How to Delegate Effectively

Kathy (host): 

Well, hello there and welcome back to another episode of Help! My Business is growing, a podcast where we explore how to grow and build a business that is healthy and sustainable. I’m your host, Kathy Svetina. 

Kathy (host): 

It’s often been said that the best and the most effective leaders have mastered the spine art of delegation. And yes, delegation is all about completing tasks and making things happen more efficiently. It’s also about giving your employees pride and ownership over their work. It helps you avoid that entrepreneur burnout and break free from the daily grind so that you can focus on the work that’s essential and only need you and you alone.

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Kathy (host): 

And this is a total win-win, right? And in a no-brainer. But a lot of business owners struggle with this delegation, and the question is, What prevents entrepreneurs that are already swamped with things to do from handling work over to their trusted team members? And how can you specifically successfully start delegating your work to your team so that you can focus on growing your business? This is what this episode is going to be about. 

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Kathy (host): 

And just a quick reminder, all of the episodes on this podcast, including this one, come with time stamps for topics that we discuss, and each one has its own blog post as well. So if you do not have the time to listen to this podcast, just go ahead and read it and come back to it when you’re free to listen to it. You can find all the links in the detailed topics in this episode. 

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Kathy (host): 

So our guest today is Barbara Churchill. She’s a Confidence and Leadership Coach for high-achieving professional women. Through her Lead Real Confidence Coaching Program, she helps leaders and entrepreneurs break through their blocks and own their power so that they can create the career and life they crave.

Kathy (host): 

Barbara has been mentoring career professionals for over 25 years and is a frequent television guest in the Minneapolis/St. Paul market. Has been featured on several leadership podcasts and major publications such as Star Tribune, Renew Every Day, and Good Enough Mother. She lives in the Minneapolis area and will do just about anything for dark chocolate, and I think I would do too. Join us.

Kathy (host): 

Well, hello Barbara. Welcome to the show. 

Barbara (guest): 

Hey, Kathy. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. 

Kathy (host): 

Yeah. I’m so glad you’re here because we’re going to talk about some really important topics here. As an entrepreneur business owner, it’s really easy to get caught up in the grind of growing the business because you have to wear so many hats. You’re responsible for a lot of moving parts. You’re responsible for other people, and oftentimes it gets absolutely exhausting. And because of that, it’s if you’re not careful, it’s a sure way to burn yourself out. And that’s where the, I think, that’s where the art of delegation can really do wonders for an entrepreneur and a business owner.

Kathy (host): 

But there’s also this catch. You need to be willing to delegate as much as possible, which means that you have to let go of control and trust other people to do those things. And I always say just because you can do something, it really doesn’t mean that you should be doing it. So I see a lot of business owners struggling with what I call this thing called the true delegation. They go and delegate things. Seemingly, it gets off their plates, but it also makes them nervous, so they end up micromanaging, making the whole thing, plus the managing of people back on their plate and it just doesn’t work. So why do you think that happens? And why is this such a problem? 

Barbara (guest): 

Oh my gosh. This is like Pandora’s box, right?

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Kathy (host): 

Yep. 

Barbara (guest): 

Building a business sounds so great. When we think about it. We were probably in a job. You know, let’s think about why we even started a business. Okay. We’re in this job and we probably didn’t like it, or we wanted the freedom and it sounded really great. Or maybe you had a product and you really thought this would be a great thing to do, and now that you’re into it, the dream of flexibility and freedom and being your own boss that sounded heavenly to begin with is just a chore. Now, it’s just this job that you thought you escaped, but now you’ve created for yourself, and instead of working your 40 or 50 hours, you’re working your 80 or 90 hours and I am always wondering what is being accomplished and why so many hours, especially when you have employees.

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Barbara (guest): 

So that goes down to let’s look at what’s happening. Are you delegating? Are you really delegating or are you just thinking that you’re delegating? Right? Right. This business that was born out of a passion or love, is just a chore now. And how much fun are you to be working for if this is how you show up to work every day, right? Plus, how much fun are you actually having? 

Barbara (guest): 

So I like to start with, there are some lies in owning a business that we tell ourselves, that society tells ourselves, right? We get this messaging that you have to do it all. To be successful, you have to do it all. You have to always be growing quickly and constant. And you should always be in your business. 

Barbara (guest): 

Oh my gosh. I have built and run three separate businesses, and I remember that thinking. “Yep. You always gotta be in your business. You always gotta be thinking about your business.” That leads you to burnout, period. End of statement. And I should know about this because there was a really long stretch of time when I believed all of those expectations and I put the needs of everybody else, the needs of my business before myself. You know that total good girl thing growing up. Get good grades. 

Kathy (host): 

Yep. 

Barbara (guest): 

Perform, succeed, all of that. Take care of everybody else. Well, what happens then? I married and had children. I did the exact same thing . Took care of everything was the mom that did it all, you know? And I ran three different businesses that were very successful. But here’s the thing, I was setting myself up for constant busyness and being on autopilot. 

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Barbara (guest): 

So I lost connection with myself. I lost connection with my health without fully recognizing it. And I think this is really key because people talk about burning out. And they kind of use that term so flippantly now. ” Oh, during Covid I burned out on Netflix, and binging and all that.” That’s not what burnout is, right? Burnout is gradual and it really sneaks up on you over time. And I’m such an overachiever that I didn’t burn out once. I burned out twice. 

Barbara (guest): 

There are components to burnout that I really want to hit. One is exhaustion. Burnout is a loss of energy. Okay? And you get that by not delegating, because you’re doing everything. You have your hands in everything and there’s a belief system in there that if it’s going to get done right, then I’ll have to do it. And that is such a trap, right? Then we have cynicism, right? because burnout is a loss of your enthusiasm. Remember all that passion that we had in the beginning? Where did that go? Right? So we’ve lost enthusiasm. Now, we’re just mirrored in the shoulds. That’s where we are. And then there’s this loss of personal efficacy. It’s really a loss of confidence. So when people are micromanaging and thinking it’s all about control, that’s all based in fear. They want it done right. They want it done a certain way. They’re afraid it’s going to be wrong. The business is going to be lost, they’re going to lose a customer, whatever the situation is. That’s all in fear. 

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Barbara (guest): 

So I want people, first, let’s look at your burnout situation. Okay? We’ve gotta address that first. What are the questions to ask yourself? Are you in a constant state of stress?. Is it just chronic for you? Are you just chronically stressed? I think our society is chronically stressed. 

Kathy (host): 

Yeah, I would agree.

Barbara (guest): 

Everybody is stressed and everybody thinks that’s normal now. It is not. It may be your norm, but it doesn’t need to be your norm. Right. Am I out of sync with my business and or out of touch with people and things that I love the most? Have you let all of that fall, by the wayside? That’s a big indicator of being burnt out, and have you lost interest in the people and things that once kept you engaged and passion. 

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Barbara (guest): 

So first we have to decide what’s happening here. Everybody wants to take action and oftentimes we have to kind of back up and get a big picture view of it. And now we’ve asked the questions, we’ll reflect on it, and now let’s go and look at some of the ways that we can help give ourselves a little bit of spaciousness so we don’t have to have this burned out feel. Does that make sense? 

Kathy (host): 

It does. And let’s talk a little bit about this idea of being out of sync with the business. What exactly does that mean? And not just how does that, what does that mean, but also how does that really feel like on a personal level? 

Barbara (guest): 

Well, being out of sync, you’re just going through the motions. You have lost the passion, you’ve lost your vision. Now we get to work and we have all the to-dos, or we’re all running around with our hair on fire because we’re putting out issues. Everything is an emergency or someone comes into your office and their emergency immediately becomes yours. We don’t have any boundaries around our workspace, right? It really depends on the person. What it feels like is always being heightened. Everything is heightened, everything is a priority. 

Barbara (guest): 

We know that can’t possibly be true, right? Because if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. So we really have to look at how are we going through our day? What are we looking at in terms of our business? Have we lost our vision? Have we lost our way a little bit? Are we just allowing revenues and sales to drive everything? Because then you don’t get anynew ideas. You’re not really allowing space for innovation. You’re not allowing space for. Sometimes we have to just be status quo. We can’t constantly be growing. 

Barbara (guest): 

You know, you’ve heard of companies that were on such a huge growth trajectory that they fell apart. So they have to, you have to have some space. Right. But we always think getting there is going to be better than where we are. 

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Kathy (host): 

Yeah, and I think that’s a huge problem, especially for the growing, like the really fast-growing companies. Growth becomes the goal. 

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Barbara (guest): 

Yeah. 

Kathy (host): 

But no one really pauses and says, “Well, how does that really fit into originally where we envision the business, how we envision the business right now, how is that going to impact us as the business and individuals?” Because if you’re growing fast, you are probably hiring a lot of people. There’s going to be a lot of costs associated with that, just from the financial perspective, but also the culture’s going to change. If the culture changes, then you have to make sure that the culture that you had embedded before somehow gets embedded into these new employees. There’s a lot of complexity there. That I think people just kind of forget about it when they’re just focusing on growth. And I always say that too. Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast later. 

Barbara (guest): 

You do and that is not supported in our society. The United States, the western cultures are very fast-paced. Go, go, go, go, go. You know, bigger, better, faster, more. And that is not the way it is in other parts of the world. In Europe, they have, if you don’t have at least six weeks of vacation, that’s like, the baseline is six weeks of vacation. 

Kathy (host): 

Yeah, right. 

Barbara (guest): 

In Europe and people, you never see people in Europe like not taking their vacations .So it’s very, very different. And so it’s not just, I love that you said, you know, where’s the culture and who’s going to instill this? It’s also, are you still in alignment with your core values of when you started. And often what happens is those start to go by the wayside. So when I talk about being out of sync, it’s also being out of sync with those core values that you have as an entrepreneur and business owner and that you want your company to have.

Barbara (guest): 

So there is a disconnection. It’s a feeling of being out of alignment and you may not even be able to put words to it, but you’ve, something doesn’t feel right and your body knows. So your body’s telling you, “Listen, something is not up. It’s off. We gotta look at this.” But we’re going at such a pace that we never give ourselves time to do so.

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Kathy (host): 

And you know, since I deal with finances and I always also think about how is the business owners or entrepreneurs’ mindset, and that is so important because if you constantly in this pace of “I gotta do something, I’m reactive.” You don’t give yourself the space to actually think about the business strategically, and does this really make sense? Does it make sense to hire these three extra people where you are committing to hiring them and paying them for the next, you know, how many, probably at least a year or two, or however. Does it really make sense financially? 

Kathy (host): 

So if you’re in this constant place of burnout, you’re not really, for the lack of a better word, you’re not thinking. You can make some financial decisions that are just not going to be beneficial to the business and can actually collapse the business in the long term. I mean, we’ve seen this, and I’m not going to name names of the companies during the pandemic, that they have had such exponential growth that right now. They are firing people because they realize that the growth that they’ve had was just for a little bit. It was not sustainable and now they have to go and back down because they just cannot support that many people that they added to it. So really thinking about that, just I’m not just reactive to current, currently what’s happening in the business and what’s happening in the economy, but like really on a long term scale. And you have to be able to be present and not deal with burnout to be able to see those and make those connections. 

Barbara (guest): 

Absolutely. And that’s why. Always say to my clients, “Okay, let’s slow it down just a little bit. Let’s slow it down just a little bit. Let’s look at what we already have that’s working, and let’s start there.” right? What do we have that’s already working? If you have processes and systems in place, great. That you put them there, you paid money. Maybe you have an HR department who knows? Let those work for you. That’s why you have them. 

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Barbara (guest): 

Process and let me tell you, I fought systems. I am not, I’m a big picture thinker. I’m not a systems girl. I am not a detail chick at all. Okay? And through two burnouts, I absolutely embrace systems and processes. Now, love them, but they’re there for a reason. They’re there to support you. They’re there to support your employees and the business. So you have this framework. We have to allow. We have to allow them to work, right? We have to get out of our own way and get out of the way of the systems and trust that process. Trust what you created. To work and build that for you, right? And trust the people that you’re hiring. If you have the right people in the right jobs, great. If you don’t, then you have to look at that.

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Barbara (guest): 

And when you’re hiring, you don’t want to clone people. You don’t want to be have the same people that are just like you. This isn’t interviewing a friend for coffee. This is who’s going to fit in your organization? Who is going to be a right fit for this job? What do they need to have for this job? Right? I help my clients with that a lot with assessments because I think they’re an amazing onboarding tool and it helps you build the kind of diverse workforce that you need, right? Because you don’t want to have everybody that’s all results oriented, strive and drive, go, speak in bullet points, make decisions really fast. They’re going to charge up a hill and it may be the wrong hill. You don’t want everybody to be that, right? You want someone, because that person’s probably not going to be the best in customer service, okay? So you want to make sure that you have all of these things in place. 

Barbara (guest): 

The other reason that we tend to micromanage is this perfection thing, and this is what I’ve noticed in all my years of coaching and the research that I’ve done with my clients. I have identified four behaviors, and I call them derailers because what they do is derail you from the vision that you have, from the goals that you have. And perfection is one of them. And that’s all about getting it done right and not liking mistakes. And sometimes, you know what done is good enough. If it’s done and out the door, it’s good enough. 

Kathy (host):

Done’s better than perfect. 

Barbara (guest): 

Oh, I’m going to tell you right now. Perfection is such a myth in human beings. It does not exist. It exists in math and engineering, which is really important because when we build an airplane, we don’t want to have leftover parts . Right. We want it to be perfect. Right. 

Kathy (host): 

You don’t even want to have that when you’re building an Ikea Furniture. That’s something when seriously wrong. 

Barbara (guest): 

Totally. Right. So when we’re hiring people, we have to allow, because when we have failures or mistakes, we learn a lot from that and that’s when evaluation comes in, right? We get to evaluate, we get to see what worked really well, what didn’t work without judging it. Let’s just look at that, right? And it may be something that we’ve been doing for a long time, because there is that mentality of, “Well, we’ve always done it this way.” Well, in today’s world what we’ve always done is not probably going to work because it’s so different. So we look at it, we evaluate it, what worked, what didn’t work, and what might we do differently? No judgment. And then we go out and we try that instead of just throwing stuff against a wall and seeing if it sticks. Right. 

Kathy (host): 

I mean, it seems like what the way, how I look at it, mistakes are an opportunity to learn. So there’s always going to be something that that went wrong or something went differently. It’s like, why don’t we compile all of this and figure out maybe we, I, I’m a pattern person. I just see patterns everywhere. 

Barbara (guest): 

Yeah. 

Kathy (host): 

And if something went wrong in this project, something went wrong in this project, there’s probably some kind of overlap that is an opportunity to take a look at it. What can we learn from this and how can we actually improve the process? So that in the future you can just avoid it altogether, or at least you don’t have to. Your hair is not on fire the next time. 

Barbara (guest): 

Right, right. And sometimes our mistakes, if you will, are hires. We may have thought this, you know, this person looks really great on paper and in reality, “Oh my gosh. Wrong person, wrong job, right?” Sometimes it’s right person, wrong job, and we can find a space for them in our organization, but oftentimes it’s just wrong person. And then we’re going to need to fire people. 

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Barbara (guest): 

And here’s what I’ve noticed about particularly women who own companies. They have a very difficult time firing people because they make it mean all these things. Right? They don’t want to hurt their feelings. They feel really bad about it. And so what happens? They allow this person who’s not performing to stick around, and that’s one of the derailers. That’s people pleasing, right? Putting other people’s needs first. Needing to be liked. I’m going to tell you right now, if you own a business, you are not always going to be liked, and that’s okay. You don’t have to always be liked, and that’s a hard one for a lot of people. So we bring all this mental drama into a situation that’s totally unnecessary, right? And what needs to happen is, we have a person, they’re not doing their job, okay? We have these KPIs that we’ve listed, right? If they’re not doing what they need to do, we have a meeting with them. Here’s what we need. If it’s a skill that they lack, great, we’ll get them training. 

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Barbara (guest): 

If it is a behavior or if they’re just not performing at a level, then you know what? We give them timeframe. We chat with them. What do they need? We let them know, here’s the consequence, and if it doesn’t work out, then we need to let them go. What we forget is we are doing them a favor by letting them find a job that is a better fit for them in an organization that is a better fit for them, so that they don’t come to work every day and feel terrible because they know they’re not performing. It’s not like this is a surprise. They know they’re not doing the job well and they feel awful. So if you can start to look at it that way and say, “Hey, this just isn’t working out. Here’s why we’ve given it this. We wish you all the best.” And that’s it. Don’t make it a huge drama thing because it’s not.

Kathy (host): 

And I think the big component of that is articulating what is really needed from a particular role and put KPIs together for that particular role. It could be anything. It could be like customer satisfaction if you have someone in the customer role. It could be making sure that the projects are on budget, whatever it is. But I think what a lot of people struggle with that is, how do I take this role and actually put some indicators, whether they’re doing well or whether they’re not doing well. I think that’s the hardest part in all of it, is because you hire someone, you have an idea what they’re going to do, you give them the job description, and the problem with the growing business is that as the business is growing, the role is going to evolve a lot faster with that person as well.

Kathy (host): 

So as you’re delegating and then you see them kind of falling behind in your expectations, How do you manage that? Because what you expected originally from that role might have changed right now. So obviously you have to communicate that to the employee, but I feel like a lot of businesses kind of forget that part of communication. Have you seen that as well? 

Barbara (guest): 

Yeah, totally. And I think first and foremost, we have to really check in with our own expectations. And are they still spot on for what is happening in this job. Are my expectations that one person can handle this role, and I have to look at it now. It’s been six months. We’ve grown by X. Maybe this is a two person role now. But my expectation is that one person is going to be able to handle it. 

Barbara (guest): 

We first have to look at our own expectations. Then we look at what is the job description? How was our training? Was it super clear? I always look at what am I doing first before I start to blame somebody else, or, sign blame or “Oh, they’re not doing this or that.” Because that’s easy for our brains to do, right? We just, well, they’re not doing their job. So now I have to jump in and do. Right, and that is something that is very seductive. You know what? By the time I explain how I want it, I could have already had it done, so I’ll just do it myself and it’ll be done the way I want it. That is such a trap. That is worker bee mentality. That is not CEO mentality. Right. 

Barbara (guest): 

And again, it does a disservice. So you have to know who’s doing the training, if you’re doing the hiring and the training and the all of the things. You need somebody in between there. You’ve got to have management helping with all of that. You cannot be the one doing all of those things because that’s where you’re burning out. And that’s why you think you need to have your hands and everything because you’re seeing all of these things. And we’re really not doing a great job when we’re trying to do 14 things at once. We think we are, but we’re not. We’re spread out far too thinly, right? 

Barbara (guest): 

Look at those things first and then see is it a skill set or is it a behavior? Now, I don’t know how people feel about this, but I’ve been trying this with my clients because the workforce, right now, we have such a shortage of great workers, right? And everybody is struggling to find great people. What if you gave them a month of, we’re going to try you out? We’re not hiring you forever. We’re going to give you a 30 day trial period. A 60 day trial period. Why not do that? Because the kinds of things that you’re talking about are the kinds of things that can they make a decision on their own? Can they think about something ahead of time, or are they someone who has the student mentality? And by that I mean, tell me what to do to get an A. I’ll go do that. and I won’t do anymore because you haven’t told me what to do. Okay? So you want to be hiring people that can think on their own. They’re not going to come to you for everything. Okay, I’m done with this project. What else would you like me to? No, they look around for things to do, or they can look deeper into something without needing you to come in and help them figure some things out. You want somebody that has expansive thinking and you’re not going to know that in an interview because like we said earlier, some people interview really well, they look great on paper, but you get them into the real world and into a job, and they don’t know what to do without being told. Because oftentimes we’re hiring newbies right outta college or people who have very little work experience. And there’s a huge shift coming from being a student to being someone who’s a valuable employee. And that takes experience. But it also takes a shift in your thinking, right? Instead of being told what to do all the time, you figure it out on your own. It’s like for you, you said you, you see patterns all the time. We want somebody who is like that, right? But we’re not going to know that until we give them a trial basis. That way we can find out what kind of a worker they are and they can find out what kind of a company we are. It’s really a win-win for both.

Barbara (guest): 

So I would highly recommend, you know, a trial basis, 60 days, 90 days, whatever you want to do. And yes, you pay them and you know all of the things, but they don’t get, you know, they may not get benefits right away and all of that because that’s at added expense, but you understand that we get a trial basis.

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Kathy (host): 

I really like that because, It’s not just a beneficial for you as an employer, but also for the person who’s going to be in this role because now they get to see for the next 60, 90 days or however long you give the trial basis, they really want to work with this company. Or maybe this is not a place for me. This is not really a good place for me. You can kind of ease into it and see do you really want to work for this person? And I like this expense of taking and taking initiative mentality. I mean, obviously it depends on for the role that you are hiring but if it’s not a very specific specialized role, I think having that set of mentality, because you can always, and I would say you can always teach someone something like how to do, how to, what tools you are using, how the process looks like. You can only teach someone that, but like having, you cannot really teach someone like how to think outside the box. It’s either like they have it or they don’t have it. 

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Barbara (guest): 

And I think it’s so important. So who’s the front face of your company? Right? Who’s the person at the front desk? If you have a brick-and-mortar, who’s the first person that you see? I will tell you that so many companies and this is such an old term. They call it soft skills, which is such an old term, and it’s such a poor term because what they’re calling soft skills, is effective communication, empathy, and emotional intelligence. We are now finding out in the last five years, oh my, this is super important. Because if you don’t have a particular skill, we can teach you that. But oftentimes the people that are naturally good with customer service, they have empathy. They have great listening skills. They have great communication skills. Those are the people that you want out front. Those are the kind of skills you want to look for. 

Barbara (guest): 

So if you’re hiring for a particularly, a specific job where there’s a tech component involved, if you find someone who thinks outside the box, who really can, you can teach them the other things. But grab that person. Even if you’re at, if you have this opportunity, even if you really don’t have a great job for them right now, you’re not sure where they’re going to fit, grab them anyway. Make a fit for them. Let them know, “Hey, we’re going to figure this out. Show us what you really like to do and all of this”, because you can put them anywhere and they are invaluable. 

Barbara (guest): 

The most I work with with my clients, particularly when they’re going from one role, say from a director to a VP or a VP to an EVP or something like that. What’s their executive presence? How do they show up in the world? Are they influential? Can they communicate effectively? Do they have empathy? All of those great leadership skills, right? When you see that in somebody, you grab that person. It doesn’t matter if they don’t have the technical, I mean, of course I’m talking in broad strokes, right? But you grab that person and make sure find a place for them because they are invaluable. 

Kathy (host): 

To bring this back into where we started, this fear of relinquishing control and delegation and actually delegating, but delegating only partially because you’re micromanaging. Maybe that is the reason why you feel like you have to micromanage. Because you don’t have those types of people in your business they’re really good at what they’re doing. They only do what they’re told and what’s expected in terms of, but they’re not really looking at it outside of the box. Things always break in the business, and you need someone who’s going to be able to see what’s breaking. How can I fix this and bring it to your attention? Or maybe just even fixing themselves. So maybe the people that you’ve hired might not be a good fit for where the business is right now. That could have been a fit for where the business was, a year, two years, five years, or 10 years before, but not right now or maybe there needs to be like another layer in between that person and between you. So I think that’s one of the reasons why people might be micromanaging. Would you agree? 

Barbara (guest): 

Well, I would. I think there’s another big reason and people rarely think about this. What is your brain telling you? Cause we always want five easy steps to stop micromanaging.

Kathy (host): 

True. Yes. 

Barbara (guest): 

Or six ways to, you know, whatever. Right. 

Kathy (host): 

We love the listicles. At least that’s what the marketing people tells us, right? 

Barbara (guest): 

Absolutely. We want tell me what to do. And I’m going to say right now, stop all of that. I’m going to tell you what to think because that drives everything. So to make the shift, you have to first decide that I’m not going to micromanage anymore. I’m going to decide that my health, my business, where I want my business to go is going to be benefited by me not micromanaging anymore. I want a life back. I want to feel like I used to when I started this business. In order to do that, I have to allow the people I have in place to do their jobs. Nobody wants a hover. 

Barbara (guest): 

We’ve heard about hovering parents. You know, nobody wants a hovering boss. You know, just, I’m an adult. I’m here to do a job. You pay me to do it, by the way, so let me do it, right. We have systems. Let them work. So decide that you are going to not micromanage anymore. Because so many people are like, “Yeah, I really want to delegate.” But their brain’s like, “Yeah, I really don’t want to delegate.” I’m not going to hand everything over because it’s not going to be done the way I want it. So it’s a difference between being the worker bee and the micromanager and being a CEO. It’s a decision and a commitment to yourself and to the future of your business. 

Barbara (guest): 

I encourage people, find out exactly what you’re thinking and really make this a judgment free zone. Take out a journal, take out a paper, and I know all your active people who want to do, do, do. They’re going to go a journal. Come on. I’m going to tell you, the most successful CEOs and leaders of businesses take time to brainstorm. They take time to think. 

Barbara (guest): 

So I want you to ask, what is your brain telling you about micromanaging and about the team that you currently have? Is it useful? Let’s not even judge if it’s right or wrong. Is what your brain telling you. Is your thought process? Is it even useful? What are other ways that you can think about this particular topic? What are other options for you to believe? We’ve gotta clear out all the junk. And get down to brass techs, get down to what’s really out there. 

Barbara (guest): 

When we clear out all that noise, and I do this every morning, I just take a walk every morning and sometimes I listen to podcasts and sometimes I’m just out and because I’m clearing all that clutter in the noise, I have the best ideas come to me. They either come to me on my walk or they’re in a shower. , I’m not quite sure why the shower, but I’m telling you. 

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Barbara (guest): 

So be prepped for that. Allow yourself some space to not be doing, doing, doing, and just be thinking because you will come up with solutions for whatever’s happening if you allow yourself and get rid of that noise. So have your phone with you so you can have a voice memo because when it comes into your head, it’s not a great storage. Okay. You’re going to forget it. Or like for me, in the shower, I actually have a waterproof pad of paper and a pencil. It’s above the water line, but I have it in there and I am jotting things down, and then I rip it off and flip it over the shower door.

Barbara (guest): 

But this is what you need, right? You need to allow yourself the space to think, to plan, to create and schedule that into your calendar. It should be a date with yourself. I would say at minimum once a week for two hours, very minimum. That’s the time when new ideas come to fruition and that’s when you always, you also, when you’re scheduling, you gotta schedule in fun first, and that’s the last thing we ever put on our calendars, and that should be the first thing.

Barbara (guest): 

We should put all the fun on our calendars, and if we don’t have dinner parties at our house and we wanted to, you know, hang out with our friends or whatever, then you schedule that and you can fill it in later, but you know it’s scheduled. But schedule that, that time for thinking and ideation and just spaciousness, because that’s when our answers, our best answers come to us when we do that.

Kathy (host): 

Yeah. And you’re relaxed. You’re not under pressure, hopefully. And, and I’ve noticed this with myself too. I was laughing because as you said, you’re walking and you’re taking a shower. That’s exactly where I get all my ideas too. I guess we’re all the same eventually. But yeah, I mean noticed like, and the other thing that really helps for me too is just get myself out of my office. Because when you’re in the office, what I’ve noticed is you’re in this doing zone. You have the laptop, you have the monitors, you have like everything reminds you of. I get a do, do, do, do, do. And that environment is really not inducive of actually allowing the spaciousness and thinking and thinking broadly about the business. It’s just weighs you down. So you have to be a 10,000-foot view, but everything around your environment, it’s like stones weighing you down to the ground. And that’s just not a good place to be. 

Barbara (guest):

 And if you live in a large city where you don’t have a lot of green space, just get outside. Go on in a balcony if you have one right, get out. You don’t have to be in mother nature with trees and forests and all those things, right? Cause that’s not where everybody lives. But get some fresh air, get outside, do something different. Go even have a dance party for five minutes. Change the state that you’re in. Change the energy that you have in your body, right? Cause when we sit at our desk, we’re hunched over, we’re forward. If you’ve ever watched anybody on a computer, they’re just hunched, right? Yeah. It doesn’t look like very much fun. It doesn’t look like anything can really come in. So change your state. Change that thinking. Put on some tunes. Let loose, and then take that time, sit in a completely different space. Your comfy chair, get a cup of tea. Whatever it is that you like to enjoy. and allow thoughts and ideas to just flow through. 

Kathy (host): 

Barbara, you give us so many good tips and ways how to make things better and how to stop micromanaging and be better at delegating. And I always ask this one question to every single guest that I feel like it’s kind of redundant of me of asking this because the last five minutes, you gave us a bunch of tips, but I’m still going to ask it. Nevertheless, if someone is struggling with this and has been listening to this episode, what is the one next actionable tip that they can do in the next week to get them closer to that, escaping the micromanaging and delegating really well what they can do in the next week?

Barbara (guest): 

Well, I’ll tell you. Yeah. We talked about a lot of things. The one question I love to ask my clients when they’re feeling stuck, when they’re feeling like, I just want to get these things done, is, “Hey, what might be possible? What might be possible in this situation? What might be possible for your business? What might be possible for this employee?” when you open yourself up to that question? Because possibility requires curiosity. It requires you to think about something. So when you open yourself up to that, “Hey, what might be possible?” The answer really is anything. Anything is truly possible. Okay? And that starts the juices flowing in your head. We could do this, we might be able to do this. We might be, and all of a sudden you’ve got 15 ideas. So just ask yourself what might be possible. 

Kathy (host): 

Fabulous. Barbara, where can people find you? 

Barbara (guest): 

You can find me on LinkedIn. It is Barbara Churchill. You find me on LinkedIn. My website is barbarachurchill.com. I am on Instagram, Facebook, and all the things. You can find me anywhere. Just Google, Barbara Churchill, and I will be there. 

Kathy (host): 

And I will also put all the links to all the things where you are in the show notes, where you people can find you there as well. Thank you so much for being on the show, Barbara. It was really a pleasure. 

Barbara (guest): 

Thank you so much. I loved it.

Kathy (host): 

Thanks so much for joining us, and I hope that today’s episode has given you some tips on how to achieve that true delegation to become a more effective leader. And tune in next week because going to have George Wiedermann. He’s going to be walking us through how to manage profitability in a service-based business, specifically in a marketing agency.

Kathy (host): 

Also, if you love this episode, you can find all the timestamps, show notes, blog posts, and links on the website, newcastlefinance.us/podcast. And before I go, as always, I do have a favor to ask. If you are listening to the on Apple Podcast, you could please go to the show and tap the number of stars that you think the show deserves because this helps other people find it too. Thanks so much. Until next time.