00:00:00: Introduction
00:01:13: Some ‘I’ statements
00:06:45: Delegation challenges
00:12:08: Four don’ts, and the opposite dos…
00:12:15: … 1: the how vs the what and the when
00:16:53: … 2: delegating and disappearing
00:21:12: … 3: don’t delegate and do
00:25:36: … 4: as you would do it vs what’s better because
00:30:40: Final thoughts
Sarah Ellis: Hi, I’m Sarah.
Helen Tupper: And I’m Helen.
Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast. Every week, we talk about a different topic to do with work, and share some ideas and actions to help all of us navigate these Squiggly Careers with that bit more confidence and control.
Helen Tupper: And every episode that we record on the Squiggly Careers podcast comes with a PodSheet. That’s a one-page summary of all the tips and tools and resources that we refer to, and that is designed to help you take action really, which is what we really care about. Also, one of the things that might be useful to you is to sign up to the Squiggly Careers in Action weekly newsletter. It’s where we put all the links to the podcast, the PodSheet, other things we might have been reading, watching and listening to that we think might be useful for you. The links to those things are in the show notes or you can just go to our website, amazingif.com and you’ll find everything you need right there.
Sarah Ellis: So, today we are talking about what I am going to guess will be quite a popular topic, which is why you don’t delegate and what to do differently. And I think even if you think you’re good at delegating, and I started this process thinking, “Oh, I’m good at this, so I’ll be able to share my words of wisdom and what I do really well”, actually the more I thought about it, the more I thought, “I am good at parts of this and not all of this”. So, to get started, we’ve written some ‘I’ statements about why we don’t delegate. So, perhaps listen to these and think about which ones feel relevant for you. And some of them, you might think, “Oh no, that’s not me”, and then Helen and I have reflected on which ones perhaps get in our way of delegating in a useful way at the moment.
So, statement one, “I can do it better”. And none of us like to say that out loud, but I think we think it in our minds. Yeah, so, “I can do that better”. Or it might sound like, “I can do that faster”. I think that’s probably even more common than, “I can do that better”. “I don’t want to overload the other person”. So, we know how busy everyone is, and you just think, “Oh, well I don’t want to add to somebody’s capacity challenges. They’re already trying to prioritize five million things”. Back to the ‘time’ one, “It’s going to take me ages to teach someone to do this”. So, basically, “I can’t be bothered”. I do think you sometimes think, “Oh, that’s so much energy and effort”. I do think you need a bit of capacity, actually, to do this really well. So, I think some people will think, “I don’t want this to come across as a power play or power structure”, almost like, “What right have I got to delegate this to someone else?” Even if perhaps you have got the right to do that, you are leading a team, you don’t want to be in charge of someone and maybe, in that way, it can perhaps come across a bit command and control, I suppose.
Helen Tupper: Yeah, agreed.
Sarah Ellis: I think there might be a practical thing, “I just don’t know how to delegate. I don’t know how to ask somebody to do this”. So, because I don’t know the how, I just don’t do it. I think this can be particularly hard. I was reading an interesting article about this, “I don’t know how to delegate to someone who’s not in my team”. So, maybe you have got something to delegate, but they’re in a different function. So, I don’t have that same level maybe of commitment or care and we’re not one team, so that can feel really hard. So, I was like, “Oh, that made me reflect on that can feel a bit harder”. And I think the last one is a really interesting one, “I don’t even think about delegating”. So, we’re so on autopilot almost of getting stuff done and taking the actions that we need to take, that it almost doesn’t even cross our minds. So, it’s not that you think you could do it better or you don’t want to overload someone; you don’t even think in the first place, there’s not even a question in your mind of like, “Well, would this be something that would be useful for me to delegate?” You’re like, “Well, no, I just have got so used to doing these things, I just keep on doing them”. Which one of those for you, Helen? Is there one or two that sort of stand out for you?
Helen Tupper: Which one doesn’t?! I think my ‘I’ statements, I don’t know if I think, “I can do it better”. It’s not that, I think it’s I go, “Well, I can just do it faster”. And that’s a combination of, “I don’t want to spend the time teaching somebody”, but it is more just like, “Okay, well, I could just do it faster”. Like, “I may as well just do it because I think I can do it faster and get it done quicker”. That’s probably my biggest I statement. I was also thinking when you were talking actually about, “I don’t know how to do it”, particularly maybe if it’s not in your team. I was also thinking it’s quite useful to reflect on what direction of delegation feels more difficult. Like, would I find it more difficult to delegate to you than I would someone who works for me, for example? Or sometimes, because might be like, “Oh, I find it really easy here, but this one feels a lot harder”. And then, you could ask yourself, “Why does that direction feel difficult? What’s the thing that might be getting in the way?” Because you might have different ‘I’ statements that affect delegation with different people or different directions.
Sarah Ellis: We were like, “Oh, maybe reflect on how comfortable and confident do you feel delegating on a scale of one to ten?” And I think my starting point is quite high. So, I would be scoring myself a seven or an eight, maybe slightly lower now I’ve thought about this a little bit more. But I think my starting point actually would have been eight. And I think the only thing that sometimes holds me back with delegating might be, “Have I got the energy and effort needed to upskill someone to do this?” So, I always feel really comfortable delegating to people. I hope I do some of the things in the right way.
I often don’t think that I could do it better or faster, I think probably because I’m not a fast person anyway. I’m not you, as in I don’t work as quickly as you do. So, I would always be like, “Well, Helen can do this faster, brilliant. Just delegate it to Helen!” I think I really believe in, doing is how you learn. So, yes, I might be able to do it better, but that’s because I’ve had loads of practice or I’ve done it a lot. And so, I don’t expect it to be better from someone else. And then, that feels fine because I’m like, “Well, I’ll help along the way to make sure it gets to where it needs to get to”. So, I think mine is often just more of a question of like, “Oh, I’m not sure about giving that to someone else, because I just feel like I know it’s going to take a lot of energy on my part, as well as on their part”.
Helen Tupper: I often think, because I hear you say that, often in contrast to something that I’m saying, which is like, “I’ll just do it”, and you’ll be like, “Well, how does that help?” You’ll often challenge me when you say that. And I think probably one of the factors as well that’s maybe different between us that affects the delegation skill is that I think you have a slightly more long-term view. So, you’ll be thinking about, “Well, what do I want to be doing in a year’s time? Or if this person could do that, then what could I be doing with that?” Whereas I’m often like, “Well, it just needs to get done. It just needs to get done, it needs to get done this week”.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, “It needs to get done now”.
Helen Tupper: Yeah, “It needs to get done now”. And so, I don’t think, “Yeah, but if I don’t delegate, I’m going to be doing it the next week and the next week and the next week”.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah. Talk about your delegation boomerang that you were talking to me about!
Helen Tupper: The delegation boomerang is where, this is a mistake that I make that I don’t think Sarah does. My delegation boomerang is where I’ll delegate something to somebody. So, I don’t know, somebody in the team or whatever, and I’ll be like, “Oh, could you look at this?” And then, I will look at it and I’ll think to myself, “Well, that isn’t quite what I wanted it to look like”. Either it doesn’t read the way I wanted it to look like, or it doesn’t look the way I wanted to look like, whatever it is. And so then, I will just think, “Well, I’ll just do it myself”. And so, things just keep coming back to me. And that happens over and over again, is that I’ll send something out, like I’ll send my little task out to someone, it’ll reach someone, and then it just comes back to me.
I guess my reflection there is, because you know, you have to think, “Well, that’s your problem, Helen, not their problem. The pattern here is how you are delegating, because this is happening with lots of different people.
Sarah Ellis: Or people have figured it out and they’re just like, “Oh, if you just wait long enough, you just give it back to her and then she’ll do it anyway”.
Helen Tupper: Yeah, “She’ll just do it”. I mean, that’s probably what people think. But I think it is because I don’t think I am communicating clearly my expectations. And then, I think I probably don’t collaborate with them in the process, I just sort of say, “This is what I want doing”, send it their way, and then it’s done.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think my delegation challenge is a bit different. I think sometimes, what I’m not as good at is I’m okay at delegating, I’m okay at supporting through the process, but I am not clear enough early enough in what does good look like. I think because I naturally stay quite open and like to explore and might have a few different questions in my mind, I sometimes think that openness can create confusion rather than clarity. And what I do see that you are very good at is actually sometimes, if you’re in those conversations with me, let’s say we’re working on something together with someone else, I’m much more prepared to let something go and for it to take a bit longer and to feedback as we go, I’m much more prepared to do that. But what you are very good at is, we might have quite a meandering conversation, which is a good thing, we’re not saying we shouldn’t have those conversations, but you are very good then at going, “What matters most first or what matters most now”.
I sometimes think I have delegated things, well, I know I have, I’ve delegated things where we have wasted some time because I haven’t created that clarity. Or maybe I thought I’ve created that clarity and then it becomes clear that I haven’t, because you’re like, “Oh, this is not what we were expecting”. And again, to your point, you have to take accountability for that, because you’re like, “Well, I have delegated that and clearly, somebody’s gone off and done something quite different, or perhaps gone in too many different directions”. And you’re like, “Well, that’s because I wasn’t clear enough on the outcome”, or sometimes maybe breaking down the delegation into, “Well, part one of this project looks like this. So, do you know what, let’s just focus on getting that right first and let’s do that in the next two weeks, and then we’ll figure out the next bit from there”. But because I think about it all, all at the same time, and act over loads of different time horizons all at the same time, I think for some people, they’re just like, “Well, it could be this, it could be this, it could be that”. And I’m like, “Oh, yeah, but still ultimately I know I want a five-page PowerPoint, or whatever”. I’ve never quite distilled it enough. And that’s actually been quite a big learning for me because then I think that can feel quite demotivating for someone else.
Helen Tupper: I think as well, and I’ve had it in the past, when a senior person delegates to you and you care about their opinion, you want to do a good job, you want to impress them, you’ll be listening to what they’re saying, they’re like, “Oh, Helen, could you lead this project? And what I’m thinking about is this, and one of the other things that we could do is that, etc”, and they’re sharing a lot of ideas. And then, the assumption I’ve had before is that part of the delegation is for me to take every single idea that they have said and I need to do that. They’re like, “Oh, no, no. There were five ideas, but the thing that I really wanted you to do is just run that meeting. That was the thing I was delegating”!
Sarah Ellis: I think I do that. I think what you were saying is, “That is you”, and I’m like, “That is me”.
Helen Tupper: Kind of! It just reminded me. And I think it’s a bit of a watch-out. If you are a senior person or you are the project lead or you are the manager, I think inevitably, people who are working with you or for you, they want to look good in your eyes. I think that’s that a natural hierarchy we place on perception with people who are more senior than us. And so, there is a risk that you share all your ideas, which like, I know you. And so, I’d be like, “Okay, well, that was five ideas, Sarah, which one do we actually want to move forward?” Like, I would just say it. But someone who doesn’t have that confidence or just that relationship with you might assume that all those five ideas are things that actually need to be implemented by them, and that you’re delegating all of that. And that can be, I think, overwhelming sometimes for people.
Sarah Ellis: Also, hopefully, us sharing those examples I think does show how easy it is to get this wrong. And for someone like me, where I’m sort of going, “Well, I back myself with this. I think I’m quite good at this skill. I’m giving myself quite a high score”, and then when I’ve really thought about it, I’m like, “Oh, actually, I can think of quite a lot of examples where I have got this wrong, even something I think I’m relatively good at, at least some of the time”. So, what we thought we would do is talk about four ‘don’ts’, and then what is the opposite ‘do’ when it comes to delegation.
So, the first one is, don’t delegate the ‘how’ but do delegate the ‘what’ and the ‘when’, because that is how you create clarity. So, I think sometimes this is what I do get wrong. So, the reason you don’t want to delegate the how, is I think this can end up feeling demotivating. So, this is when you do tell someone how to do their job, which I probably wouldn’t do this bit, but I don’t get the next bit right. So, if someone, let’s say Helen, needs to do a presentation for a new client we might be working with in career development, I say to Helen, “Right, so can you get the presentation ready by 4.00pm next Wednesday? And to do that, I’d suggest you get some slide headers ready first, and then this is what I think each of those headers should say. And probably they should look a bit like this. And if I was you, I’d approach that by doing an hour, hour-and-a-half each day, keep building on it”. So, I’m basically telling you exactly how to get that job done. And you’re not giving people that freedom to work in a way that works for them.
Also, you are assuming that your way is the best way. So, I always think try and give freedom and flexibility on the how, but do be really clear on what needs to be delivered by when. So, I might say to Helen, “Let’s get the first version of that presentation ready for that client. If you send it to me by 4.00pm Wednesday, then we’ll go through it together first thing on Thursday”. You are left in no doubt about what needs to happen by when. And so, I think the problem I have is I don’t delegate the how, but I also don’t delegate the what or the when. So, I think I would be too vague here. I think I would say, “Oh, we just need to explore getting a presentation ready for a client and, yeah, I’m really open to what that looks like”, even when perhaps I’m not as open as I’m saying I’m open. Or I then throw five ideas at someone about what we could do or how we could approach that.
Helen Tupper: I was just thinking, I feel like we delegate okay to each other, unless you want to give me some feedback now. I feel like it’s always quite a clear, “Okay, so you’re going to go back to that person, and the deadline for doing that is this”. So, actually, maybe there’s a peer thing going on, like we are peers without fear. I might go with that. I have absolutely no fear of you coming back to me and going, “That wasn’t very helpful”. I think you would challenge me back like, “Okay, I don’t mind picking it up Helen, but I don’t know what it is that you need me to do”. Peers without fear is, I think, why we are able to delegate to each other.
Sarah Ellis: I also wonder whether I sometimes think a lot of what we do might have some quite tight deadlines, and almost like if we don’t do it by that point, it’s not going to happen or I can imagine quite quickly the consequences of not doing something. And we feel that even small things that we miss create quite a few implications around time and other people, and those sorts of things. Whereas perhaps with the team, I don’t have that same sense of closeness, because we work together so closely, you and I, and are relatively interchangeable, so I can feel the impact. It’s like, if I suddenly said to you next week, “I need you to read the next copy edit of our book and I’m giving you 24 hours’ notice, I know that that’s not going to get done”. I would know what your week looks and feels like. So, I’d probably have the most empathy for you out of anyone because we’re so similar in our day-to-days. And then, perhaps you sometimes forget to extend that to everybody else, because you’re just not as close day-to-day. I think sometimes that’s probably what I forget, is everybody else in our team will have their own equivalent.
So, if I don’t say this needs to happen by this point, I think I often am most likely to miss the when. So, I really appreciate it when people ask me that question. So, that’s one top tip that you can do, because obviously you can also be on the other side of this, right? You can be the person who’s being delegated to. If you ever have something that is delegated to you and you don’t have clarity on the what and the when, ask for it. You will save yourself so much sunk cost and time and energy. When people ask me that, I never think, “Oh, that’s annoying”. What I actually always think is like, “Oh, that’s such a good question”. I’m always really pleased when people ask that question. So, if that happens to you and you’ve got a me with four million ideas, just do those like nice nudges, just do those prompts of like, “Okay, Sarah, so there’s lots we could do. But what matters most, and when do you need me to do that by?” Keep asking that question, because for someone like me, that’s not a natural thing to think about. So, I need to practise it to get better at it, but also people can help me by just asking me.
Helen Tupper: The next one is one that I don’t do very well. So, the don’t here, and I get so annoyed that I do this, but the don’t is, don’t delegate and then disappear. I think I do this quite a lot, because when I finally build up the like, “Oh, I should delegate this, it’s the right thing to delegate this, give someone else an opportunity”, I’m like, “Right, I’d like you to lead on this initiative”, I probably do the what and the when, “lead on the initiative, just be creative”. I probably do your first bit all right. But then I just go, “Right, got it? All good? Fantastic, bye”. What happens is, it goes quiet, and then somebody quite late in the day will then ask for help. They’ve basically been struggling because I’ve just gone, and I’ve just assumed that everything is totally okay, and it’s just tickety-boo, being done as I expect it to. And they’ve actually been struggling with it for way longer than they needed to, because I think I’m making the assumption that my way of delegating, I gave them complete clarity and it’s all fine. And they’re probably thinking, “Oh, I don’t want to go back to Helen, because it’s going to maybe look like I’ve not done it the way she wants”.
So, instead of delegating and disappearing, don’t do that, what you should do is delegate and then agree together what support looks like, “How can I best support you?” So, I might say to Sarah, I mean, it’s obviously a bit weird cause we’re peers, but if I said to Sarah, “Oh, I would like you to lead on the podcast for the next couple of months, because I’m going to be working on this really big project over here, and I think that’s important for the business, so I’d appreciate your help with it”, rather than just leaving that with Sarah and Sarah thinking, “Well, I don’t actually know what that means. What are all the things that I would need to do? We haven’t talked it through”, I could then say to Sarah, “In order for that to happen, what support would you need from me before the delegation happens, during, what would that look like?” And Sarah might say, “Oh, I could do with a couple of hours just talking through so I understand the process. Be good maybe after week one just to check in that everything’s as you want it. And then you could probably back off then, Helen, to be honest”.
That conversation would look different for everybody. But the point is that before you disappear, you have asked the other person what they need in order to take that thing on from you successfully.
Sarah Ellis: I also think sometimes people don’t know what they need, but you are giving people permission to tell you along the way. So, if I think about some of the things that I have delegated in our team, particularly if someone’s doing something for the first time, that they wouldn’t be able to tell me. Like, we did some award entries recently. I might say to somebody, “Okay, well, I’m delegating the writing of that award entry. So, do you know what, when you’ve just written a first draft, doesn’t matter how scrappy or work-in-progress it is, why don’t you share that with me, and then why don’t we get on a call together and just go through it?” And actually, that person gave me some feedback that they found it really helpful to see me going through it live. So, rather than just passing back and forward, it was just like, “Oh, let’s work on it together”, because she could also hear my thought process out loud. Then, she could go away and refine it and work on it, and again, I left her to it for a bit. And then, I saw it when it was 90%. I think actually then you saw it when it was about 90%. So, we both then saw it and we were like, “Okay, any final tweaks and changes?”
That felt like a really good way of delegating something really important, being involved enough, but where that person had still done the hard work, it’s their achievement, what has been written is definitely theirs. And so, I think this can sometimes be as simple as, and I’ve done this once with someone I worked for, where once a week, I would just do an update. You know the classic, keep someone updated, if it’s a bigger project that’s been delegated to you? Once a week, “This is what’s happened, this is what’s happening next, here’s my latest version”, if that feels relevant. And I think often, when you start to do that, also that person then grants you more and more space along the way, which I always quite appreciated when people were delegating stuff to me. Often, people are unsurprisingly more involved when maybe they don’t know you as well, or they’re like, “Oh, we’re not sure how well Sarah’s going to be able to do this”. But the more you show you can, and sometimes you can’t, sometimes you do need the help along the way, often the more space you get in return.
So, number three is, don’t delegate and then do it for someone. If we obviously end up doing it for someone, you can put yourself in that person’s shoes quite easily, and just imagine what that feels like. It probably reinforces any confidence gremlin someone’s got. They think, “I’m not good enough”; comparison, “They’re so much better than me”, or, “They’re smarter than me”. Also, we know people get better by doing and by practising. And so, often it is harder to do this, it’s harder to give feedback and it is quicker to just do it for someone. But then you’re missing out on the benefit, like everybody is missing out. So, it’s the difference between very practically, I always think about it, somebody’s written something, you could either add comments to documents, whether it’s a Word or a PowerPoint; you can either add comments, or you can make the changes directly. And I am definitely an ‘add comments’ person. I accept that that means sometimes things take longer, and it might mean multiple comments, and I might have to go back a few times. But I don’t know, I think I have this thing of going, “Well, I don’t think the right thing for me to do now is to just do it”, unless that person has said, “I’m really stuck. I need an example. It would really help me to see something”, which I did have this week on something, where someone said they’d had a go at something and they were like, “Oh, could you show me what you would do?” And I was like, “Oh, yeah, that’s fine”. It’s not like I would never show an example, but I would really resist the temptation to then actually do the work.
Helen Tupper: I think this is what’s behind my boomerang. And it sounds so harsh to be like, “Oh, you’re micromanaging people”, but maybe that’s what it feels like. My only issue with the do, delegate, and then share feedback, because I definitely think that’s the right thing to do, I think for the long term, that is definitely the right thing to do; but the thing that I struggle with is I think by doing. So, if I looked at something, let’s say there was a presentation, and I’m like, “Do you know what, that’s not got enough energy in it”, which is one of our values. I can’t then go, “Oh, so here are five things that you could…” I feel like sometimes creatively, in order to get to the answer, I sometimes need to do it. And so, sometimes I find what’s almost more helpful for my brain rather than writing comments, because I have to do the work to get to the comments, is sometimes doing the changes but while someone’s watching me. So, then I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to change that deck because there’s some things that aren’t quite right in it. But it’d be really helpful if maybe you’re with me when I’m doing it and then I can explain my thinking as I’m going through it”. I would find that is almost a bit of a hybrid, because I am still doing it, but I’m talking through my thinking when I’m doing it. It’s hard for me to get to the feedback without actually having done it.
Sarah Ellis: As long as the other person who you are delegating to has seen it and can then apply it, because it is a bit harder when you’re not — like, if you were doing that with me, I’d be like, “Well, I’m not applying it, I’m not getting to do it”. So, if I work in the same way as you, I’ve not got to do the doing potentially. It probably would work okay for me, but I’m less of a doer than you are. But I’m like, “Oh, what happens if you get a Helen and a Helen?”
Helen Tupper: I’ll tell you what would happen. Helen would say to Helen, “Yeah, I’ve got it. You don’t need to show me anymore, I’ve got it”.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, you do say that, exactly like that, when you’re trying to shut me down. You’re like, “Yeah, I’ve got it”.
Helen Tupper: “I’ve got it, enough”.
Sarah Ellis: “Definitely not interested anymore!” But I guess the thing that you can do here is ask the question of the person that you are delegating to, or the people, and kind of going, “How helpful was that as an approach? Like, do you think that would be helpful for next time?” Because if you’re doing that every time, it’s obviously not working, you’re just going back in a cycle. If the next time round, you’re like, “Oh, actually, someone seeing me do that in action has obviously actually really helped them”, then you’re like, all that really matters is you want the person to stay motivated and you want the other person to be able to keep learning.
Helen Tupper: So, what I have done before is I’ve edited the thing, the document or the presentation, whatever it is, I’ve edited it, because I have to do that to work out how to make it better. And then, what I’ve done is a little video, like I’ve literally put my phone in front of my screen, and I’ve done a, “Okay, I just want to talk to the changes I’ve made and why I’ve made these changes so it makes it easier for you next time”. And I have had good feedback about that approach, and that is probably more efficient than someone just sitting and watching me do it.
Sarah Ellis: Yes, yeah.
Helen Tupper: So, the last one is, don’t delegate it and expect it to be exactly as you would do it. Do delegate and spot what’s better because. And I think this is a really important habit to build, this one, because it’s so easy. You delegate something, you probably have got some view in your mind of what it could look like, even like I’ve had it before where I’ve delegated a document and in my head I’ve gone, “Oh, it’s clearly a PowerPoint”, and then what’s come back is a Word document. And I’m like, “Well, no, I wasn’t thinking Word”. I was visually thinking PowerPoint.
Sarah Ellis: That is actually quite a fun question, “What do you think in?”
Helen Tupper: PowerPoint. What do you think in?
Sarah Ellis: Probably a Word document.
Helen Tupper: Do you really?
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, of course.
Helen Tupper: Oh no!
Sarah Ellis: Which tool best reflects your personality?
Helen Tupper: I mean, that is totally a podcast for another day. But on this last point of delegation, so just to go back to this one, this is don’t delegate and expect it to be exactly what you’d like it to be; you do delegate and spot what’s better because. So, rather than critiquing somebody and being like, “Oh, well, that’s not quite…” that might be where your brain goes automatically, because that’s maybe where you started. Actually, really push yourself to think, “Okay, but what is better because of the way this person has done this?” So, I might think, “Actually, there is a lot more useful detail that has gone into that document than I could have put in the PowerPoint. And actually, that’s much more likely to be used as a pre-read for before a meeting, so that we can actually have a really good conversation”. Whereas my view probably would have been what I clicked through in the meeting. And so, I wouldn’t have had that depth.
You can say to someone, “I think actually, what’s worked really well with how you have approached this is… and one thing that might be even better for us to look at is how we create something that we can use in the meeting, because we’re not going to put that one up in the meeting”. And I think it’s just a real, nice habit to get into, what is better because of the way that individual has approached this? Because I think delegation shouldn’t just be, do what I want you to do the way that I want you to do it, because you miss out on the value of somebody else’s experience and insights and ideas making that thing better than you could have done yourself. I think that’s part of the payoff of delegating, not just getting it done, but someone doing it in a different way that hopefully might be a bit better to the way you’ve been doing it for a while.
Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think that is a really good habit, because sometimes you are a bit surprised or it’s not quite what you had imagined, because most of us do have some sort of visualisation of how we imagine a task will get done. And it’s a bit of unlearning and relearning here. I think you’re unlearning, “Oh, well, that monthly report has to look in this this way, or it has to have these things”, and relearning, “Oh, but now it looks different”. So, there will be some things that are better. It doesn’t mean you can’t say, “Oh, we still need that data point, or we still want to do it in this way, or I want it in PowerPoint”, or whatever. If you’re also thinking about that individual and helping them to learn and grow, you also want to give people confidence to do things in their own way. We don’t want people to be carbon copies of the people they work for. And everyone always says that, right, “Don’t recruit in your shadow, don’t have more of the same”, because then you miss out on the diversity of everybody’s individuality and all of their brilliance.
I think if you start to do this, you are saying, “Well, my way is the right way”. And actually, someone said this to me today. So, they were talking about writing and our tone of voice at Amazing If. And I think what she was essentially saying to me is some of what we do is an Amazing If tone of voice, but some is a Sarah tone of voice. And I said to her, “Well, actually, that’s really useful feedback because it can’t be a Sarah tone of voice, because that’s impossible for people to deliver on. Because you basically need to be in my head to be able to deliver on that really well. I was like, this has to feel like Sarah moves to Australia and abandons Amazing If and Helen, and this tone of voice has to live on without me, independent of me, because this is our brand and this is what we stand for.
Helen Tupper: I might probably add a few more exclamations into our copy if you go.
Sarah Ellis: There are no exclamation marks in our tone of voice, and that will continue to be true, because I wrote the tone-of-voice document! But that’s actually a really, really good insight, because if people are trying to write as if they were me, that’s an almost impossible task. If people are trying to write as Amazing If and Squiggly Careers, simple, straightforward, short, the things that we really care about being really useful, keeping energy, maybe there’s the argument for the odd exclamation mark for energy occasionally.
Helen Tupper: Yay! Oh, my gosh, can we change our documents so that in our values, it says “Energy!”
Sarah Ellis: ‘VERY’ in capitals, VERY occasional exclamation mark! That, I think, is a really good example of that. If you are asking people to second-guess what you would do, you’re not delegating effectively, I don’t think.
Helen Tupper: I think it’s a very nice note to end on, that delegation increases the diversity of thought and people’s contribution. I think you go from, “Oh, delegation might be feeling difficult and I don’t know how to do it”, to actually, “Delegation is a really inclusive way of making sure that different people can contribute to work.
Sarah Ellis: All their amazingness.
Helen Tupper: Yeah, nice.
Sarah Ellis: Thank you so much for listening, everybody. If you don’t already, we always really appreciate it if you leave us reviews or you share with other people and subscribe. We read every single review. But you can also email us. We’re helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com. Love hearing from you, we love your feedback. What’s working well about the podcast? What are any ‘even better ifs’? Again, we read every single one and they are always our moments of joy in a week. They are always the small things that you need where you’re having a hard day and someone leads a review and talks about the impact a podcast episode has had. So, thank you to everyone who already does that, because we know that’s a lot of you, but that’s everything for this week. Thank you so much for listening and we’re back with you again soon. Bye for now.
Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.