You can’t buy love, but you can buy time. We all get 168 hours in a week. But delegation allows you to redeem some of those hours, especially hours otherwise spent on activity outside your Desire Zone.
Some of us refuse to delegate by convincing ourselves we can’t afford it. We blame a lack of resources. But as high-achievers, our goals always outstrip our budgets. The main resource lacking in these situations is creativity, not money. Where there’s a will, there’s a way—whether it’s part-time help, a virtual assistant, or an online freelance service. The hours you spend on Desire Zone tasks will always be more profitable than time you’re wasting anywhere else, so the cost of delegation pays for itself—and then some. For now, don’t fixate on resources. You need to get clear on the what before the how.
The most depressing excuse for not delegating I’ve ever heard is this one: “I’ve tried delegation, and it didn’t work.” If people tried something once or twice and gave up, there would be no art, no music, no technology, no production, no medicine—nothing. Imagine a world without art, without music—that is the world of trying something once or twice and giving up. Everything good in our lives is the result of extensive, exhaustive trial and error. If you’re letting one or two failures keep you from implementing a major productivity solution, you’ve got bigger problems than an out-of-control to-do list.
I know it can be tough to let go of tasks you’ve been personally managing for a long time. But if you want to buy back your time, it’s possible, and the results are worth the effort. Pay close attention to the three secrets of master delegators I unpack in this chapter. The first is the Delegation Hierarchy; this will help you get a clear picture of which activities truly deserve your time and energy—and which don’t.
The Delegation Hierarchy
To find those key activities only you can or should be doing, filter your remaining tasks through your Freedom Compass. By running through each of the four zones in reverse order, you’ll see exactly what tasks need to be delegated off your list and how urgently you need to find a solution for each one. I call this process the Delegation Hierarchy, and we’ll start with the tasks you probably hate doing the most.
Priority 1: Drudgery Zone. You’ll remember that the Drudgery Zone is made up of tasks you have no passion or proficiency for. Hopefully you’ve eliminated or automated most of the tasks in this zone. Any tasks left here are prime candidates for delegation—and it’s important to hand these activities off as quickly as possible.
When exploring options for delegating your Drudgery Zone tasks, don’t feel guilty about handing off your most-hated chores to someone else. Like we saw in chapter 2, just because you hate doing something doesn’t mean everyone hates doing it. In fact, someone else’s Desire Zone could be made up entirely of tasks in your Drudgery Zone. Consider housework, for example. You may dislike cleaning the house and folding laundry, but those things could be at the top of someone else’s Desire Zone. Same with accounting, or design, or marketing, or anything else.
I introduced my coaching client Matt in chapter 1. His professional and personal life were transformed when he stopped asking, Can I do this job faster, easier, and cheaper? and started asking, Should I be doing this job at all? One obstacle for him was delegating Drudgery Zone tasks. “Well, I just need to do it,” he would say. “Why would I want to hand it off if I don’t enjoy doing it?” It felt arrogant or rude to assign work he didn’t enjoy. What changed? “Finding out that my Drudgery Zone isn’t someone else’s Drudgery Zone. When I’m withholding that assignment, I’m actually keeping people from doing something they enjoy doing.” The real arrogance isn’t delegating work we don’t like; it’s assuming everyone likes and dislikes what we do.
Another coaching client, Caleb, discovered something similar. “One particular fear I had was outsourcing a lot of executive support–level tasks, such as responding to customers,” he told me. “I was pretty stressed about handing some of those tasks off.” Then he started seeing other clients in our coaching sessions succeed with delegation. That gave him the confidence to try it himself. “Having clarity on the activities that fall outside of my passion and proficiency gave me the confidence to hire some executive support staff. A lot of Drudgery Zone activities that weren’t giving me any energy are things that give them a lot of energy, and they’ve excelled at in ways I never could have. By handing that off to them, I’ve been able to increase my time doing Desire Zone activities from 30 percent to around 70 percent, which has given our business so much more energy and focus and are really the highest leverage activities.”
By passing off your Drudgery Zone tasks to someone who loves doing them, you can free up hours per day to focus on things that really matter to you. Plus, getting rid of things you hate doing will give you a new burst of energy you can direct toward your Desire Zone activities.
Priority 2: Disinterest Zone. The next target for delegation is anything that’s still sitting in your Disinterest Zone. Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you should do it. Continuing to do tasks you’re not passionate about is going to drain your energy from the things you are passionate about.
I know how to do the basic accounting for my business, and I did it competently myself for years. However, I hated doing the job and always put it off. By hiring a CFO who was passionate about keeping the books, I freed up a new block of time for my Desire Zone activities. That’s always the goal. So if you’re bored with a task that hasn’t been eliminated or automated, even if you’re good at it, delegate it. It’s not as urgent as a Drudgery Zone task, but don’t put it off too long. All that boredom will eventually lead to burnout.
Priority 3: Distraction Zone. The tasks that remain in your Distraction Zone after eliminating and automating can be a little tricky. You may be more inclined to hang on to these tasks because you enjoy them, but you also don’t want to waste your time or money doing subpar work when a more proficient professional could do the job ten times better.
I enjoy playing around with web design, but my skills aren’t nearly what’s required to run my business’s website. If I tried to manage our website myself simply because I enjoyed it, I would waste an enormous amount of time and the website would break every other day. So even though this one may sting more than others, I encourage you to scrutinize your Distraction Zone activities. Carefully evaluate each task by asking yourself, To what extent am I passionate about this? Is it worth parking this task in my Development Zone to see if I can hone my skills enough to move it into my Desire Zone? If the answer is no, delegate it.
Priority 4: Desire Zone. Once you’ve eliminated, automated, and delegated everything you possibly can from your Drudgery, Disinterest, and Distraction Zones, you’ll find your world opens up. It won’t happen overnight, but this is the goal—spending most of your time focused on Desire Zone activities. There’s only one reason to delegate something in this zone, and that’s if your Desire Zone still has more tasks than you can reasonably do yourself. Believe it or not, it’s possible to stay in your Desire Zone but still work yourself to death. In fact, it’s a real temptation for high-achievers. If you get to this point, you’ll need to examine every task and try to figure out which ones you’re most passionate about and which ones you’re most proficient at. This could lead you to some hard choices about delegating things you love to do. Or at the very least you may find ways to delegate pieces of these tasks, allowing you to keep only the portions you most enjoy and at which you most excel.
Now you know what to delegate. But there’s more to mastering delegation. Next we’ll learn how to delegate.
The Delegation Process
Even though delegation is an essential part of leadership and integral to a productive lifestyle, I have seen it fail time and time again. Most leaders may assume they know how to delegate, but when they try to hand a project or task over to someone else, everything falls apart. That failure leaves them not only worse off than they were before, but generally less enthused abo
ut trying delegation again in the future. This reluctance drives them to keep hoarding too many responsibilities for themselves, which ultimately drives down their productivity and enjoyment. In the end, the struggling leader is left with an impossible list of responsibilities and little hope that anyone can come alongside to help get it done. Sound familiar?
In a situation like this, it is easy to blame the employee or, worse, assume delegation is an impossible feat altogether. The hard reality, though, is the blame falls squarely on the leader. Specifically, it’s because the leader doesn’t know how to delegate properly. Many people think delegation is simply a matter of handing someone a task and some instructions, and then reaping the rewards of the other person’s efforts. Not usually. Delegation is a process, and it requires an investment of your time. Your goal is to develop passionate, proficient team members whom you can trust with the most delicate tasks, and this will happen only when you walk them through a trust- and skill-building process. If you walk a team member through the seven steps below, you’ll not only find yourself surrounded by competent employees, you’ll discover untapped leadership potential all around you.
First, decide what to delegate. The Delegation Hierarchy shows you exactly what tasks need to be delegated and in what order. Start with tasks in your Drudgery Zone, then tasks in your Disinterest and Distraction Zones, respectively. If you don’t have time to do all your Desire Zone tasks yourself, look for ways to trim that list or at least delegate parts of those tasks to others. This step may sound obvious, but this is the starting point. You’ll never master how if you don’t start by identifying what.
Second, select the best person. The Freedom Compass not only works for you; it works for your team. You aren’t the only person who works better in the Desire Zone; everyone else needs to stay in that zone as much as possible too. When you offload a task to someone else, try to find someone with passion and proficiency for the task you’re handing off. If you’re handing over the reins of your social media accounts, for example, don’t pick someone who thinks social media is a waste of time or who has never had a Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram account of their own. They wouldn’t know how to maximize your social media outreach, and they wouldn’t do a good job at it. That’s a recipe for a delegation disaster. To become a master delegator, you must develop the patience and attentiveness to match the task to the person. When you do, you’ll set yourself up for unbelievable success.
Third, communicate the workflow. Once you’ve identified the best person, it’s time to show them how to do the job. The work you did in chapter 5 documenting workflows can pay off here. Automating your process by creating a documented workflow makes delegation a breeze. Simply hand off the workflow, show them how to use it, and let the system take over. That said, don’t worry if you don’t have a workflow prepared. Some jobs don’t lend themselves to documented workflows. Others may be outside your expertise, making you a poor candidate for identifying all the steps to get the job done. In these cases, just talk through what you need done and the outcome you’d like to see. Depending on the person you chose and the complexity of the task, you may be able to let them try it on their own or document the workflow themselves. Other times you may need to walk them through it once or twice as they learn how to do it. In either case make sure you have clearly communicated the result you need them to accomplish before moving on to the next step.
Fourth, provide the necessary resources. In this step you ensure the person who is doing the job has everything they need to follow through and be successful. This could mean providing physical resources like a key, file, or specific tools for the job. It could mean communicating intellectual resources, such as login information or a piece of software they’ll need. You might also need to provide authorization by sending an email to the other team members or departments involved so they know this person will be acting on your behalf. These are all pesky little details that trip up many delegation efforts. Carefully think through every step of the process and make sure that you are handing off everything they’ll need to win.
Fifth, specify the delegation level. Before you allow someone to assume responsibility for a task or project, you need to communicate your expectations. This goes beyond simply relaying the step-by-step tactical instructions; it includes being clear about the level of authority you are giving them. Do you want them to conduct research only and report their findings? Do you want them to lead the entire project through to completion without checking in? Each scenario requires a different level of delegation and failing to clarify how much authority you are handing off can create chaos and resentment on both sides. A misalignment of expectations can trip up even the most skilled delegator, so this is an area we will discuss at length in just a moment.
Sixth, give them room to operate. Once the person knows what they need to accomplish, has everything they need to do the job, and understands exactly what authority you’ve given them to act, you’re ready to toss them the keys and allow them to take over the project or task. This is where delegation breaks down for a surprising number of people. While it should be obvious that delegation requires us to step away and let someone else take over, it can be hard for us. Sometimes we simply can’t make the emotional leap that enables us to get out of the other person’s way. Be careful here; this is where micromanagers are born. I once had a micromanaging boss who made my life terrible. He hovered over me, questioned every action, and second-guessed every decision I made. Nobody should be expected to work under those conditions. If you selected a competent team member and properly prepare them for the task, they’ll be able to pull it off. Stand back and let them run with it.
Seventh, check in and provide feedback as needed. While you don’t want to micromanage, it’s a mistake to think you’re completely out of the process once you hand the task to someone else. Delegation is not abdication. The outcome is still your responsibility, even if you’ve outsourced the work to someone else. You’ll need to check in periodically to ensure things are progressing the way you want them to. But let me stress again: do not use this as a license to micromanage. Give your team the dignity of doing the job you hired them to do. Just keep an eye on them while they do it until you’re sure they have things under control.
Once you’ve walked a team member through these seven steps, you should expect to see a stream of trustworthy, quality work. As your team members grow, you can give them more and more authority to act on your behalf, and that’s when you’ll really see your energy and productivity explode.
The Five Levels of Delegation
Part of the Delegation Process we outlined above was to specify the delegation level. This may be a new concept for you, so I want to explain it in detail. Let’s start with an example. I recently mentored a young leader we’ll call Tom. Tom was planning a special event, and he was surprised to discover someone on his team had completed a project he didn’t authorize. As we spoke, I could tell he was frustrated. He thought his team member had gone way out of bounds, taking more initiative than he was given. After listening to the situation in detail, I finally said, “This isn’t your team member’s fault. The problem is that you didn’t make your expectations clear when you delegated this task.”
Tom was stunned. He thought he had been perfectly clear with his employee, but as I walked him through what I’m about to show you, he realized how much confusion and ambiguity he had allowed in the situation. It isn’t enough to describe the ultimate outcome you want to achieve when delegating; you also need to specify how much authority and autonomy you’re giving to the person. If you don’t, you’ll be taken off guard by underachievers who do too little and overachievers who do too much. It’s your job to let them know exactly how much rope you’re giving them. You can do this with the Five Levels of Delegation.2
Delegation Level 1. In Level 1 delegation, you want the person to do exactly what you’ve asked them to do—no more, no less. In this situation, you would say something like, “Here’s what I need yo
u to do. Do not deviate from my instructions. I’ve already researched the options and determined what I need you to do.” The phrasing is important here, so let’s unpack each part:
Here’s what I need you to do. This is where you will explicitly tell the person what you want them to do. No one can read your mind, so be crystal clear.
Do not deviate from my instructions. This creates a hard boundary and makes your expectations clear.
I’ve already researched the options and determined what I want you to do. This provides the rationale and context for why you’ve chosen this level.
This level is perfect for new hires, entry level people, contractors, or virtual assistants, or for any other time you’re clear on what needs to be done and just need someone to do it.
Delegation Level 2. In Level 2 delegation, you want the person to examine or research a topic and report back to you. That’s it. In a Level 2 situation, the person you’re delegating to will only do research; they won’t take any other action on your behalf. This is where my friend Tom messed up in the example above. He thought he was instructing someone to do research and was surprised when the person took action. Tom could have avoided the situation by saying, “Here’s what I need you to do. I want you to research the topic and report back with your findings. We will then discuss it, and I will make a decision and tell you what I want you to do.” Again, each phrase matters, so let’s break it down:
Here’s what I need you to do. Be explicit. It’s your job to make sure they understand the assignment.
I want you to research the topic and report back with your findings. Clarify what you mean by research at this point. Do you just want them to Google it? Do you want them to conduct an online survey, call several customers, solicit bids from vendors? In other words, this is where you are clarifying the scope of the research you want done. Clarity is key here.
Free to Focus Page 11