How to Delegate (Without Losing Control)

Summary

• Initially, I didn't understand how to delegate effectively, which can lead to either suppressing a team by being too involved or losing control by delegating too much.
• There are times when holding on too tight to control can prevent team growth and lead to high-value team members becoming resentful or leaving.
• Delegating everything can lead to hiring too soon or without proper context, making it difficult to manage teams or departments effectively due to a lack of understanding.
• Understanding whether you tend to hold on too tight or delegate too much can help you cover your blind spots in leadership and delegation.
• In my experiences, especially during the rapid growth of Gym Launch and Prestige Labs, I learned the importance of giving enough oversight to those with less experience in high-growth environments.
• A mistake I made was over-hiring for our customer service department, which resulted in having to do layoffs, teaching me valuable lessons in delegation and management.
• I learned that delegation has levels, and I should have matched those levels with my team's experience and capacity.
• The levels of delegation are:
  • Level 1: Investigation – where research is delegated but decisions are made by the leader.
  • Level 2: Informed Progress – where tasks are delegated with regular updates for oversight.
  • Level 3: Informed Results – where tasks are delegated with the understanding that the leader is only informed upon completion.
  • Level 4: Complete Ownership – where the delegatee has full control and the leader is not involved in the process.
• Transitioning between these levels of delegation should be gradual, allowing for team development and a build-up of trust.
• By evaluating these levels of delegation, one can more effectively assign tasks to team members based on their experience and the task's impact on the organization.
• Mistakes in delegation result from a lack of awareness of personal leadership tendencies and team experience; recognizing and addressing this can prevent debilitating errors like unnecessary layoffs.
• As a leader, it's essential to continuously adjust delegation strategies to ensure both the growth of team members and the effective management of the company.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest starting by understanding your own leadership style—do you hold on too tight or delegate too much? This awareness helps in managing your team effectively. For tasks, consider the experience and capacity of your team members and delegate accordingly, using the levels of delegation model we discussed.

Here's how you can apply the levels of delegation:

1. Level 1: Investigation – This is ideal for new team members. Have them gather information on a project without making decisions. Example: "Sarah, please research customer opinions on our new product and report back to me."

2. Level 2: Informed Progress – Give tasks to team members who show competency but might need support. Require them to update you regularly. Example: "Mike, start laying out the new marketing plan and check in with me at each step so I can guide you if needed."

3. Level 3: Informed Results – Assign this to team members who are well-versed with processes and can work independently. They should inform you only when the task is complete. Example: "Alex, develop a training program for new hires and let me know once it's ready to implement."

4. Level 4: Complete Ownership – This is for seasoned team members you trust deeply. Allow them to take full control of a project without your involvement. Example: "Rebecca, oversee the new software integration. I trust you to handle it."

Remember, avoid over-hiring by carefully considering the needs and growth of the company. Transition gradually between delegation levels, building trust and competence.

Lastly, keep adjusting your delegation strategy to support your team's growth and maintain a well-managed business. Avoid the mistake I made with over-hiring for customer service—match delegation levels with team experience to prevent such issues.

By following these tailored suggestions for delegation, you're more likely to foster a strong, capable team while avoiding common pitfalls.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"I never want this to happen again, I feel like"

– Leila Hormozi

"It's not delegate or don't delegate, it's delegate to what extent"

– Leila Hormozi

"The first is that there are levels of delegation"

– Leila Hormozi

"I look at doing informed results as a teaching tool"

– Leila Hormozi

"I know that 90% of the time they're gonna do it the way that I would like it to be done"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

what is up in this video today what i want to share with you is how i delegate without losing control so i'll start off with just a little story which is i didn't always know how to delegate um at least not effectively and i think this is because typically we tend to be on one end of the spectrum or the other which is like either we hold on really really tight and we delegate nothing and a lot of times what that does is it like keeps our team small we tend to like burst at the seams at some point and it kind of suppresses the team and so some of your you know best people might leave or become resentful of the fact that you're just really overbearing and doing their job a lot of the time the complete other side of the spectrum is that you delegate everything and you probably hire too soon you delegate too soon you don't give enough context to people and you don't really know how to do much like you don't understand how the machine works of your department and so you can't really make informed decisions because you're kind of walking blind right and so i think that the first thing that you have to be able to understand is which side you lean toward right and if you know which side you lean toward then you can that can make you more aware of how to cover your blind spots when you're trying to figure out how to delegate and so when i first started off i actually didn't know which side i swung to because i was inexperienced and so it's like i'm just kind of going with what's happening i don't even know if i think i may have started out really holding on tight and then because we had such rapid growth i think what happened was i just kind of was like i have to let go right and unfortunately i didn't have experience in a lot of the areas that i had to like go and delegate to for the people i was hiring and so a lot of mistakes were made right and so one of those mistakes was one that stuck with me um for a long time it really made me determined to understand how to delegate without losing control but also without suppressing your team by staying too involved and so i'll tell you the story which is when we were growing gym launch and prestige lab simultaneously um there was a year in which we were launching prestige labs and gym launch was also exploding and it seemed like an impossible task but our team worked really well together and so it came kind of to the point where we're like all right we need somebody to lead the way for prestige labs and to you know really take the team off the ground and you know we kind of promoted somebody internally who had some experience but not not experienced in like a fast growth you know like crazy fast growth company and i think that's where i lacked experience was in understanding that there's a very big difference between you know leading sales or leading customer service or leading marketing in a normal company versus like an explosive company right it's very different and so the experience doesn't always translate and um i put her in that department to take that company to the level it needed to because we knew that we had an existing customer base so it was like okay it's not just gonna be like a slow launch it's like gonna be an explosion off the bat and so we need to be prepared we need to staff up etc etc and she did the math um on what we were expecting in terms of volume and so we hired like 23 people for essentially a customer service department and i remember thinking like that just sounds like a lot but at the same time you know if the company's doing multiple millions of dollars a month like okay i can see how that would work and so we launched the you know product line and it all really went well um it actually went really well but a couple weeks in i started noticing like a lot of disengagement on that team specifically and i felt like the quality actually wasn't up to par despite how many people were there and i was starting to get like a really weird feeling about it and before i could do anything about it i actually had one of the new reps say hey can i talk to you and i was like of course so i got on a call with her and she said listen i understand that i just got a job here she's like but out of respect to you i feel like you should know that i'm not working i was like what do you mean you're not working she was like no like there's no work for me and she's like i'm pretty sure it's like me and like six or seven others like literally have no work like i answered like three chats all day and i was like oh and so i was like crap okay we over hired like we didn't realize that very quickly efficiency is gained and you get processes and you get systems and all that and so you don't need that many people and so i went to the woman who had hired everyone and i said look like look what's going on like we actually don't need like oh more than half this team like i think like 75 and she was like well what do you want me to do about it and i said i mean i've and you have to understand i was the kind of person who was like if i ever i will never do a layoff i will never let people go for any reason like that like that's wrong that's you know that's harmful it's all these things right and so i was facing this the question myself like what did we do about this and you know i talked to a couple mentors and i talked to a couple people i really trusted and they were like i think you know what you need to do you just don't want to do it and i was like i had you know identified with being someone that would never do something like that so for me it was very hard to face and so then to even bring it to her was very painful for me um because i felt very guilty i felt like it's all my fault which it was but i also lacked experience and that's just kind of what happens um so i went to her and i was like listen like i hate saying this but like we need to do a layoff like we don't have anywhere else for these people to go we're not anticipating growth like we just had like there's nothing for them to do and she was like i don't want to do that like i don't believe that's right i think that's what big corporations do i don't just i don't agree with you et cetera et cetera and she wanted to keep everyone she said let me find work for them i'll find work for them and i was like you don't find work for people like that that's something i know and so it ended up that we were at odds and you know she exited the company because we didn't agree and i did a layoff and it sucked i definitely beat myself up over it for a long time for a lot of reasons um probably too long for sure and i let it kind of take a stab at my confidence and how i felt as a leader but more importantly it taught me a lot of lessons that i realized later on which is much more productive right to recognize the lessons that you learned rather than lol and self-hatred and so what i realized it taught me was a couple of things the first is that there are levels of delegation right and i did not properly identify this one and i didn't identify that she was going to need more oversight than she had because she had experience but not in a rapid fast growth company like this right the second piece of that is um sometimes when you are growing really fast you know it's kind of like i could have done it but it would have been done very poorly and i would have not met expectations and so when i was making the decision to bring her in i don't think it's the wrong decision to have somebody else do it i think that the way that i let go of too much oversight was where the decision was wrong so it's not all or nothing it's not delegate or don't delegate it's delegate to what extent and so that's when i started reading a lot about delegation i was like i never want this to happen again i feel like um and so i just want to prevent this from happening for myself and i want to be able to teach people how to effectively delegate without you know making a giant mistake like this right and so i don't even remember what book this came from but it basically talked about the levels of delegation and it's really stuck with me and i think i've kind of come up with my own interpretation of it um but i use it in my thinking when i'm trying to understand how i should delegate two people without losing complete control like i feel like i did in that situation all right and so there's four levels okay the first level is investigation investigation is where you essentially just delegate research to somebody else you explain to them what you're looking for what you want and then you ask them to go retrieve information for you and then they bring it back to you and then you take action on that information right and so this could be like taking customer surveys it could be like you know finding if it's you know an executive assistant can be like you know researching different places of travel it could be um you know gathering articles on how to hire a controller it could be all sorts of things right and then that person brings that information to you and then you do with that information what you will that is a very that's like the first level of delegation right so i would give that somebody who's like brand new and has no idea about the thing i am asking to retrieve information on right the second level is informed progress now informed progress is where the leader right so like myself would give somebody a task and then it would be with the understanding that they would take on the task and give me regular updates and i would help them when they're getting stuck right so they're informing me of their progress along the way so it might be like sarah i need you to go and launch this new product line that we want to launch it's a new flavor of x for our supplements and i want you to figure out what the sourcing the pricing and all that looks like i want you to put me on the asana project and then just like inform you when you hit these milestones and so that's what informed progress looks like so that's basically in my mind if somebody is competent and able to figure things out themselves but may not have experience in doing that exact thing then i probably want to go with informed progress which is like i want you to keep me looped in the whole time because i do have experience or at least greater context than that person and so i can help them when they get stuck or if they're going to make a decision that would be less than desirable for the company and then there's level three okay level three is going to be informed results and so what that means is i'm gonna give someone a project i'm gonna say go start this new product line you're going to figure out the skus the pricing the sourcing all that and then i don't want to hear about any of it until you're done and i want to see the results okay so i want you to inform me of the results of you doing this thing and so with that it would be like giving that person that project and then saying i don't want you to ask me anything along the way i look at doing informed results as a teaching tool right so if somebody has been primarily doing projects in a way that is more of informed progress when i'm looped in on everything i'm trying to get them to take the next step i'm going to tell them to not tell me and to use other people on the team right to help them throughout the way and then bring me the final end result and so what i see that doing for people is when you're when you're delegating at that level it's teaching people to create a different support system besides their own supervisor right so i'm saying like i want you to go work with the team and work with them to then produce a result that is you know they're going to want to feel more certain about because you're not helping them find it right and so i look at that as probably the the area of the most teaching is the gap between the boss being involved in every step of the way and then the boss not being involved to the very end now once someone's done that multiple times and been very productive with it then i would go to level four which is complete ownership right and so complete ownership is it's literally just like set it and forget it and that is something that i wouldn't do with somebody until they've been in a role and been in a company for a couple of years most likely and sometimes if you're growing extremely fast and it is a role that um anything that they would do would not be detrimental to the company you may do this at times but with a lot of roles you're still going to want to at least be informed of the result until they've been on your team and you know you know how they work and there's a lot more predictability and consistency in what you see come from them and so for this it would be i'm going to give this to you i'm going to give this task project etc i'm going to give you the result that as desired and then you're going to figure out how to do it you're going to do it yourself you're going to use other resources and you don't even need to tell me when it's done right and so a lot of the times this would be how you would work with probably an executive assistant or like a director of operations who's doing things on your behalf right and that's just when you've developed a level of trust that you've been able to go through all the other levels of delegation and now you're at the point where like i know they're going to get it done and i know that 90 of the time they're gonna do it the way that i would like it to be done and if they don't do the way that i would like it to be done they're gonna know why it didn't go well and it's like they will be able to tell themselves all the reasons that didn't go well i don't need to tell them for them because i know how intelligent this person is and so when i'm thinking now about like hiring someone bringing someone new and delegating something i'm going through in my mind how involved i want to be in that thing and so i'll give you an example of something that i just started doing which was a couple of quarters ago i started passing off the organization of our quarterly meetings to my director of operations and so what i basically said was you know you she's been looped in on how i planned these out for the last couple quarters so it's like first i was looping her in right like i was almost informing her of progress and then now i'm like okay now i want you to do it and then loop me in at these points right and all it is for this is like i'm on an asana project and i see when certain things are done and i can just like comment on there if there's anything that we want to change and i'm doing that because i want to make sure that she can be successful in her own right to get it done and that she also has autonomy right because i'm saying like he you can do things differently you can do things your way and then you can just check with me if you want me to tell you like do i think that's going to work well or not and it's new for her and it's obviously a big event for the company so i want to make sure that she has my support but in probably two to three quarters she'll do it all on her own and i won't be involved at all i'm not going to be involved in approving anything i'm not going to be involved looking at things ahead of time i'm just going to probably show up and it's all completely done i want you to even be on the asana task and so i look at that as the evolution of how to delegate to someone and like i said in the beginning um everyone messes up in how they delegate and a lot of people it's just not understanding you know or being aware of what kind of leader you are if you're someone who really holds on tight or if you're someone who delegates too quickly and if you can think about that you know for a few minutes just look at your patterns then you can decide okay then how does that affect the lens in which i see how i should delegate to other people and then hopefully you can avoid mistakes like i've made like you know having to lay off i think like 23 people which sucked and it was terrible um and that is why i feel like this video is very important because if you can just create this process for yourself that you can think through when you're giving things to people then you will be a lot better off and in the end the more people in the beginning with if everyone lacks experience then you probably want more eyes on things right and so you are probably in the beginning if you are an experienced people on your team are inexperienced do you probably want to be checking in qa more than not so if you found that video useful go ahead hit subscribe and i will see you on the next one