you own real estate right, like you own, like I own a bunch of real estate. I have an employee that runs my products for me, but I still have an understanding of how much money it makes, what decisions are being done. So there's still and it's much less hours, but there's still hours that are having to be put in to make sure that it's being allocated appropriately, to make sure the staff is hired appropriately that are working these facilities. So there's still an element of work there.

04:14

When you're running an active business, like a service model business or a product-based business, there is this element where people hire people and they want to delegate the understanding, and then you get caught flat footed as a leader for not understanding the decisions people are making. And this is where things can go really South and this is where people wake up a year from now or six months they go, or even 90 days ago, I had no idea anybody was making these decisions, and what you, what you did is you took your eye off the understanding, and this is where it comes down to, and I think a lot of people have taken their eye off understanding, and when you hire somebody, they just want to delegate everything to them to make it easier. And that's really where it starts to come in. And so I have friends that have hired people outside of the real estate world in their organizations and this is why it's fresh in my mind, because this guy runs a big business and he's like I missed this. What did I miss here? How did it go from zero to this in 90 days? And the reality was and that's what the conversation had he goes you're absolutely right, that's exactly what happened. I brought somebody in here and I took my eye off the understanding, which is really the direction of what the company is doing right, and I I didn't ask the right questions. Which, again, is you delegating understanding and not knowing where and what people were doing.

05:26

Now, it doesn't mean you need to know what. If you have a big organization, what the third level person does. But you need to know certain key things that everyone is doing in an organization and the larger organization gets. This is why scale is so hard, because it's hard to know what everybody's doing. So you rely on the key people that you respond to. That you're three, four or five people that are there, so you understand what they're doing and really good. Then you understand that's when you want to have a meeting.

05:52

We do a meeting that's called a state of company meeting for all of our employees and really the employees that can listen in. And then there's employees of each department that are giving updates and then people inside the department giving updates. So when I'm once a month I'm listening to what people are doing and I will hear something in each department just once a month that I'll either take a note or address it right there. That is not the direction of or the line of the industry. It's somebody's fault. It's just that wasn't relayed to them, that we're no longer doing, that, that's no longer a priority or we need to shift here. I thought this was happening over there and but there becomes this challenge with leadership where people really want to just be able to give it all away.

06:35 - Caitlin (Host)

Right, Well, I mean I think that's what you hear the word leverage.

06:37 - Adam (Host)

And it's like oh, thank God.

06:39 - Caitlin (Host)

Like, yes, let me give this piece to somebody else and then you know, you hear, well, you hold them to the standards, you hold them accountable. So then it's almost like you don't feel like you have to be as accountable because you've given that accountability to somebody else, and it's like a relief.

06:55 - Adam (Host)

But I hear you where that's a trap, because ultimately you are the person who is most accountable and I think a lot of businesses can really get hurt doing this, where they stop the understanding and they delegated everything and they wake up and they feel like they have to then jump back into everything because they've missed the boat. Especially, you see this in real estate, right, when people hire an agent to kind of work leads for them and all of a sudden they missing clients. They didn't know about it and all of a sudden they run into a client and they go yeah, I ran into them and you know, we interviewed with your firm and we met with so-and-so and we went with somebody else. And you're going what when did you meet with them? Right, and then they find out it happens again. And then you go down, they go oh yeah, we met them, they didn't use us, they didn't like this, and you're missing. And then you go like well, hold on, right, so you're just missing these deals that are happening in there instead of having a more of a robust understanding.

07:47

You can have everybody, and this is where having key people in your leadership team is so important, because if you don't have the right people and they're leading 30 people or they're leading another five people and they're in the wrong direction, it can completely take out an organization or division of the organization because of one person not following through. There's why getting the right people is so important in your business. And then you, as a leader, showing up as a leader which is understanding its vision right, so everyone understands that. It's clarity, so everyone understands clarity, right. And then it's kind of removing the roadblocks around your vision or clarity, right. So those are the three things that you really want to concentrate on doing, but we we have this this I've seen it more right now where things are so tough, where people are just looking to just just get like they're just trying to get rid of, like, almost like the, the pain of having to deal with it, which, to me, is you're just going to have more pain, if that makes sense.

08:40 - Caitlin (Host)

Yeah, you're like putting it off, kicking it down the road. Yeah, you're just exactly what you are.

08:43 - Adam (Host)

This is what you are so, uh, so what do you do to to prevent that? Right, I mean, that's kind of like next step. So, okay, I hear you. And if people are leadership but I've heard this before also, by the way, though this can go with your whole family I always like to bring in other things to this. Like you are just trusting what teachers are saying to your kids or what their friends are saying, and you you look into that, like at one time and you go. I had no idea they were even doing this. So it's like you you may go okay, well, somebody else, you can go hang out after school and do that but like, what are they doing? And it's just, it's not like you're spying on them, you're just what did you actually do? Where'd you go? How much money did you spend? What'd you buy? Who bought what? So it just to me, that's the same thing that I do with my kids, that I do in leadership, which is asking more questions to gain more of an understanding of how people are thinking.

09:28 - Caitlin (Host)

How do you do that? And not like fall into the energy of micromanaging or being over the top with questions with your kids or their teachers or whatnot Like? Where do you find the balance between understanding and being curious but knowing when you maybe need to let go a little bit too?

09:49 - Adam (Host)

So in business, there's two things that we do. Number one is we do a weekly one-on-one. So when you're meeting with a one-on-one individual, somebody that reports directly to you, what you're doing is you're seeing what they're doing for the week and making sure the priorities are there. The other thing that we do is we have what's called our daily five questions, and those five questions are sent to your basically the person that's overseeing you, and in those five questions you get a really good understanding of what they're doing on a daily basis. So those are the two ones there.

10:16

Those tools are so impactful for for at least for me and our organization, because the five questions that we get I mean you do them, but like the ones that that I get these from all of the people that report directly to me, which is awesome because I truly can understand what they are. The first question is is what success did you have today? Right, and so it's. Usually people are listing all the things they did, so in there there may be a success and you're going they shouldn't have been working on that or that shouldn't have been this. So it just gives you clues into what people are thinking and what they're doing. That's a great way of being established in that the way that it's set up too.

10:58 - Caitlin (Host)

as an employee, I love it because it's nice to be able to share like. This is what I'm working on Like, and even if it's just I mean so much of what you do in a role is often in isolation a little bit, you know, and it's not necessarily needing like a huge pat on the back or anything but just here, yeah, here's what I'm doing to contribute to this organization and that feels good to be contributing and sharing it. Yeah.

11:13 - Adam (Host)

That's wonderful. And the second question is what challenges do you have today? Right, and then how did you overcome them? So it's like you're, you're in, people are writing challenges and like the third one is just how did you overcome those challenges? So it was the first three questions. So people list out their challenges and this is where you can also get into.

11:28

If you're seeing patterns in people, like there may be a certain challenge that shows up and they may call it a business challenge, but you see it three days in a row and you're going okay, I need to grab that person. There's something else going on, and usually there is. It could be in their personal life, or it could be with an issue with their, with their person, with another employee or whatever it is. So it's what success, what challenges? How'd you overcome the challenges?

11:49

And then the fourth question is on a scale of one to 10, right, like where are you at? And, as you know, we don't care if you say a one, I'd rather know it. If you are, you are what you are, what you're experiencing that moment. So what is it? Or 10 being like this is a great day. Also, you'll find patterns in people Like some people will never be a 10, right, I have people in my, in my world that just never are tens, like I've never seen.

12:09

And there's actually somebody I'm thinking of right now that is, that has done these for years and I've never seen a 10 of that person and they and then there will be nines, but it's always like, and I've asked them, they go, well, 10 is like. That means that like I can't improve anymore, so it's like it's. It doesn't even matter what the number is, it just matters. And there's other people like when Hallie and I first introduced this, um, how it was actually in her meeting, so she was on my mind a few minutes ago, but, um, she was to always be like a seven or eight, like eight was like her best day right.

12:40

Like for what it was, and she was always around a seven. So to me it doesn't matter what the number is, because you're just looking for the pattern of the person. And then if somebody was, as an example, if Hallie was like a six and then a five, and then a seven and then a four, like it would show me, I'd go hold on pause for a second. We need to have a deeper conversation about what's going on and there will always be some other challenge. So that's and again, so, using the one-on-one and the daily questions to supplement this, you get a really good understanding as a leader's perspective and you can be anywhere that we have mostly remote employees right, because we work throughout the country. You have a great understanding of A what they're doing, what their focus is, their understanding of your understanding of the vision, which is really what you want them to understand, which is what you're thinking is and what they're actually doing, and making sure that's a match. So those are two wonderful techniques that you can bring into your business right now, specifically, especially when things are challenging, because you get more granular, people get to share their success, like you said. They also get to feel like they can share their challenges which, by the way, there are challenges every day. So it's like I hate when people try to prevent and try to or like, oh no, life's great. And then from that angle yes, it is from like an inner perspective Can you have all the challenges out there in life can be great, absolutely. But I have people that I know they're just saying that when they're like super challenged, I go is it? And they go, well, not really so, and I go okay. Well, there's a difference. That's why I always stop and go well, you can be okay and you can be fine, but there's a challenge at hand, right, and that's different. And they go, okay, I go. You can separate yourself from you. Who's in there experiencing the challenge? Cause I said three days ago there wasn't this challenge, right, and they go no, it wasn't.

14:15

I said, well, how'd you feel? I said, well, I felt great inside, oh, great. Well, who was the person that felt great three days ago? And who's the person that feels hurt from this challenge? And I go. That's, by the way, one of my friends called me the other day runs a big Vermont business and he goes what's that saying, that, saying that you say all the time and this was at like a seven in the morning and I go you're talking. He's like, when it's really hard, I go the WIFIO and he goes yeah, because it's we're to being a billionaire today, right, like. And it was like and he's not a billionaire, but like his point was now is I just laughed for some reason I didn't get back to him until the next day and and he was funny. He's like I already worked through it and I go, and we just got into this funny conversation about how one moment, you can feel literally like it's over.

15:05

Like, like it can feel like your, your every little stuff you're doing, and then literally the next day you're going can't believe.

15:14

I even thought that, right, right, and that becomes this gift of. So I always, in those moments, go well, who's the one experiencing that? It feels like it's over. Is it really me, or is it this self-concept? Then, when I'm feeling really high, I'm and like who's the one feeling like we're going to be again in my buddy's line, a billionaire again, right, like, whatever that is. And it's just you're having experience, because you know that will fade too, that will constantly go away, and so you can use these kind of like, these inner techniques for you to get more clear and so that these techniques from the business side really allow you to run and operate your business with a more totality of understanding of what people and that's really I said it again. I just want to mention that what you're looking for, what I'm looking for in a lot of those, is patterns to remove roadblocks for people. But number two is do they understand what I'm thinking? That's really what I'm trying to look for in those questions is have I missed?

16:08 - Caitlin (Host)

the mark right.

16:09 - Adam (Host)

Have I missed the fact that I'm not explaining the vision properly? Or have I missed the mark where people don't have clarity on what I think is the priority of the organization? And so that's where you can really gain some insights into your own leadership, and then you take a step back and go okay. Well then, I've seen this pattern show up a couple of times and how do I fix this? And you can do that in a one-on-one, you can do that in a response to the email, you can do that for you, just making sure that you add, maybe, a state of the company for all of your stakeholders.

16:36

I believe firmly in being completely transparent, open in a lot of things, so I would naturally try to go there even for all of our employees, when we're in a state of company, of what that looks like or what our challenges are in an organization Actually, a lot of times. I'll start with I know there's a lot of good things and you guys want to share them, so I want to hear the good things in 15 seconds and I want to focus the rest of the stuff on where our challenges are, cause I know none of you guys would be here if you guys weren't doing great work. And so then let's go, and I I mean I know I say it a little better now, but you get the point right Of like let's go, do the we need to work or what challenges we have, cause I don't care what company you are, where you're at size wise, there's always something you're succeeding at and there's always something that you're challenged at. And so you celebrate those successes, take them in there, but then you, just you do some more tweaks and iterations of the things that are that you can collaborate on.

17:27

If you don't to me. I just don't see them as the same way as other people do. I don't see them as challenges that hurt me. I just see them as something that we get to now solve as a problem. Does that make sense? Like so when you, when you take the step back of seven and so many people are afraid to take on those challenges, like I don't want to feel what it feels like to talk about that, or like what, if somebody thinks I'm not a good leader If I bring that up and you, just you get rid of yourself and you bring that into the conversation and makes you, you now have a better understanding of your business and you can lead better and more effectively.

17:59 - Caitlin (Host)

Well, that seems to be the tone of everything you're describing here is. It's not that you're asking these questions and introducing these tools as a way to preserve any sense of your own self-concept ego. You're really coming at it to have a deeper understanding of other people and the people around you, to use it as a tool of self-reflection on your own leadership and then almost like mentoring the people that you have delegated work to, to keep everybody focused and moving with more clarity, vision, everything. But it doesn't sound like in any way that you're describing it that it has to do with you. It's more the only way that you've described it that has to do with you is in reflecting on your own leadership.

18:43 - Adam (Host)

Yeah, and your actions that you're taking and that's part of the inner work that you can do. It gives you, it allows you to be, in my opinion, more of a fierce business competitor, because you no longer it's not like walking in there and going. How do I approach this state of the company so that my ego feels good?

18:57 - Caitlin (Host)

Right.

18:57 - Adam (Host)

Which is really what a lot of leaders do, and they don't say it that way, but a lot of people who are still stuck in that, and that's it's working. People are making active strides to not do that and there are a lot of people that are, but still there's this element of, like people walk into any meeting and go. How does my ego feel good out of this? And that's when you go. There's a difference between asking the question is what do I want? Versus what do I want and I'm aware I said the same words, but there's a difference between walking in there and saying what does the ego want out of this conversation? And how is? Basically what you're saying is how does this make my, how do I make my inner experience feel better, based on what needs to happen, versus going? What do I want out of this conversation that's best for the organization and that creates a win-win for everybody? There's two different ways that. It's the same question, but it's just two different ways. Your intent is behind that.

19:48 - Caitlin (Host)

Yeah, to me this seems to be like very tactical ways that when you do the inner work and you approach life as a 200% life, that this is how you show up differently and this is how you lead any team, your family, the school community. You're in the larger community. It's how you show up as a leader differently, because you've done the inner work to be able to ask questions from a place of much more clarity and less judgment about other people, and people trust that.

20:19 - Adam (Host)

And listeners will sometimes ask or just people will email in or ask that that are listening to this. They want to. How do I know that I'm in the right seat Right? Or how do I know that I should be even in leadership? Or how do I know I should be in this business specifically more right now? Because, again, in real estate it's tougher and people were like should I be in this business specifically more right now? Because again, in real estate it's tougher? And people were like should I be in this? Should I not be in this? Somebody said that yesterday they might even cut out for this anymore. So again they started in my responses If you do the inner work that you're describing, it'll guide it, it'll. It'll be very clear.

20:46

You may not be supposed to be in here. You may not be in a couple of years, you may not be in a day right. I may not be in leadership in a day right If people don't think I'm doing it. I always, I've always said from the beginning if somebody thinks or wants to do better than me in my role and they need me to step aside, I'm out, right, like I don't mean, like I'm out, I'm not going to do anything.

21:03

I just mean, I'm never going to stay in there because I feel like I'm the person that needs to do. I think that's part of removing yourself, so that then you can show up to the conversation and be willing to be open about any solution that needs to happen, versus the one where it's about. Well, I need to feel validated, or I need to feel that I'm in here for that specific reason.

21:26 - Caitlin (Host)

Yeah, it's like the difference between piecing out and like bowing out.

21:29 - Adam (Host)

Yes, exactly Right, that's exactly right. Yeah, and again, I've I've heard many of my mentors use language similar to that, that have been in business and they go yeah, the minute, the minute, I'm no longer asked to be here. I just think that's just a. It's just a at some point you're not. At some point somebody's going to be better. At some point the company takes a different direction. At some point things change for you. So at some point things change for your investors, whatever it is. Maybe you get fired, Maybe you get promoted, Maybe you, somebody, comes into the things.

21:55

But what we do know is, whatever action happens, it's not like you're going to go anywhere and life always takes care of itself. That's why it always comes. That's why he's having faith in enjoying your experience of life. I mean, having faith isn't like hope to me, it's not about it's. Having faith is to trust in the fact that something else is again the thing that powers your body and the 300 million stars that are in our galaxy. There's something else that runs all of this and you have faith into that. So, again, whatever the situations that arise that are showing up, you're able to just meet them and just smile with them. For anybody, that becomes the gift. So the inner work always is about how do I let go of my self-concept and it's and we're talking about this, but it's in the moment. It's really hard. It's really hard at times, but that's why you start with smaller things, so then you can show up and have more understanding of clarity for it. So I think so what would you, what would be the takeaway in? Or?

22:51 - Caitlin (Host)

out of there, right. Well, inner is doing the inner work, really, and trying to do the things that you need to do to focus on yourself, that you can show up in with as least ego as possible. And the outer work is then the tools and techniques that you've talked about, that you can put into place. And it seems like it's kind of going back and forth, like you're implementing the tools and techniques and then you're doing the inner work and then you're continuing to implement, and it's kind of this back and forth between the two.

23:21 - Adam (Host)

Yeah, and remember, as leadership it's never about delegating your understanding of what's happening. You can delegate the work product that needs to get done. Just make sure you have mechanisms for understanding what people are doing in your organization. And as you scale that, just make sure you have mechanisms for understanding what people are doing in your organization. And as you scale, that becomes one of the most important things is to make sure that there's procedures and models in place. That's why bigger companies have state of companies or weekly team meetings, so that there is a cohesion of what's actually being shared and said in the organization. And if you're small and you're in the same room with a couple people, it becomes pretty easy.

23:54

I remember building my first company. We were in an office similar to the size of the studio right and literally there was four of us in it, and so I knew what everybody was doing. So you actually don't have to learn those things, because you're listening to the person all day. You know what they're doing. They share every 30 seconds or whatever it is. You just know what they're doing.

24:14

It's where things get spread out and bigger. When you stop connecting with people on a daily basis, that gets even more challenging, and I think that's been brought up into our world, given the work from home and different things that have shown up that way. Right, because now people are waking up and people are spread out. They're not coming in the office every day.

24:29

There's different things that are there and it does add a different element to the equation, which means that you have to be more on top of things like the five daily questions or a weekly meeting or some sort of tool that you're using to see what people are focused on each week and that becomes your leadership is do I understand what's happening in the company? Do I have a vision for that? Do I understand the vision? If you're not the visionary, do I understand what the vision is, or do I need clarity on that? And that you can go back to the person who is having the vision and ask them and then ask them to maybe share it, like our team just asked me to share our vision again for our company meeting because people were asking about it. So I'm going. Well, clearly I'm not doing that enough, so I need to do more of that. So now we're putting a presentation together about where we're going, what we're doing and what the vision is of the organization.