The Power of Letting Go: A Leader’s Guide to Effective Delegation

Phil Calandra  00:04

The reason that it’s hard for people to delegate is because they want to be in control. They want to have their fingerprints, their hands, were a successful leader. And I see this every day. When you are a good leader, you do two primary things, I think

Rob Brown  00:23

What we encourage our clients to do is put on the leadership hat, take off the manager hat, but on the hat of being the person that really wants to set a vision, and propel things forward, and not manage the things that you have.

Rob Brown  00:52

Welcome to the Truest Fan Blueprint, a podcast for financial advisors, and other professionals looking to get the most out of yourself and your business. I’m Rob Brown, and my partner Phil Calandra. And I promise to walk you through a journey that will allow you to take action in your business and your life, so that you can be the best that you can possibly be. Thanks for listening. 

Yes, you have it right. It is time for the Truest Fan Blueprint, Rob Brown here along with my partner, Phil. Hey, Phil. 

Phil Calandra

Hi, Rob. Good to be with you again. 

Rob Brown 

Absolutely. Phil, I’m excited about this conversation, because we really teed it up on the last podcast, one of the things that we focused on was the importance of saying no, I’m endo is is part of our four D framework, a process that we teach our clients for how they get the most important things done. And the DS just really quickly are what should you delete? What should you delegate? What should you defer put off into the future? And then what should you do right now, and we want to talk about one of those DS today, because it’s, it’s essential. I mean, it’s delegates.

There’s a great quote that we read and not sure who said this, it’s attributed to that great unknown, but the quote is, delegation is not about micromanaging. It’s about trusting others to do their best work. Yeah, I can’t tell you how many times in working with a client, a successful client, great business owners who are afraid to delegate number one, because they like to have their hands and everything, they are micromanagers. But number two, they kind of say something like, I would never give something, somebody else on my team to do that I wouldn’t be willing to do myself, which is a great thing to say, but it’s a horrible thing to do. Yes, you should be willing to do it yourself. You never know when you might have to pitch in because somebody’s unexpectedly out of the office, and you’ve got to pick up the ball and run for them. But that doesn’t mean that that work is not important work that is okay to pass along to somebody else on the team who is better suited to do it. I mean, that’s, that’s really kind of at the root of delegation, finding the people on your team, who are better suited to do the other important work that needs to be done that you as the team owner, Team Leader shouldn’t be doing. So I think that’s that’s really important. I know, Phil, you’ve seen that over and over again, in your work.

Phil Calandra  03:52

Yeah, time and time I was listening to the quote that you had given delegation is not about micromanaging. It’s about trusting others do the best work. You’ve never heard the term micro leader, but you’ve heard the term micro manager. And that’s what we’re talking about. A good leader delegates, a good manager manages one’s about people. One’s about processes and systems don’t confuse the two. The people that can’t delegate are the ones that are in my view, probably need to work on leadership, because they want a man edge the process. They’re afraid to give it up. What’s the old saying, you’ve all heard it? If you want something done, right? Do it yourself, take that out of your vernacular, take that out of your mind, because that’s not going to propel your business. As a firm owner. It’s not going to propel you as an individual. You have to have the ability to think there’s no micro leader as a micromanager.

Rob Brown  04:49

I love that I love that I’ve never heard that said before not even in preparation for this podcast came to us came to me Rob just yeah, just comes I know. I know. That’s what had happens when you’ve got so much gray matter in between your ears. But it’s a great point. Because what we’re encouraging our listeners to do, what we encourage our clients to do is put on the leadership hat, take off the manager hat, put on the hat of being the person that really wants to set a vision, and propel things forward in not not manage the things that you have, it kind of reminds me of my first job as a manager, I was totally ill prepared for helping the advisors of financial advisors who work for me at the time to coach them into growing their businesses, I was really good at growing my business, I was a really good producer, um, I grew faster than a lot of advisors. And that’s why they made me a manager. But I never thought about how do I take what I know and translate it to others. And I had to learn that I mean, I did learn that I became a very good manager and leader. But what I did first was micromanage. I would go around and look for like little things that I could fix them, because that made me feel like I was getting something done. And like back then like a sending a bad X envelope was extraordinarily expensive, or making telephone calls were really expensive. They actually charged you by the minute. And I would like micromanage all of these little things when there was really somebody else there on my team whose job that was, and I just needed to empower them to oversee the expenses and get out of the way and go, go do what I was really put in a position to do is lead the growth of the business. But I didn’t know how to delegate and I didn’t know how to lead. I mean, that made me a pretty lousy leader manager for I don’t know how long it took me to kind of work my way out of that. But fortunately, I did. I

Phil Calandra  07:06

yeah, I think you’re right there. The reason that is hard for people to delegate is because they want to be in control. They want to have their fingerprints, their hands, were a successful leader. And I see this every day, when you are a good leader, you do two primary things, I think you cast the vision, you build the culture, and you get out of the way. Because if you’ve got the right people in place, maybe it’s the fact that you don’t have the right people or you haven’t identified the right people within your organization, the talent may very well be on the bench, you just haven’t pointed them and told them to get on the field, you haven’t put them in the game. And that becomes the problem all along, because then the manager or the pseudo leader can’t delegate, because they have very little confidence that what the goal is going to be carried out. And the reason that is is because the leader didn’t cast the vision, and they didn’t build the right culture, that

Rob Brown  08:07

those are great points, I think where that really extends, is in identifying the vision and the culture, you’re also deciding who’s going to be on your team. And whether you’re trying to harness the talents of the folks who are already on the team. So that you can is the quote said a little bit ago, trust them to do their best work, or you’re delaying hiring because you don’t know how to describe the position that you want to add to the team, um, so that you can again, trust people and help them do their best work that that becomes a really important so part of good delegation is having the right people to delegate to on your internal team. But also, many of the folks listening to this podcast, have other people who help support their businesses and home office offices, or maybe they work with other in a professional network where they work with other attorneys or accountants to work their clients. There are things that can be delegated, externally, too, but thinking about as you’re as you’re looking at what you need to get done, as you’re working through your priorities and your action plan. I’m thinking about, okay, who do I have, that I can delegate things to? And then what are those things that I should delegate, you have to have a system? Yeah, and I think when

Phil Calandra  09:31

you think about delegating, the whole purpose of delegation is to give that that thing, that item that process, that activity, the idea of delegation is to give it to somebody that’s better equipped that’s better at executing that particular item or that particular project. I think it’s the way I would say it is great leaders are never the smartest people in the room. Great leaders built the team around them. They brought the smart There’s people in the room, and they’re comfortable, their ego is small enough that they step away from it and say, I’m not the smartest one to figure that out. You mentioned an attorney, maybe it’s somebody that’s built a firm, or worked in the capacity that you most need in your current state. But the greatest leaders are never the smartest people in the room. They bring the smartest people in the room, small leaders, small thinkers will never do that. They don’t want to let smart people in the room because then what happens is it diminishes them, that’s a poor leader, or

Rob Brown  10:31

they think you will diminish them when in reality, having the right people around you make you look smart, if looking smart is important to you. And I don’t think it necessarily Yeah, I

Phil Calandra  10:42

don’t think it’s about looking smart. It’s about getting results, it’s about achieving what I say to my clients is our objective as your advisor is to help you achieve your most cherished financial goals. That’s the way I say it to clients, as a firm owner, you should be thinking, I’m going to assemble and delegate to the people that can help our organization reach our most important goal, or use the word cherished for that matter. But so many times leaders don’t do that, or they don’t recognize who is the best person to delegate to, and then it just kind of spins out of control forever.

Rob Brown  11:18

Yep. And that takes us really back to where I started the podcast in talking about our four D framework, because whether you’re looking at your daily to do list, or looking at the list of possible action items for your truest fan action plan that you’re gonna work on, for the next sprint, you can look at that list of possibilities, and say, Okay, I’ve got stuff on here, that really isn’t important. I’m gonna delete it, I’m just gonna get rid of that, because you’re trying to get to the things that you are going to do. But number two, ask yourself, What, among these action items, these to do items, can I delegate and who should I delegate that, to, that cuts down on the things as a leader that you need to work on because you in your planning and prioritizing process are deciding who to push that task, that action item out to on your team or outside of your team? That’s best at it, because that’s why they’re on your team,

Phil Calandra  12:21

right? And I think the micro manager, if they will get out of their own way, and they would learn to delegate, what they’ll find is that the team members, the people that they’ve assembled around them, the cream rises to the top right, you will all of a sudden discover things about people that you didn’t know, you didn’t know that they were so skilled and so capable, because you got out of the way, and you let that happen. People, it’s human nature, I think for people to naturally want to learn. We’ve talked in the past, Rob about the importance of reading, right, people naturally, I think human nature naturally wants to get better. They want to be successful. They want to be part of a winning team. micromanagers won’t let that happen. Good. Yeah, here’s will allow it to happen. Yeah,

Rob Brown  13:10

that’s absolutely right. And what you were saying there, Phil reminded me of something that happened a few months ago with a client who was thinking about getting rid of one of his team members, because he was offering that team member, a promotion to kind of come out of the back office and go into the front office. And he asked me to talk to that team member on his behalf, because to see what was wrong, what was what was off about what was being offered. And this team member who is in the back offices, I like being in the back office. And if you go back and talk to my boss about the changes that I made in the back office that have made what we do better, he the probably couldn’t name them. But if you asked him that in front of me, and I said what they are, he goes, Wow, I didn’t know it was you that did that. Yeah. So that. So that was just a case of delegating work to someone who was really good at doing the back office. Grier, who loved the grind in in loving the grind. His talents really came out and made a difference to everybody on the team. And yeah, if I if I were slapping anybody’s hand, it would have been the leader of that team, because he wasn’t recognizing what was being done. Yeah, because he had properly delegated but didn’t appreciate it. And he was trying to turn a team member that was really good from what he was always doing into something that he thought he needed more. And that was,

Phil Calandra  14:43

that’s so good. Yeah, that’s so good. Rob, I think in my own practice, when we were in massive growth mode, Trish, she had series 765 663 And if you asked her, she just didn’t want to be out Front, she didn’t want to be client facing, she wanted to be in the back. She wanted to be the heart beat of the practice. And that’s what propelled our success it was recognizing you naturally would think, well, you have all these licensing ease Naturally, this person should be doing financial planning working with the client, she came to Atlanta and said, No, that’s not what I want to do. I said, Okay, you’re not going to do that. You create all the systems and processes behind the scene, you become the heartbeat, and then the business went, right that and,

Rob Brown  15:29

and it went like that, not only because she was doing some of her best work behind the scenes, it gave you time to do your best work. And so that was it, which takes it back to that idea of delegation. But yeah, delegation, as it almost takes on a life of its own. It’s like kind of like compound interest, the more you delegate and give the right tasks to the right people, so they can do your best work, the more things are going to,

Phil Calandra  15:58

and then you could keep going down the list, Rob, then it becomes fulfilling, it becomes motivating, it becomes satisfactory, it becomes this balanced life, whatever that means. It’s it’s fills so many different points, when you’re able to delegate and put people in the proper role that they can do their best and full operation, have fun and get fulfillment and enjoyment out of it. One of the things that we’ve always said and you helped us do this, in our practice years ago was for delegation to work, you have to have a system for it to work. And I’d love it if you could kind of share in whatever time you feel like we have left. How do people develop a system? How do they develop a process to breed this healthy delegation, which in turn breeds healthy leadership and not micro leadership? true leadership?

Rob Brown  16:50

All right, Phil. So since we don’t have a ton of time left, and I could go on, and maybe that will be our next podcast, we’ll we’ll get into some of these ideas. Even pure, I’m just going to leave the listeners with an action item. Yeah, that I promise that if you’re not already doing this, and you put this on your list of things to put to work a month from now, you’re going to be shocked at the increase in your productivity, and you’re going to be doing something that you really think you don’t want to do. And what that is, is what I call a daily scrum. Some people call it a daily stand up meeting, being a fan of the Cleveland Indians, I used to call it up powwow. But the idea is stand up with everybody on your team. Or if you could dare to do it, virtually do it virtually every single day for about 15 minutes. And in that 15 minutes, everybody has to answer three questions. What did I accomplish yesterday, that’s important for the team to know about not every little thing but prepared a great presentation or financial plan for our client is coming in today. So what what was a big thing that I did yesterday? What’s the most important thing that I’m working on today, that people on the team should be aware of? And then to ask either to ask for help or to offer help saying, Okay, what I did yesterday, when I’m working on today, I’ve got some extra time today. And I’ve heard somebody else on the team say that they need some help, I’m going to be able to jump in and help or I’ve got a couple of big things that I’m working on today. If anybody has an extra time, can you help me with this and so that way, doing that scrum doing that stand up meeting, you’re creating delegation with the team through the team, and you’ll get a lot more done. And I said, it’s not something that most advisors I talked to one to say, I’m going to recommend that you have a daily meeting and they’re like, I hate meetings. I don’t want to have any meetings that day. We need it. And then they do it for a month they go, why didn’t we start doing that years ago? So that’s my delegation tip for this. I think Phil, that was probably the that’s where

Phil Calandra  19:01

I wanted to go with it, Rob, because we started doing this years ago. And man, if you want to pour grease on the skids of delegation, fry it, I challenge our listeners try it, it will work. That’s exactly where I wanted you to take this because it creates a system and why people can’t get out. The reason they don’t do it. Micro leadership, be a leader. If you don’t want to do it daily, maybe do it every two days. If you can’t do it every two or three days. Do it once a week, I promise and I don’t promise much. This will be a game changer for most firm owners and most firm leaders.

Rob Brown  19:37

Yeah, but I do want to encourage you do it every day. It’s to me the more days you do it, the better off you’re going to be so I heard they’ll give it a little bit of a breather there.

Phil Calandra  19:48

I gave you a break.

Rob Brown  19:49

I give no breaks anyway. Well, it’s been great being with you, Phil. I think it’s time to let our audience know how much we appreciate them being here. We want to encourage you if you’re listening to this podcast and you didn’t know we’re also over on YouTube, we’d love for you to subscribe to our YouTube channel but also like this podcast and share it, we want to, we want to get the word out. We really want to build the truest fan community because as always, we’re rooting for your success, like everybody thanks for joining us for this episode of the truest fan blueprints. If you want to learn more, head over to our website truest fan.com. On the site, you’ll learn more about becoming a truest fan. You’ll also find today’s show notes and links to the other gifts and resources we talked about during this episode. Again, thanks for listening and remember, we’re rooting for your success.