Delegation for control freaks: How to let go and trust your team

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Webinar presented live on March 25, 2025

Do you find yourself constantly redoing your employees’ work? Do projects slow down because everything needs your approval? If you struggle to delegate, you’re not alone—but holding onto too much can stall your agency’s growth and leave you feeling overwhelmed.

In this webinar, Chip Griffin helps agency owners break free from the micromanagement trap. You’ll learn how to identify which tasks you should be delegating, how to set expectations so work gets done the right way the first time, and how to create accountability without feeling like you have to oversee every detail.

By implementing these practical delegation strategies, you’ll not only free up your own time to focus on high-value work, but you’ll also empower your team to take ownership and perform at their best.

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The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Hello and welcome to today’s SAGA webinar. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And I am excited to be presenting today on a topic that I know will be of interest to many of you and many others in the community. And that is delegation for control freaks. Not that we are, of course, not, that we are as agency owners and leaders.

But we’re gonna talk about how to let go and trust your team. And this is relevant to you if you are an owner or if you are, even if you’re a first time manager. There are so many lessons that we can learn and that we can take away from this. So, before we get into the meat of today’s webinar, we’ll go through a few of the usual housekeeping items as people continue to trickle in.

First and foremost, the replay of this will be available, so you don’t need to sit and take meticulous notes. You’ll be able to watch the replay, get a transcript, all that kind of stuff after the fact. If you are here participating live, you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions. I’ll take those at the end of the prepared presentation, but feel free to submit them using the q and a function at the bottom of your screen at any time.

If you’re watching on replay, you won’t have access to that live q and a, but you will be able to ask questions by emailing me at [email protected]. Which certainly you can do if you are live as well and just have a question you don’t want to ask in public. And you can also ask questions in our SAGA community on Slack.

A great place to get feedback not just from me, but from your peers as well. Of course, any of the resources that I mentioned today, as well as many others will be available at smallagencygrowth.com. You can use the search function there and, and tap into something on just about any topic that you might desire, including lots of things on management and delegation and project management and all that kind of stuff, things that we’ll be delving into and touching on today.

So. Who is this webinar for? This is for you if you are someone who feels like you’re just so busy that you can’t get everything done, and so things are falling through the cracks.

It might be for you if you feel like you’re always chasing your team for updates, trying to figure out where things stand, when is this gonna get done? It might be for you if you find that you are constantly redoing your team’s work. And so maybe even you just say, I’ll just do it myself. It’s not, it’s not even worth passing it off because I can do it better.

I can do it faster. Or the worst one that I hear from a lot of senior leaders and owners is I can do it cheaper, which is very rarely the case. And finally, perhaps you don’t trust others to get things done right, or on time. Those are all things that are signals that, that maybe you are having a problem with delegation.

Either you’re not doing it or you’re not doing it effectively, and so we’ll be touching on different ways that you can address that over the course of today’s webinar.

In particular, we’ll look at why delegation typically fails. We’ll talk about the mind mindset shift that you need to have in order to be an effective delegator. We’ll talk about the value of trust and the importance of trust in successfully delegating. We’ll talk about what you should be delegating and how you do that, and finally, we’ll talk about some simple systems that will help you make sure that you get the results that you’re looking for in terms of moving things off of your plate, but still getting the right results.

So let’s talk first about why delegation fails. And there are really a few key reasons in my experience that this happens and it’s, it’s a challenge that I’ve had many times over the course of my career as well. First, it’s just lacking trust in your team members that might be not trusting, that they can really produce the quality that you’re looking for, that represents the brand that you have.

It might be a lack of trust that they will get things done on time. And so we’ll talk a little bit later about how we address these trust issues because that’s a really big problem and, and frankly, it’s the first thing that you need to address if it exists.

The second thing is that you have this fear that you are the only person who can do it to your own standards, and that may not be a trust issue. It may just be that, that you feel like you’ve got the experience and your clients have hired you for that experience, and so you are afraid to let go of a task because it’s not going to be of that same caliber. Sometimes it’s because there’s confusion about what managing is and what it means. And I think we’ve sort of fed into this a lot with our reliance on project management tools, and the like, because it really puts us in a task master position as opposed to a manager position. And I’ll explain the difference and the shift that we need to make in order to be effective there.

And then finally, a lot of us have been burned in the past. We may have been burned within our own businesses. We may have been burned in past experiences as managers. And so because we have felt that pain, we are reluctant to give things up where we want to have that control.

And so this all feeds into why we’re not getting things off of our plate that should be off of our plate and why we are more control freaks than true managers. Again, this is a challenge that I have faced repeatedly because I am someone who really does honestly believe that there are a lot of things that I can do better than anyone I’ve ever hired.

There are things I can’t do nearly as well either, but for those things where I feel like I am better at it, it is really hard to let go. And I know that is the case for many of you as well.

So let’s talk about this mindset shift that I’ve been alluding to. We need to stop thinking about being a task master, someone who is assigning specific tasks to individuals on our teams and following up to ensure that they are done reviewing them to make sure that they’re being done in a quality fashion.

That’s really making us more of a project manager, which is not typically what we want to do as an owner or even as just a general manager. We want to be in a position where we are assigning overall responsibility for things. We want to be a, a manager who is a coach, a mentor, a resource. I often describe it as being sort of a, a blocking back.

If you’re familiar with American football, someone who is out there clearing a path for the team to succeed. And, and your goal really is to play that helping role. And it’s, it’s a mindset shift because so many times we think as a manager, we just tell you, this is what you need to do. This is when you need to do it. This is how you need to do it. And then you want to hold them accountable. And you want to, to sit there and say, well, why didn’t you get this done? What’s wrong with you? And, and that is not, that may be sort of old school management thinking, but that is not how you get the most success. You really need to make this mindset shift where you are handing off responsibility for projects responsibility for certain function areas if you want to be successful. And then you want to be that helper that blocking back, that assists your team in getting it done rather than sits there with the whip and keeps hitting them until they get it done.

So. We need to think about this in terms of this shift where we’re not a task master, but we are truly a delegator.

And so, as I mentioned before, that means transferring ownership. It means giving responsibility for functional areas or outcomes. In other words, are you gonna give responsibility to someone for all of the social media on a project, or are you going to give them responsibility to hit a certain project end date with a certain result?

If you focus on functional areas and outcomes as opposed to individual tasks, you’ll be much more successful in delegation. Because now what you’re doing is you’re not just transferring the responsibility, but you’re transferring a bit of the authority as well. And it’s a lot easier for team members to move forward with things when they have true ownership of it, as opposed to when they just have a piece of the puzzle and need to, to move from point A to point B and just hand it off back to you.

It also takes you out of that mix of going back and forth because delegation is not gonna be successful if you are overseeing every little task. In fact, sometimes that can be more time consuming, which is why we will say, I’ll just do it myself. And so you need to think. Anytime you say, I will just do it myself.

Ask yourself why? Ask yourself it’s if it’s because you’re not delegating enough in order to be successful.

So you need to share with your team what they need to do. They need to have an understanding of why they need to do it. And, and this is again, an area that I’ve made a lot of mistakes on in the past.

I’ve simply said, this needs to be done, but without the context, without helping your team to understand why they are doing something, it makes them feel a little bit lost. It, it hurts their ability to make smart decisions in terms of how they resource things and how they accomplish the task. But it also hurts morale because they just, they feel like a cog as opposed to a true partner in the team that you’ve created.

And finally, you need to be the one who is eliminating obstacles and providing resources. And so that’s very different from being that task master that says, do A, B, and C by these dates in this way. Instead, it is saying, okay, here’s what I need from you. To achieve, or here’s what I need you to achieve to your team member, and then say, what do you need in order to do that?

How much time, what resources do you need? What obstacles are there? Is it me because I’m not approving things in a timely fashion? Is it a client because they’re not giving you the feedback that you need? Is it a lack of information that you need? And we need to find a way to get that? Is it training?

There are all sorts of things that your team may need in order to be successful, and your job as a manager at any level, whether you are an entry level manager or the ultimate owner of the business, is to clear those roadblocks for them and get them what they need in order to succeed. And that’s one of the things we’ll talk a little bit later about the importance of, of weekly one-on-ones.

That is always a question. I think every manager should be asking their one-on-ones, in their one-on-ones, which is what’s holding you up? What’s holding you back? How can I help? And the more that you think of it that way, and the less you think of it as, I need this by this date, the more successful you are going to be.

So another problem that we have is that we really feel like nobody can do it as well as we can. And that may be true, particularly if you are the owner of the agency. We got here because we were really good usually at what we did. We got there because we could do things faster and better than a lot of our peers.

And that’s what drives us to be entrepreneurs. But at the same time, we need to understand that that is not a viable business model, that we internalize all of this. And try to have people who are identical to us. We need to have people who are just like us, but maybe 5, 10, 15 years ago, people at an earlier stage in their career who need a little bit more help, a little bit more coaching, a little bit more guidance.

We also need to, to accept that we are often perfectionists and I tell and have told everyone who’s ever worked for me, never let the perfect be the enemy of the good. You need to make sure that you’re not just phoning it in, but you’re producing good enough results. But that doesn’t mean that it has to be absolutely perfect, and that’s true whether you’re doing design or writing or strategy.

There are a lot of things that we can do to achieve the expectations of our clients without making it absolutely perfect. And if we keep striving for perfection, even if it’s just with our own work, it makes it really hard to do it in any kind of a scalable fashion. You also need to understand that your way isn’t the only way.

In fact, it may not even be the best way. Very frequently our team members will bring new ideas, new experiences to the table, and they may find a better way to get from here to there. And so rather than telling them how to do that and really keeping them within a tight lane, you want to let them know what you’re trying to achieve and then give them the flexibility to achieve it.

Now, that doesn’t mean that they’re gonna make all of the right decisions all of the time. Sometimes you will need to step in to help, particularly if it’s going to change the outcome, but that’s really the only time you should be stepping in. If it’s clear that a deadline is going to be missed or an expectation is not going to be met, then you absolutely need to step in.

If things are generally on track, even if they’re not exactly the way that you would do them, it becomes a problem if you are inserting yourself, because that’s when you turn into a micromanager. That’s when you start seeing less in terms of results from your team.

Ultimately doing things well, doing things on time. That’s what our real responsibility is as an agency and as a manager. That’s what we should be striving for. And as long as those boxes are being ticked, we need to, to take our focus on the, the mechanics of the day-to-day and everything that’s happening from that.

So bottom line is that we need to make sure that we are focused on those results and focused on meeting the expectations and timelines of our clients, but not getting too deep into the weeds about how exactly the team is accomplishing those things.

So there are times when those things are not happening, there are times when it isn’t actually good enough.

And so just because the perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the good, that doesn’t mean that you should be lowering your standards, that you should be delivering subpar work or that you should be callous about the deadlines that you have agreed to with your clients. So what do you do in those cases?

In those cases, if you want to be successful at delegation, you need to remember a couple of key things. First is don’t redo someone else’s work. Don’t sit there and say, okay, well, I’ll just rewrite this press release, or I’ll just redo this logo design, or I’ll just come up with this strategy on my own.

That doesn’t really help. It doesn’t help for several reasons. First of all, it takes a lot of your time to do that. But more importantly, it doesn’t help your team member become better so that the next time those same things don’t happen. And so you need to remember that as a manager, your primary role is to be a coach and advisor to your team.

And so that means that you need to accept that these mistakes are going to happen. But you also wanna make sure that your team members are learning from those mistakes. I always tell people who work for me, I understand that we will have screw ups, that mistakes will happen. All I ask is that you learn from them so that we don’t repeat the same mistake in the same way again and again, because that’s when I do get irritated.

But I do accept that we are all fallible and that these things will happen from time to time. So create that culture where it’s okay to fail as long as you are learning from it, and as long as you are figuring out how to recover. And so that means that you need to be in a position where you’re offering advice on how to solve the problem, how to do it better the next time.

But I would always do it in terms of asking the team member, what could you have done differently? What could we have done differently, more importantly, in order to achieve a different outcome or to avoid the trip up that we had. Those are key things to think about, and it’s a real shift in how you think about things from that

accountability standpoint where it’s simply, you screwed up. We’re gonna hold you accountable for that. You can’t allow this to happen again. That is not a productive way to help your team grow and thrive over time. So work on that as your approach when things aren’t good enough and when things do need to change.

So all of this, as I mentioned at the start of today’s webinar, is based on trust. And so one of the biggest things I see from agency owners is that they will tell me that they don’t trust a team member to be able to do it right and to do it on time. And if you can’t trust a team member, whether that’s an employee or a contractor, or worse, if it’s a client that you say that you don’t trust them to give you what you need or to tell you exactly what they’re trying to accomplish, you need to address these trust issues before all else.

Because if you don’t have trust, there is no way to have a successful relationship as a manager, as an agency owner, or anything like that. And trust is not something that you just tick the box and say, yeah, I trust you. No, I don’t trust you. It’s something that both sides have to demonstrate over time, and you need to show your trust in your team members in really tangible ways.

And by being a micromanager, you are effectively telling your team that you don’t trust them, because if you did, you wouldn’t need to be all up in their business all of the time in order to accomplish a task. So you need to demonstrate it. Because your trust in them is paramount. At the same time, they need to trust in you that you are going to give them the resources that they need, that you’re gonna give them the guidance that they need, that you are going to listen to them when they raise concerns.

It doesn’t mean that you have to let them make every decision on their own. It doesn’t mean you have to give them a blank check, but it does mean that you show you have to demonstrate that you’re hearing them out. And that if you don’t agree with what they’re asking for in terms of resources or help or guidance, then you need to explain why that is. And you need to make sure that they understand that you considered it, but decided that it was not correct for whatever reason.

Whether you don’t have the resource available, whether the client wouldn’t agree to it or whatever, you need to make sure that this trust is a two-way street. And if you don’t have that go address that first. And I would say to you, if this is a widespread issue that you find that you have difficulty trusting most of your employees or many of your employees, then you need to take a deeper look at why that is.

Is it a, a challenge that you’re having in the hiring process to bring the right people on board? Is it because you’re not setting your standards and expectations correctly? Is it that you just have trust issues generally? They’re all different reasons that might exist, but if it’s more than just one or two employees that you have a trust issue with, you need to get to the root cause of it because it’s going to hold you back and, and prevent you from becoming an effective manager who can get things off of your own plate and get your team all rowing in the same direction with you.

So we’ve talked a little bit about trust, but here are some tangible things that you can do to build this trust. So part of it is what we talked about earlier. You need to accept that there’s going to be failure and you need to give your team space to achieve the results that you’re looking for. And that means you can’t constantly be checking in.

You can’t constantly be jumping in and saying, here, let me help with that, or jumping in and saying, you know, why isn’t this done if it’s a preliminary step. You need to focus on the big picture. You need to focus on what are the outcomes, what are the timelines, and if there are things that are gonna deviate from that, yes, you need to address those. But you shouldn’t be in a position where are asking those questions every day or multiple times a day.

You need to give the your team members the ability to work through things on their own and have the ability to come to you when they need to raise a flag, when they need to ask a question, when they need to request help. If you help out when it’s actually necessary, that’s showing confidence in your team. That empowers them, that makes them more likely to figure out how they can move forward and achieve success for you, for the business, for your team, and all of that.

And so by providing this advice and not control, this is how you tangibly demonstrate trust with your team.

So now let’s talk about the sort of the elephant in the room, which is how do you figure out what to actually delegate? Because maybe, maybe you’ve bought into everything that I’ve said so far.

Maybe you are absolutely saying yes, absolutely. These are, I agree with you. I want to hand off ownership of things. I don’t wanna be a micromanager, I wanna stay out of the weeds. I want to be helpful to the team. But what does that look like and what do you actually delegate? So I encourage you, first of all, well first of all, everybody in the agency world should be keeping time sheets.

Not because it’s fun to do. Not because you need to micromanage what everyone on your team is doing. But because it helps you to understand what tasks are out there, how is time being spent? And the most important person to do this with is you, particularly if you are the owner. But any owner or manager needs to have a strong handle on how they’re actually spending their time.

So start by using time tracking or some other means to list out all of the different things that you’re doing on a regular basis. And from there, I want you to build out a two by two grid and let me show you what I’m talking about here. So let me see if I can successfully shift cameras here. And so really what you need to do is have a two by two grid.

And so what you should have here is on this axis, like and dislike. And down here you should have others. In other words, others can do it. And you, which is only you. So if you break out all of the tasks into this foursquare grid, what you’ll find is that the things that only you can do and that you like doing, these are the most important things.

This is what you should build your whole work life around. These are the things that you are adding, the value you are contributing the most to, and that that will allow you to be effective. It will also provide you the highest level of satisfaction. Then what you should do is you need to offload everything that is in this box.

If others can do it and you dislike doing it, those are the first things typically to start looking at offloading. Now, the the other two boxes are a little bit more challenging, right? So if, if there are things that only you can do and that you dislike doing, those are ones that you just need to ask yourself, just double down and, and, and really ask yourself, do, are you really the only person that can do it?

Or could someone else. And at the same time, does it even need to be done? I think a lot of you will find, if you look at all of the tasks that you engage in, that there are plenty of things that you do that it really wouldn’t make a difference to the business or to your clients or to your team if they weren’t being done. So take a really close look at things there.

Now for the things that you like doing, but could be delegated. That’s about the trickiest box there is because those are the things that you need to be thinking about in terms of if it’s, if it’s something you like doing, but you could delegate, that’s a balancing act that really comes down to how much time you have available.

And we all have things that we enjoy doing, but we don’t necessarily need to do. And it’s okay to have some amount of that in your work mix because it does contribute to your satisfaction and, and both you and your team members need to feel satisfaction in order to achieve your highest level of success.

But I would say to you, if you start by building your day around those things that only you can do and that you like doing, and if you start by offloading those things that can be given to other people and, and that you dislike doing, that will get you really far, and then you can look at the others as part of the mix and figure out how to balance it most effectively.

Ultimately when you, when there’s a really tough call to be made and it’s, and you can’t quite figure out whether you should do it or not, whether you should delegate it or not, you really need to look at what the value of that work is. In other words, you as the, the owner or you as a manager, you have a certain effective hourly rate that you should be achieving, and you need to ask yourself, is this two or three or $400 an hour work, or is this $25 an hour work that someone else could be doing, whether that’s a contractor or an employee or whatever. And so you need to, to make sure that you are moving those things off of your plate that simply are not delivering the value to the business that could otherwise be done there.

You need to look at this in terms of, of a net benefit, right? So sometimes I will talk with an owner and they’ll say, well, I don’t really have someone else who can do this, and so I just, I need to do it for now. And I’ll say, well, what would it cost for you to have someone else do it? And let’s say that that cost is $50 an hour.

The value that you as the owner can bring to the business is 250 or $300 an hour, then that means every hour that you move off, yes, it costs you some money, but if you’re actually able to deploy that in a more value oriented way, your net gain is actually $200 an hour if you go from $50 to 250. So you need to think about those things and make rational decisions about where you’re going to invest because your time, particularly if you were the owner, is the most limited thing that you have. But really, every manager has a limited number of hours that they can give. And so if you want to be able to do more and be more effective, you need to figure out how to get the highest value out of every hour that you’re spending.

So let’s talk now about how we delegate responsibility in the right way. So the first thing that you need to do is you need to be really clear about what your expectations are, and that means you need to make sure that your team members that you’re delegating to have a clear understanding of what success looks like.

They need to know what the timeline is for this, what are the deadlines that need to be met, what milestones must be met along the way. They need to understand what are the requirements for approval and feedback. Because if they have all of these things, then they can figure out how to manage their time most effectively.

They can figure out how to deploy the resources that are available to them. They can figure out what additional resources they need, may need to ask for, or what questions they need to ask in order to the clarity they need in order to succeed. And they also need to understand why what they’re doing actually matters.

Because I think we’re finding more and more with employees in 2025 that they really want to have a, a feeling like they’re doing something that has some sort of meaning to it. And it doesn’t mean that everything we do has some grand meaning and, and epic consequences, but they need to figure out where it all fits in the scheme of things.

And the more that we can take a little bit of time to explain that, the more likely we are to have the kind of effort and input that we need, with the work that we’re delegating in order to have it be successful.

So. All of this is not to say that there is no role for accountability. We’re not, we’re not creating a, a mindset where we’re simply handing things off and hoping for the best.

We absolutely need to still expect accountability from our team members. So how do we do that without micromanaging? And I would say that my, my biggest advice to every manager everywhere is that regular, weekly one-on-ones that happen without fail, between every manager and every direct report is about the most effective tool that you have. And that is particularly true when it comes to delegation. Because those weekly one-on-ones are an opportunity to empower the employee, the team member, to ask questions, to raise concerns, to flag things that you need to be aware of.

And if you’re not having them, you’re relying on that employee to have to come to you directly and say, Hey, Chip, I, I need to, I need to share this with you. And that’s a higher threshold. That’s a, it’s a scarier thing for many individuals, particularly again, if you are the owner of the business. And so people may be reluctant on your team to do that.

Whereas if they have the forum of a weekly one-on-one, it’s a lot easier. It’s a lot less scary, a lot less confrontational to raise these concerns in that forum. So you need to make sure that you’re making that available. At the same time, for larger projects, for things where you have multiple team members involved, you need to have regular check-ins to do that, whether that’s your normal weekly or biweekly team meeting, or whether that’s special project meetings with just the folks involved in that.

It will depend on your individual organization and the structure and all of that. But you need to have that ability for everyone who’s responsible for something and shares responsibility for certain goals to come together in the same way as those regular one-on-ones where it’s, it’s not a big deal to be able to share a little bit of information, to raise those concerns, and make everybody aware of what’s needed, what’s on track, what’s off track.

So rely on those get togethers as an opportunity to ensure that you’re having the accountability for the results that you’re trying to achieve. But you also need to make sure that your team understands that you are always available as a resource. You can’t be a coach, a mentor, an advisor, and all of that, and take yourself out of taskmaster world if you are not truly opening up and being available as a resource.

So that means if you’re asked a question, you need to be able to reply in a timely fashion. Part of that may mean that you need to delegate more things so you have the bandwidth to answer the questions that your team sends you. One of the things I was often pretty bad at was providing the final review and approval for things that I needed to review and approve before they moved out of the organization.

And so we need to be thinking about how we operate with our teams.

So you need to be making yourself that resource and, and freeing yourself up to be available. And that means if you don’t have the time available for it. You need to, to find ways to free your time up in order to serve as that resource and mentor and helperto your team members. But it’s important as you’re focusing on accountability and getting the results that you need, that you stay away from the blame game.

And so that’s not just directly saying, I blame you. It’s also making sure that you are not implying that, or that your team members are not walking away with that impression. You need to be in a position where you are helping them to learn from their mistakes, to learn from failure and not view it as an evil thing and not view it as something for you to scold or blame.

And so that means that you need to sit down and have constructive conversations. And so, for example, when we had mistakes in the various businesses that I’ve run, I would usually sit down with the, the team members involved and say, okay. What could we do differently next time? How could we avoid a similar outcome?

How might we mitigate the outcome if it’s something that can’t be completely avoided? And by thinking in those terms and thinking about how we move on from here, you still have that sense of accountability, but it’s not being done in an adversarial or confrontational kind of way. Now obviously there are going to be exceptions.

There will be times where it is such an egregious mistake that you need to, to address it in a different fashion. But the vast majority of the situations that we deal with as managers within agencies can be handled by simply learning from those lessons, figuring out how to, to mitigate the current problem.

That might be going to a client and saying, we screwed up. Here’s the step, here are the steps we’re going to take to avoid it happening again in the future. Or here are the steps that we’re taking in order to rectify the error that we had. Almost nothing is completely insurmountable, and so we need to make sure that we understand that so we don’t overreact, but we also need to communicate that to our teams so that we can help them move through these challenges themselves. Because that’s the only way to get to this effective, effective level of delegation because your team is not scared. Your team is there to help. Your team is there to learn.

And so I would also encourage you that even when things are going well, have after action reviews, after a client leaves or after a project is done, or periodically for existing clients. Whatever the trigger points are for your organization, have these conversations regularly because even when things are going well, you can still find ways to improve. You can find ways to do things more efficiently, achieve better results. You can find ways to better collaborate as a manager and team member or amongst different groups within your organization. So focus on all of these things and try to learn from each other and try to improve consistently, and that will improve your accountability, both in good times and in bad.

So in order for all of these things to work, you need to have a true ownership culture within your agency. And so that means that the individuals need to understand that they are not simply task master or, task completers. They need to understand that they do truly have responsibility and ownership for whatever you’re handing off to them.

And that means that when they do a good job, you need to make sure that you are celebrating, that you need to highlight the successes. You need to make sure that your focus is on the results and not the process. How they get there doesn’t matter nearly as much as what the outcome is, as long as it is a good job and on time.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t work on finding ways to be more efficient or that you can’t find ways to be more consistent. But don’t get too hung up on all of the mechanics because that is gonna make it more difficult for you to get things off of your plate.

And all of that means that, as we said before, you need to show this trusting feeling towards your team. You need to be asking them, how can I help? As opposed to, why isn’t this done? And so when you see something that’s off track, ask that question. Say, you know, I, I noticed that this doesn’t seem to be on track. How can I help? What can I do in order to, to help you to succeed? Because that helper mindset is going to do a lot more to get you out of micromanagement and make it easier and more comfortable for you to move things off of your plate.

So bottom line is, is letting go is worth it. It is, it is difficult. I fully admit that, and I, there have been plenty of times over the course of my career that I have, I’ve taken on things that I, I simply shouldn’t, I should have allowed others to do it. I was chair of an organization and there was a, a monthly message that went out under my name and I would, I insisted on writing it myself, even though they had a staff member who was fully prepared to do it and probably could do it

almost as well as I could from a quality standpoint, and probably even better from a consistency standpoint, because they knew more about what the organization was doing day to day. And so in my mind I was a better writer. I knew my own voice better, and so I said, I’m gonna do this every month. It didn’t take me a lot of time, but at the same time, I should have allowed it.

It would’ve, it would’ve showed more trust in the team member for that organization who would, would be writing the message. And it also would clear up even whatever small amount of time on my calendar that it did. And so I can tell you that letting go is difficult, but letting go is worth it because it allows you to focus on that higher value work that you can do.

It allows you to focus on the things that really help you to advance the business, to move the ball forward and not let you get. So buried in the weeds that you’re just sitting there looking at Asana or whatever project management tool you’re doing and saying, I noticed these deadlines haven’t been met, or, I need to follow up with Sally and see why this isn’t done. Or, I need to ask what the status of this is because it doesn’t appear to have been updated.

And as you, as you make this change, as you start to let go, your team is going to grow. Your team’s confidence will increase as you give them more responsibility. They will learn more because there’s nothing more demoralizing than having your boss micromanage you.

And particularly I’ve seen this with folks that I did a lot of rewriting of the content that they would send me. The quality consistently went down because they knew I was gonna rewrite it anyway. So why bother? If I’m gonna rewrite it, why not just phone it in? And I’ve had this happen with clients as well.

I, there were clients who I knew would just completely gut anything that I sent them. So I would spend less time putting that piece together because what was the point? Why should I polish it if I knew that they were going to just put red ink all over it anyway?

So by letting go, we’re actually helping our team to do better. And by not letting go, we’re actually. Encouraging them to decline in the quality of the work that they’re doing, even if unintentional.

But it also helps us to make our businesses more sustainable because whether you are a frontline manager or the agency owner, the more that we get things off of our plate and the more that we have our team involved in things, it becomes a more sustainable model because we’re not becoming the bottlenecks, we’re not serving as problems, and instead we are resources.

And so that’s a really valuable benefit of letting go. And finally, if you let go, you’ll be happier because you won’t have all of these things on your plate that are eating at your time, that are making you frustrated. You won’t benavigating everybody’s business every day. And so your team members will have improved satisfaction.

And so the more satisfied everybody is with their jobs, with their business, it’s going to be a more effective result. So, let’s go ahead and, and tie this up with a bow. And as I do that, if you are here live, feel free to start submitting questions using the q and a function that I’ll address in just a moment.

So I would say that the key takeaways that I would, would have for you are, first of all, delegation isn’t easy. It’s valuable, but it isn’t easy. Losing control is actually a good thing. We all hear those words and, and I, I’ve talked to agency owners, they’ll tell me, I, I feel like I’m losing control.

Good. Good because you are not there to control everything. Your goal is to set the expectations, to set the, the goalposts on the horizon and get everybody headed in that direction and achieving them. Not to sit there and carry them there yourself. And finally, I would say that. Letting go. It, it, it’s not something that that will happen overnight.

You’re not gonna finish watching this webinar and say, yep, all set. I know it. I’m, I’m gonna switch from being a task master to someone who is handing off ownership and responsibility. You totally buy into it. That’s great. It’s not gonna happen overnight. And so what I would encourage you to do is coming out of this webinar, I would suggest to you that you pick one thing, just pick one thing from that, that grid that you’ve got, that we’ve talked about, that two by two grid.

Pick one thing in that dislike others column, and you will be able to move that off of your plate and you will start to see the benefits of that. And then it will just mushroom from there. So go ahead. Stop being a control freak. Find a way to trust your team. Find a way to turn your team into true resources and partners in the work that you’re doing, and you’ll be happier and you will see better results for your business and for your clients.

So with that, that will take us to the end of the prepared presentation. If you are watching this on replay, this is where the replay will conclude.

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Hello and welcome to today’s SAGA webinar. I’m your host, Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And I am excited to be presenting today on a topic that I know will be of interest to many of you and many others in the community. And that is delegation for control freaks. Not that we are, of course, not, that we are as agency owners and leaders.

But we’re gonna talk about how to let go and trust your team. And this is relevant to you if you are an owner or if you are, even if you’re a first time manager. There are so many lessons that we can learn and that we can take away from this. So, before we get into the meat of today’s webinar, we’ll go through a few of the usual housekeeping items as people continue to trickle in.

First and foremost, the replay of this will be available, so you don’t need to sit and take meticulous notes. You’ll be able to watch the replay, get a transcript, all that kind of stuff after the fact. If you are here participating live, you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions. I’ll take those at the end of the prepared presentation, but feel free to submit them using the q and a function at the bottom of your screen at any time.

If you’re watching on replay, you won’t have access to that live q and a, but you will be able to ask questions by emailing me at [email protected]. Which certainly you can do if you are live as well and just have a question you don’t want to ask in public. And you can also ask questions in our SAGA community on Slack.

A great place to get feedback not just from me, but from your peers as well. Of course, any of the resources that I mentioned today, as well as many others will be available at smallagencygrowth.com. You can use the search function there and, and tap into something on just about any topic that you might desire, including lots of things on management and delegation and project management and all that kind of stuff, things that we’ll be delving into and touching on today.

So. Who is this webinar for? This is for you if you are someone who feels like you’re just so busy that you can’t get everything done, and so things are falling through the cracks.

It might be for you if you feel like you’re always chasing your team for updates, trying to figure out where things stand, when is this gonna get done? It might be for you if you find that you are constantly redoing your team’s work. And so maybe even you just say, I’ll just do it myself. It’s not, it’s not even worth passing it off because I can do it better.

I can do it faster. Or the worst one that I hear from a lot of senior leaders and owners is I can do it cheaper, which is very rarely the case. And finally, perhaps you don’t trust others to get things done right, or on time. Those are all things that are signals that, that maybe you are having a problem with delegation.

Either you’re not doing it or you’re not doing it effectively, and so we’ll be touching on different ways that you can address that over the course of today’s webinar.

In particular, we’ll look at why delegation typically fails. We’ll talk about the mind mindset shift that you need to have in order to be an effective delegator. We’ll talk about the value of trust and the importance of trust in successfully delegating. We’ll talk about what you should be delegating and how you do that, and finally, we’ll talk about some simple systems that will help you make sure that you get the results that you’re looking for in terms of moving things off of your plate, but still getting the right results.

So let’s talk first about why delegation fails. And there are really a few key reasons in my experience that this happens and it’s, it’s a challenge that I’ve had many times over the course of my career as well. First, it’s just lacking trust in your team members that might be not trusting, that they can really produce the quality that you’re looking for, that represents the brand that you have.

It might be a lack of trust that they will get things done on time. And so we’ll talk a little bit later about how we address these trust issues because that’s a really big problem and, and frankly, it’s the first thing that you need to address if it exists.

The second thing is that you have this fear that you are the only person who can do it to your own standards, and that may not be a trust issue. It may just be that, that you feel like you’ve got the experience and your clients have hired you for that experience, and so you are afraid to let go of a task because it’s not going to be of that same caliber. Sometimes it’s because there’s confusion about what managing is and what it means. And I think we’ve sort of fed into this a lot with our reliance on project management tools, and the like, because it really puts us in a task master position as opposed to a manager position. And I’ll explain the difference and the shift that we need to make in order to be effective there.

And then finally, a lot of us have been burned in the past. We may have been burned within our own businesses. We may have been burned in past experiences as managers. And so because we have felt that pain, we are reluctant to give things up where we want to have that control.

And so this all feeds into why we’re not getting things off of our plate that should be off of our plate and why we are more control freaks than true managers. Again, this is a challenge that I have faced repeatedly because I am someone who really does honestly believe that there are a lot of things that I can do better than anyone I’ve ever hired.

There are things I can’t do nearly as well either, but for those things where I feel like I am better at it, it is really hard to let go. And I know that is the case for many of you as well.

So let’s talk about this mindset shift that I’ve been alluding to. We need to stop thinking about being a task master, someone who is assigning specific tasks to individuals on our teams and following up to ensure that they are done reviewing them to make sure that they’re being done in a quality fashion.

That’s really making us more of a project manager, which is not typically what we want to do as an owner or even as just a general manager. We want to be in a position where we are assigning overall responsibility for things. We want to be a, a manager who is a coach, a mentor, a resource. I often describe it as being sort of a, a blocking back.

If you’re familiar with American football, someone who is out there clearing a path for the team to succeed. And, and your goal really is to play that helping role. And it’s, it’s a mindset shift because so many times we think as a manager, we just tell you, this is what you need to do. This is when you need to do it. This is how you need to do it. And then you want to hold them accountable. And you want to, to sit there and say, well, why didn’t you get this done? What’s wrong with you? And, and that is not, that may be sort of old school management thinking, but that is not how you get the most success. You really need to make this mindset shift where you are handing off responsibility for projects responsibility for certain function areas if you want to be successful. And then you want to be that helper that blocking back, that assists your team in getting it done rather than sits there with the whip and keeps hitting them until they get it done.

So. We need to think about this in terms of this shift where we’re not a task master, but we are truly a delegator.

And so, as I mentioned before, that means transferring ownership. It means giving responsibility for functional areas or outcomes. In other words, are you gonna give responsibility to someone for all of the social media on a project, or are you going to give them responsibility to hit a certain project end date with a certain result?

If you focus on functional areas and outcomes as opposed to individual tasks, you’ll be much more successful in delegation. Because now what you’re doing is you’re not just transferring the responsibility, but you’re transferring a bit of the authority as well. And it’s a lot easier for team members to move forward with things when they have true ownership of it, as opposed to when they just have a piece of the puzzle and need to, to move from point A to point B and just hand it off back to you.

It also takes you out of that mix of going back and forth because delegation is not gonna be successful if you are overseeing every little task. In fact, sometimes that can be more time consuming, which is why we will say, I’ll just do it myself. And so you need to think. Anytime you say, I will just do it myself.

Ask yourself why? Ask yourself it’s if it’s because you’re not delegating enough in order to be successful.

So you need to share with your team what they need to do. They need to have an understanding of why they need to do it. And, and this is again, an area that I’ve made a lot of mistakes on in the past.

I’ve simply said, this needs to be done, but without the context, without helping your team to understand why they are doing something, it makes them feel a little bit lost. It, it hurts their ability to make smart decisions in terms of how they resource things and how they accomplish the task. But it also hurts morale because they just, they feel like a cog as opposed to a true partner in the team that you’ve created.

And finally, you need to be the one who is eliminating obstacles and providing resources. And so that’s very different from being that task master that says, do A, B, and C by these dates in this way. Instead, it is saying, okay, here’s what I need from you. To achieve, or here’s what I need you to achieve to your team member, and then say, what do you need in order to do that?

How much time, what resources do you need? What obstacles are there? Is it me because I’m not approving things in a timely fashion? Is it a client because they’re not giving you the feedback that you need? Is it a lack of information that you need? And we need to find a way to get that? Is it training?

There are all sorts of things that your team may need in order to be successful, and your job as a manager at any level, whether you are an entry level manager or the ultimate owner of the business, is to clear those roadblocks for them and get them what they need in order to succeed. And that’s one of the things we’ll talk a little bit later about the importance of, of weekly one-on-ones.

That is always a question. I think every manager should be asking their one-on-ones, in their one-on-ones, which is what’s holding you up? What’s holding you back? How can I help? And the more that you think of it that way, and the less you think of it as, I need this by this date, the more successful you are going to be.

So another problem that we have is that we really feel like nobody can do it as well as we can. And that may be true, particularly if you are the owner of the agency. We got here because we were really good usually at what we did. We got there because we could do things faster and better than a lot of our peers.

And that’s what drives us to be entrepreneurs. But at the same time, we need to understand that that is not a viable business model, that we internalize all of this. And try to have people who are identical to us. We need to have people who are just like us, but maybe 5, 10, 15 years ago, people at an earlier stage in their career who need a little bit more help, a little bit more coaching, a little bit more guidance.

We also need to, to accept that we are often perfectionists and I tell and have told everyone who’s ever worked for me, never let the perfect be the enemy of the good. You need to make sure that you’re not just phoning it in, but you’re producing good enough results. But that doesn’t mean that it has to be absolutely perfect, and that’s true whether you’re doing design or writing or strategy.

There are a lot of things that we can do to achieve the expectations of our clients without making it absolutely perfect. And if we keep striving for perfection, even if it’s just with our own work, it makes it really hard to do it in any kind of a scalable fashion. You also need to understand that your way isn’t the only way.

In fact, it may not even be the best way. Very frequently our team members will bring new ideas, new experiences to the table, and they may find a better way to get from here to there. And so rather than telling them how to do that and really keeping them within a tight lane, you want to let them know what you’re trying to achieve and then give them the flexibility to achieve it.

Now, that doesn’t mean that they’re gonna make all of the right decisions all of the time. Sometimes you will need to step in to help, particularly if it’s going to change the outcome, but that’s really the only time you should be stepping in. If it’s clear that a deadline is going to be missed or an expectation is not going to be met, then you absolutely need to step in.

If things are generally on track, even if they’re not exactly the way that you would do them, it becomes a problem if you are inserting yourself, because that’s when you turn into a micromanager. That’s when you start seeing less in terms of results from your team.

Ultimately doing things well, doing things on time. That’s what our real responsibility is as an agency and as a manager. That’s what we should be striving for. And as long as those boxes are being ticked, we need to, to take our focus on the, the mechanics of the day-to-day and everything that’s happening from that.

So bottom line is that we need to make sure that we are focused on those results and focused on meeting the expectations and timelines of our clients, but not getting too deep into the weeds about how exactly the team is accomplishing those things.

So there are times when those things are not happening, there are times when it isn’t actually good enough.

And so just because the perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the good, that doesn’t mean that you should be lowering your standards, that you should be delivering subpar work or that you should be callous about the deadlines that you have agreed to with your clients. So what do you do in those cases?

In those cases, if you want to be successful at delegation, you need to remember a couple of key things. First is don’t redo someone else’s work. Don’t sit there and say, okay, well, I’ll just rewrite this press release, or I’ll just redo this logo design, or I’ll just come up with this strategy on my own.

That doesn’t really help. It doesn’t help for several reasons. First of all, it takes a lot of your time to do that. But more importantly, it doesn’t help your team member become better so that the next time those same things don’t happen. And so you need to remember that as a manager, your primary role is to be a coach and advisor to your team.

And so that means that you need to accept that these mistakes are going to happen. But you also wanna make sure that your team members are learning from those mistakes. I always tell people who work for me, I understand that we will have screw ups, that mistakes will happen. All I ask is that you learn from them so that we don’t repeat the same mistake in the same way again and again, because that’s when I do get irritated.

But I do accept that we are all fallible and that these things will happen from time to time. So create that culture where it’s okay to fail as long as you are learning from it, and as long as you are figuring out how to recover. And so that means that you need to be in a position where you’re offering advice on how to solve the problem, how to do it better the next time.

But I would always do it in terms of asking the team member, what could you have done differently? What could we have done differently, more importantly, in order to achieve a different outcome or to avoid the trip up that we had. Those are key things to think about, and it’s a real shift in how you think about things from that

accountability standpoint where it’s simply, you screwed up. We’re gonna hold you accountable for that. You can’t allow this to happen again. That is not a productive way to help your team grow and thrive over time. So work on that as your approach when things aren’t good enough and when things do need to change.

So all of this, as I mentioned at the start of today’s webinar, is based on trust. And so one of the biggest things I see from agency owners is that they will tell me that they don’t trust a team member to be able to do it right and to do it on time. And if you can’t trust a team member, whether that’s an employee or a contractor, or worse, if it’s a client that you say that you don’t trust them to give you what you need or to tell you exactly what they’re trying to accomplish, you need to address these trust issues before all else.

Because if you don’t have trust, there is no way to have a successful relationship as a manager, as an agency owner, or anything like that. And trust is not something that you just tick the box and say, yeah, I trust you. No, I don’t trust you. It’s something that both sides have to demonstrate over time, and you need to show your trust in your team members in really tangible ways.

And by being a micromanager, you are effectively telling your team that you don’t trust them, because if you did, you wouldn’t need to be all up in their business all of the time in order to accomplish a task. So you need to demonstrate it. Because your trust in them is paramount. At the same time, they need to trust in you that you are going to give them the resources that they need, that you’re gonna give them the guidance that they need, that you are going to listen to them when they raise concerns.

It doesn’t mean that you have to let them make every decision on their own. It doesn’t mean you have to give them a blank check, but it does mean that you show you have to demonstrate that you’re hearing them out. And that if you don’t agree with what they’re asking for in terms of resources or help or guidance, then you need to explain why that is. And you need to make sure that they understand that you considered it, but decided that it was not correct for whatever reason.

Whether you don’t have the resource available, whether the client wouldn’t agree to it or whatever, you need to make sure that this trust is a two-way street. And if you don’t have that go address that first. And I would say to you, if this is a widespread issue that you find that you have difficulty trusting most of your employees or many of your employees, then you need to take a deeper look at why that is.

Is it a, a challenge that you’re having in the hiring process to bring the right people on board? Is it because you’re not setting your standards and expectations correctly? Is it that you just have trust issues generally? They’re all different reasons that might exist, but if it’s more than just one or two employees that you have a trust issue with, you need to get to the root cause of it because it’s going to hold you back and, and prevent you from becoming an effective manager who can get things off of your own plate and get your team all rowing in the same direction with you.

So we’ve talked a little bit about trust, but here are some tangible things that you can do to build this trust. So part of it is what we talked about earlier. You need to accept that there’s going to be failure and you need to give your team space to achieve the results that you’re looking for. And that means you can’t constantly be checking in.

You can’t constantly be jumping in and saying, here, let me help with that, or jumping in and saying, you know, why isn’t this done if it’s a preliminary step. You need to focus on the big picture. You need to focus on what are the outcomes, what are the timelines, and if there are things that are gonna deviate from that, yes, you need to address those. But you shouldn’t be in a position where are asking those questions every day or multiple times a day.

You need to give the your team members the ability to work through things on their own and have the ability to come to you when they need to raise a flag, when they need to ask a question, when they need to request help. If you help out when it’s actually necessary, that’s showing confidence in your team. That empowers them, that makes them more likely to figure out how they can move forward and achieve success for you, for the business, for your team, and all of that.

And so by providing this advice and not control, this is how you tangibly demonstrate trust with your team.

So now let’s talk about the sort of the elephant in the room, which is how do you figure out what to actually delegate? Because maybe, maybe you’ve bought into everything that I’ve said so far.

Maybe you are absolutely saying yes, absolutely. These are, I agree with you. I want to hand off ownership of things. I don’t wanna be a micromanager, I wanna stay out of the weeds. I want to be helpful to the team. But what does that look like and what do you actually delegate? So I encourage you, first of all, well first of all, everybody in the agency world should be keeping time sheets.

Not because it’s fun to do. Not because you need to micromanage what everyone on your team is doing. But because it helps you to understand what tasks are out there, how is time being spent? And the most important person to do this with is you, particularly if you are the owner. But any owner or manager needs to have a strong handle on how they’re actually spending their time.

So start by using time tracking or some other means to list out all of the different things that you’re doing on a regular basis. And from there, I want you to build out a two by two grid and let me show you what I’m talking about here. So let me see if I can successfully shift cameras here. And so really what you need to do is have a two by two grid.

And so what you should have here is on this axis, like and dislike. And down here you should have others. In other words, others can do it. And you, which is only you. So if you break out all of the tasks into this foursquare grid, what you’ll find is that the things that only you can do and that you like doing, these are the most important things.

This is what you should build your whole work life around. These are the things that you are adding, the value you are contributing the most to, and that that will allow you to be effective. It will also provide you the highest level of satisfaction. Then what you should do is you need to offload everything that is in this box.

If others can do it and you dislike doing it, those are the first things typically to start looking at offloading. Now, the the other two boxes are a little bit more challenging, right? So if, if there are things that only you can do and that you dislike doing, those are ones that you just need to ask yourself, just double down and, and, and really ask yourself, do, are you really the only person that can do it?

Or could someone else. And at the same time, does it even need to be done? I think a lot of you will find, if you look at all of the tasks that you engage in, that there are plenty of things that you do that it really wouldn’t make a difference to the business or to your clients or to your team if they weren’t being done. So take a really close look at things there.

Now for the things that you like doing, but could be delegated. That’s about the trickiest box there is because those are the things that you need to be thinking about in terms of if it’s, if it’s something you like doing, but you could delegate, that’s a balancing act that really comes down to how much time you have available.

And we all have things that we enjoy doing, but we don’t necessarily need to do. And it’s okay to have some amount of that in your work mix because it does contribute to your satisfaction and, and both you and your team members need to feel satisfaction in order to achieve your highest level of success.

But I would say to you, if you start by building your day around those things that only you can do and that you like doing, and if you start by offloading those things that can be given to other people and, and that you dislike doing, that will get you really far, and then you can look at the others as part of the mix and figure out how to balance it most effectively.

Ultimately when you, when there’s a really tough call to be made and it’s, and you can’t quite figure out whether you should do it or not, whether you should delegate it or not, you really need to look at what the value of that work is. In other words, you as the, the owner or you as a manager, you have a certain effective hourly rate that you should be achieving, and you need to ask yourself, is this two or three or $400 an hour work, or is this $25 an hour work that someone else could be doing, whether that’s a contractor or an employee or whatever. And so you need to, to make sure that you are moving those things off of your plate that simply are not delivering the value to the business that could otherwise be done there.

You need to look at this in terms of, of a net benefit, right? So sometimes I will talk with an owner and they’ll say, well, I don’t really have someone else who can do this, and so I just, I need to do it for now. And I’ll say, well, what would it cost for you to have someone else do it? And let’s say that that cost is $50 an hour.

The value that you as the owner can bring to the business is 250 or $300 an hour, then that means every hour that you move off, yes, it costs you some money, but if you’re actually able to deploy that in a more value oriented way, your net gain is actually $200 an hour if you go from $50 to 250. So you need to think about those things and make rational decisions about where you’re going to invest because your time, particularly if you were the owner, is the most limited thing that you have. But really, every manager has a limited number of hours that they can give. And so if you want to be able to do more and be more effective, you need to figure out how to get the highest value out of every hour that you’re spending.

So let’s talk now about how we delegate responsibility in the right way. So the first thing that you need to do is you need to be really clear about what your expectations are, and that means you need to make sure that your team members that you’re delegating to have a clear understanding of what success looks like.

They need to know what the timeline is for this, what are the deadlines that need to be met, what milestones must be met along the way. They need to understand what are the requirements for approval and feedback. Because if they have all of these things, then they can figure out how to manage their time most effectively.

They can figure out how to deploy the resources that are available to them. They can figure out what additional resources they need, may need to ask for, or what questions they need to ask in order to the clarity they need in order to succeed. And they also need to understand why what they’re doing actually matters.

Because I think we’re finding more and more with employees in 2025 that they really want to have a, a feeling like they’re doing something that has some sort of meaning to it. And it doesn’t mean that everything we do has some grand meaning and, and epic consequences, but they need to figure out where it all fits in the scheme of things.

And the more that we can take a little bit of time to explain that, the more likely we are to have the kind of effort and input that we need, with the work that we’re delegating in order to have it be successful.

So. All of this is not to say that there is no role for accountability. We’re not, we’re not creating a, a mindset where we’re simply handing things off and hoping for the best.

We absolutely need to still expect accountability from our team members. So how do we do that without micromanaging? And I would say that my, my biggest advice to every manager everywhere is that regular, weekly one-on-ones that happen without fail, between every manager and every direct report is about the most effective tool that you have. And that is particularly true when it comes to delegation. Because those weekly one-on-ones are an opportunity to empower the employee, the team member, to ask questions, to raise concerns, to flag things that you need to be aware of.

And if you’re not having them, you’re relying on that employee to have to come to you directly and say, Hey, Chip, I, I need to, I need to share this with you. And that’s a higher threshold. That’s a, it’s a scarier thing for many individuals, particularly again, if you are the owner of the business. And so people may be reluctant on your team to do that.

Whereas if they have the forum of a weekly one-on-one, it’s a lot easier. It’s a lot less scary, a lot less confrontational to raise these concerns in that forum. So you need to make sure that you’re making that available. At the same time, for larger projects, for things where you have multiple team members involved, you need to have regular check-ins to do that, whether that’s your normal weekly or biweekly team meeting, or whether that’s special project meetings with just the folks involved in that.

It will depend on your individual organization and the structure and all of that. But you need to have that ability for everyone who’s responsible for something and shares responsibility for certain goals to come together in the same way as those regular one-on-ones where it’s, it’s not a big deal to be able to share a little bit of information, to raise those concerns, and make everybody aware of what’s needed, what’s on track, what’s off track.

So rely on those get togethers as an opportunity to ensure that you’re having the accountability for the results that you’re trying to achieve. But you also need to make sure that your team understands that you are always available as a resource. You can’t be a coach, a mentor, an advisor, and all of that, and take yourself out of taskmaster world if you are not truly opening up and being available as a resource.

So that means if you’re asked a question, you need to be able to reply in a timely fashion. Part of that may mean that you need to delegate more things so you have the bandwidth to answer the questions that your team sends you. One of the things I was often pretty bad at was providing the final review and approval for things that I needed to review and approve before they moved out of the organization.

And so we need to be thinking about how we operate with our teams.

So you need to be making yourself that resource and, and freeing yourself up to be available. And that means if you don’t have the time available for it. You need to, to find ways to free your time up in order to serve as that resource and mentor and helperto your team members. But it’s important as you’re focusing on accountability and getting the results that you need, that you stay away from the blame game.

And so that’s not just directly saying, I blame you. It’s also making sure that you are not implying that, or that your team members are not walking away with that impression. You need to be in a position where you are helping them to learn from their mistakes, to learn from failure and not view it as an evil thing and not view it as something for you to scold or blame.

And so that means that you need to sit down and have constructive conversations. And so, for example, when we had mistakes in the various businesses that I’ve run, I would usually sit down with the, the team members involved and say, okay. What could we do differently next time? How could we avoid a similar outcome?

How might we mitigate the outcome if it’s something that can’t be completely avoided? And by thinking in those terms and thinking about how we move on from here, you still have that sense of accountability, but it’s not being done in an adversarial or confrontational kind of way. Now obviously there are going to be exceptions.

There will be times where it is such an egregious mistake that you need to, to address it in a different fashion. But the vast majority of the situations that we deal with as managers within agencies can be handled by simply learning from those lessons, figuring out how to, to mitigate the current problem.

That might be going to a client and saying, we screwed up. Here’s the step, here are the steps we’re going to take to avoid it happening again in the future. Or here are the steps that we’re taking in order to rectify the error that we had. Almost nothing is completely insurmountable, and so we need to make sure that we understand that so we don’t overreact, but we also need to communicate that to our teams so that we can help them move through these challenges themselves. Because that’s the only way to get to this effective, effective level of delegation because your team is not scared. Your team is there to help. Your team is there to learn.

And so I would also encourage you that even when things are going well, have after action reviews, after a client leaves or after a project is done, or periodically for existing clients. Whatever the trigger points are for your organization, have these conversations regularly because even when things are going well, you can still find ways to improve. You can find ways to do things more efficiently, achieve better results. You can find ways to better collaborate as a manager and team member or amongst different groups within your organization. So focus on all of these things and try to learn from each other and try to improve consistently, and that will improve your accountability, both in good times and in bad.

So in order for all of these things to work, you need to have a true ownership culture within your agency. And so that means that the individuals need to understand that they are not simply task master or, task completers. They need to understand that they do truly have responsibility and ownership for whatever you’re handing off to them.

And that means that when they do a good job, you need to make sure that you are celebrating, that you need to highlight the successes. You need to make sure that your focus is on the results and not the process. How they get there doesn’t matter nearly as much as what the outcome is, as long as it is a good job and on time.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t work on finding ways to be more efficient or that you can’t find ways to be more consistent. But don’t get too hung up on all of the mechanics because that is gonna make it more difficult for you to get things off of your plate.

And all of that means that, as we said before, you need to show this trusting feeling towards your team. You need to be asking them, how can I help? As opposed to, why isn’t this done? And so when you see something that’s off track, ask that question. Say, you know, I, I noticed that this doesn’t seem to be on track. How can I help? What can I do in order to, to help you to succeed? Because that helper mindset is going to do a lot more to get you out of micromanagement and make it easier and more comfortable for you to move things off of your plate.

So bottom line is, is letting go is worth it. It is, it is difficult. I fully admit that, and I, there have been plenty of times over the course of my career that I have, I’ve taken on things that I, I simply shouldn’t, I should have allowed others to do it. I was chair of an organization and there was a, a monthly message that went out under my name and I would, I insisted on writing it myself, even though they had a staff member who was fully prepared to do it and probably could do it

almost as well as I could from a quality standpoint, and probably even better from a consistency standpoint, because they knew more about what the organization was doing day to day. And so in my mind I was a better writer. I knew my own voice better, and so I said, I’m gonna do this every month. It didn’t take me a lot of time, but at the same time, I should have allowed it.

It would’ve, it would’ve showed more trust in the team member for that organization who would, would be writing the message. And it also would clear up even whatever small amount of time on my calendar that it did. And so I can tell you that letting go is difficult, but letting go is worth it because it allows you to focus on that higher value work that you can do.

It allows you to focus on the things that really help you to advance the business, to move the ball forward and not let you get. So buried in the weeds that you’re just sitting there looking at Asana or whatever project management tool you’re doing and saying, I noticed these deadlines haven’t been met, or, I need to follow up with Sally and see why this isn’t done. Or, I need to ask what the status of this is because it doesn’t appear to have been updated.

And as you, as you make this change, as you start to let go, your team is going to grow. Your team’s confidence will increase as you give them more responsibility. They will learn more because there’s nothing more demoralizing than having your boss micromanage you.

And particularly I’ve seen this with folks that I did a lot of rewriting of the content that they would send me. The quality consistently went down because they knew I was gonna rewrite it anyway. So why bother? If I’m gonna rewrite it, why not just phone it in? And I’ve had this happen with clients as well.

I, there were clients who I knew would just completely gut anything that I sent them. So I would spend less time putting that piece together because what was the point? Why should I polish it if I knew that they were going to just put red ink all over it anyway?

So by letting go, we’re actually helping our team to do better. And by not letting go, we’re actually. Encouraging them to decline in the quality of the work that they’re doing, even if unintentional.

But it also helps us to make our businesses more sustainable because whether you are a frontline manager or the agency owner, the more that we get things off of our plate and the more that we have our team involved in things, it becomes a more sustainable model because we’re not becoming the bottlenecks, we’re not serving as problems, and instead we are resources.

And so that’s a really valuable benefit of letting go. And finally, if you let go, you’ll be happier because you won’t have all of these things on your plate that are eating at your time, that are making you frustrated. You won’t benavigating everybody’s business every day. And so your team members will have improved satisfaction.

And so the more satisfied everybody is with their jobs, with their business, it’s going to be a more effective result. So, let’s go ahead and, and tie this up with a bow. And as I do that, if you are here live, feel free to start submitting questions using the q and a function that I’ll address in just a moment.

So I would say that the key takeaways that I would, would have for you are, first of all, delegation isn’t easy. It’s valuable, but it isn’t easy. Losing control is actually a good thing. We all hear those words and, and I, I’ve talked to agency owners, they’ll tell me, I, I feel like I’m losing control.

Good. Good because you are not there to control everything. Your goal is to set the expectations, to set the, the goalposts on the horizon and get everybody headed in that direction and achieving them. Not to sit there and carry them there yourself. And finally, I would say that. Letting go. It, it, it’s not something that that will happen overnight.

You’re not gonna finish watching this webinar and say, yep, all set. I know it. I’m, I’m gonna switch from being a task master to someone who is handing off ownership and responsibility. You totally buy into it. That’s great. It’s not gonna happen overnight. And so what I would encourage you to do is coming out of this webinar, I would suggest to you that you pick one thing, just pick one thing from that, that grid that you’ve got, that we’ve talked about, that two by two grid.

Pick one thing in that dislike others column, and you will be able to move that off of your plate and you will start to see the benefits of that. And then it will just mushroom from there. So go ahead. Stop being a control freak. Find a way to trust your team. Find a way to turn your team into true resources and partners in the work that you’re doing, and you’ll be happier and you will see better results for your business and for your clients.

So with that, that will take us to the end of the prepared presentation. If you are watching this on replay, this is where the replay will conclude.

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