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Welcome to the powerhouse Revolution Podcast. I’m Lucy Gernon, ex-corporate leader turned CEO of my dream business, helping corporate female leaders just like you to create your dream career and life. At 40, I quit the corporate world as I was tired of doing a job that no longer led me up and wanted to live my life my way. I created the power house Revolution podcast, to give you simple, actionable tips and strategies to help you create the perfect career and lifestyle that you and your family deserve. So if you’re a corporate female leader or manager who is ready to step into her superpowers, and live the life you were born to live, you are definitely in the right place. Because life is way too short to dread Mondays. Okay, let’s jump into today’s episode.
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So today, we are talking about something that used to be a big problem for me back in the day, but when I overcame it, it’s what enabled me to increase my impact at work and have a great work life balance. And I’ve continued this art through to my own company today. Can you guess what it is? It’s delegation. In my humble opinion, delegating is one of the hardest things to do as a leader, because you care a lot about your job, right? You care about delivering, and you’re used to being the doer. And what got you to where you are today is the fact that you were known for getting shit done and delivering results. And then all of a sudden, you’re thrown into the world of senior leadership, where it’s more about strategic thinking. It’s more about leading than doing, it’s more strategy and less reactivity. But it can be so hard to let go right? You do have a team behind you. And I can promise you there are people on your team right now who are eager and enthusiastic about hitting your company’s targets and goals just like you are. And some of them are craving new opportunities and responsibility. And what do you do? You start making excuses on why you cannot delegate to them. You might think things like, I don’t want to feed them to the lions, or I’m not sure if they’ll say the right thing. If I send them to that meeting, or I have to be there in case I’m asked for an update. Can you relate? So let today be the day you get real with yourself about where you’re spending your time, and begin to let go of some of that control. And I’m going to help you with that in this episode. But before we get started, I have a question for you. Have you shared this podcast with a friend yet, especially a friend or a colleague who is at or above your level in leadership who you know needs to learn to delegate, please share this episode, just copy and paste the link WhatsApp to them texted to them, send them on social media, whatever you want to do, but I would greatly appreciate it and you’d be given them a gift.
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Okay, so the first thing you need to figure out when it comes to delegation is what is your zone of genius? And where should you actually be spending your time because when you get clear about where you should be spending your time in your role, you also get crystal clear about where you should not be spending your time. So for example, in my company, I know I should be spending time coaching my clients providing excellent service delivering on their their results in my mastermind groups and with my private one to one clients, I should be talking to new leads, I should be strategizing for my company and ideating for the future, creating resources and all that kind of stuff. And speaking of which I am constantly creating content. So whether that’s masterclasses for social media, this podcast or whatever, I do a lot of content creation. I’m also responsible for leading my team. We’ve got five people on the team right now and I’m ultimately responsible for everyone. I have to set priorities, I have to support them. So leadership really is one of my biggest responsibilities and I have to try and make time for my team and support them. So they can get the job done with more ease. So for me, I know where I add the most value in my company is with my clients, my private one to one’s my masterminds, my corporate clients, coaching and teaching them content creation on strategic thinking for the future. Now, these are three these like are the three main things, which where I should be spending my time so when I’m really clear about these things, then it’s so much easier for me to let go of the other things that aren’t necessarily going to add more value to my company. So for you, are you clear on where you should be spending your time Do you really need to attend all those meetings? Like, if you’re multitasking, come back to me. If you have no whitespace in your calendar, and you’re in back to back meetings, I can promise you, you are a crap delegator. Now, I’m saying that with so much love and compassion, okay, I’m not trying to call you out. But I want you to get real with yourself. If you’re in back to back meetings, there is no way that that is all your role is okay, meetings do not all add value, okay? So you could delegate them to a team member. Or you could actually decline from time to time, but that’s for another day. Okay. We’ll talk about meetings another day. But honestly, you need to get really clear on where you should be spending your time. Because then it also gets you clear on what you shouldn’t be spending your time.
5:53
The second thing, then when it comes to delegation is you’ve got to stop fixing your team’s mistakes, you’ve got to delegate back. So if your team prepared, let’s say a document, and it’s not up to scratch, just don’t be tempted to redo it yourself, if you’re not happy with it. Honestly, in my business, in particular, I used to just fix things myself, but this is just not good leadership. Because not only does this doing this, put the task actually back to you. And it takes you out of your zone of genius and where you should be spending your time, the person you delegate to doesn’t actually learn how to do it right, or how you like it done. So you’re actually robbing them of growing in the role. Now, I’ve got really good at communicating what I like and I don’t like and honestly, I rarely fix things for my team, unless there’s like a technical issue and something they can’t fix. But I’ll make sure I teach them how I’ve done it. Okay, if for the most part. So now let’s say if I have a change in a document, I will review it and instead of just changing it, first of all, we always have our documents, we use Google Docs, so we use suggestion mode for Excel, you’ll be using Track Changes, make sure you’re tracking the changes. But the thing that most people don’t do is leave a comment explaining the change and why it’s important. So if you’re multitasking, come back to me. If you or your team send you something, make sure you’re tracking the changes, amazing. But you’ve got to leave a comment explaining why you made the change. Okay, so for example, one of my team used to write content for me, and she was new, and she used to just use a ton of emojis now. I love emojis. And we have a procedure for writing content, which explains what emojis Lucy likes and things like that. But I only like them, you know, in certain places, and there’s only certain emojis that I like to use. So as silly as it sounds, if now I see that they’re using the wrong emojis, I’ll refer them back to procedure. And I’ll say, look, could you just fix this, because I just don’t want to get into a bad habit of like changing everything, okay, and you definitely don’t want to be doing that either. Okay, now, it does take more time upfront, to actually coach your team and to train your team what you like, but it’s going to pay dividends in the future.
8:05
Okay. So moving on to number three. And this is a really important one, you have got to overcome it will the whole it’ll be faster if I do it myself mentality. Okay. So going back to your zone of genius and the importance of knowing where you should be spending your time, you’ll always have to do everything. If you keep telling yourself it’d be faster if I do it. And that is no way to operate at your level, okay? You want to deliver on those strategic initiatives that you beat yourself up over for not having time for you wanted more time to see your family back home and to have more fun with the little ones in your life. And honestly, there is no prize for doing it all on your own. If you’re multitasking, come back to me.Did you hear what I said? said there was no prize for doing it all on your own. Let that sink in. How many times have you worked yourself to the bone and worked long hours and you didn’t get the recognition you deserved? There is no prize, okay? And in fact, the more time you spend doing the busy work, the less time you have to focus on strategy, getting visible relationship building, having fun outside work, right? So you have to start changing your mindset on that.
9:20
The fourth thing then speaking of mindset is you have to embrace as a leader, the power of a growth mindset. And you have to be okay, with your team making mistakes. You’ve got to be okay with not being done exactly as you’d like us, and if they make mistakes. So having a growth mindset means that mistakes are opportunities to grow and learn mistakes honestly don’t mean failure for the most part. You have to allow your team to make mistakes and get it wrong. Now it’s different if there’s a trend with one particular person of making the same mistake and you know, you’ve you’ve gone through the performance reviews and you’ve you’ve sat down and you’ve communicated and all those things if you’ve got performance issues that’s different, but where you have people who are genuinely willing and enthusiastic, which most people are, to be fair, okay, if if they’re in the right environment with the right, leader, most people just want to do a good job, okay? So it’s your job as a leader to be there to support and encourage them to learn and develop. Now, I remember, back in the day, when I worked in the corporate world, I really strive for excellence. Because at the time, I was an extreme perfectionist, I really prided myself on having all of those green KPIs and hitting those metrics and being the best like, like, literally, my I am, my department was the best in our entire site for so long, there was so many other departments who, you know, all of their KPIs would have been red and ours was was consistently green. And I was like, I would have died, how we broke with that metric, because it was my reputation on the line. So I really get it, I understand if you, you know, I didn’t want to let go of the control because I was afraid if I didn’t show up to that meeting, that maybe it would look bad. And I also just wanted to be in the thick of it and be seen for many years. Until I learned that for everything I was saying yes to every meeting every task, I was saying no to something else. So if I spent my day in back to back meetings, it meant I had to do my work at home in the evenings or the weekends or stay late. And I have three kids. So that meant missing dinnertime and missing bedtime, or rushing, rushing bedtime, which was worse so I could get back on the laptop. And I realized I didn’t want that anymore. Because my mother used to my my kids and they were getting you know, she’s getting older now she’s in her 70s. And you just have barely have time to chat with her because I was so consumed by work related stuff in my head, that my mom was not going to be around forever. So now I make it my business. And I always before even left the corporate world, I made it my business to prioritize those things because family is my number one value. So for you, if family is a really strong value for you, which most for most of us it is if you’re feeling frustrated or stressed or anxious, it means you’re not operating in alignment with your values. So it’s a sure sign from your body actually, that something needs to change. So you’ve got to listen to that.
12:18
So number five, then is this is the final thing I’m going to say in this delegation piece really is. Okay, so now you know your zone of genius you’ve identified where you should be spending your time, you’ve made a decision that you’re going to embrace a growth mindset, you’re going to be okay with your team failing. And now it’s like, right, okay, so what exactly can I delegate. So before I got really good at delegating, I always felt like I was fighting the clock, and I just needed a few more hours in the day. And I swear, if I had a Euro, or $1, for every woman that I met, who said, Oh my god, I’m so busy, I’m in back to back meetings, I have no time, I wouldn’t even need to be doing this podcast, I wouldn’t need to work another day in my life. So you have more than enough time, my friend, you’re just choosing to spend it in the wrong places.
13:09
So I remember I read the book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steve Colby. And that really did help me step into my next level of leadership. And you know, the part where he goes through if you haven’t read the book, I will link it in the show notes. It’s a really, really, really good read. And he goes through the I suppose the art of prioritization delegation, and he shares about the Eisenhower matrix, which I thought was really powerful, but one of the quadrants where he talks a lot about the concept of focusing on you know, important tasks, urgent and important tasks and non urgent and important tasks. But the problem is I used to struggle to use it because I’d go to the matrix. And I’d go, right, okay, this, this is an urgent task, where does it fit? And of course, everything fits in the urgent box, because everything is urgent in the corporate world, right. So that’s what prompted me to develop a much easier, more intuitive tool I call the powerhouse priorities prioritization matrix. And the good news is, is I’m sharing that with you for free today. So I’ve created a free guide. And in the free guide, it’s all on work life balance, and changing your mindset. And one of the strategies is this prioritization matrix. So if you just go to sign up, dot Lucy garland.com, forward slash work life balance guide, you can grab it there, and it’ll just be exactly where you’re listening to this as well. If you go to the show notes, like or wherever you’re on Spotify or Apple, you’ll see it there. But this is this matrix is very much based off the Eisenhower matrix, but it speaks your language. Okay. So my clients absolutely love this. I do a training I called prioritize like a pro CEO and this is part of, I suppose, the whole time management productivity system that I have, but a lot of my clients would actually print this and have an under desk and they use it daily. I even had a listener messaged me to see that she has her tear board at work. So her entire team are clear on exactly what to delegate and when something is actually urgent or whether it’s not urgent and how to know. So it’s a really, really super valuable tool. And I’m happy to share that with you for free today. So go over and grab it now at signup dot Lucy garden.com forward slash work life balance guide. Okay, so that’s it for this week’s episode. But I really want you to take action today. There was no point in going oh, god looses, right? And I need to delegate more. And then going back and doing exactly what you’ve always done, okay, that is not going to get you any farther in your career, you’re going to burn yourself out. And you are literally robbing your team of development opportunities. So make a decision that today is the day that you begin to master the art of delegation. So I have three actions for you. So if you’re multitasking, come back to me. The first action is to get clear, within 24 hours of this, I want you to take a pen and paper and I want you to get super clear on your zone of genius, and where you should be spending your time in your role. Okay, now, if you’re unsure, you know, if you’re thinking oh, well, I think this but maybe my boss has other ideas. Ask your boss, okay, write out where you should be spending your time. And if you want a sanity check it with your boss, that’s fine. Remember with your boss to Okay. Your boss just wants to know everything is under control. So you know, you don’t have to get into granular details around Is it okay? If I don’t attend this meeting? Never go in looking for permission. Okay, you’re gonna need to go in with confidence and strength with an air of like, I suppose instilling confidence in them, that you have things under control, okay. So if you’re going to sanity check with your boss, you’re not going to with a permission mindset. You’re going in with a powerhouse mindset. Okay, you’re going in with that energy of control. Okay, that’s the first thing I’d love you to do. The second thing I invite you to do is to look at your calendar and your to do list for the next two weeks and ask yourself, What can I delegate? Okay, it’s time to take back control my friend, look at your calendar and your to do list for the next two weeks. And look at what you can delegate and number three to help you with number two is download the free guide that I mentioned that contains the powerhouse prioritization matrix it will absolutely help you figure this out. And it also shares other powerful strategies to help you reclaim your time to get the best from your team so that you have more time to be strategic and have more fun because God knows we need a bit of that. All right, then lovely lady. If you found this episode valuable, please make sure you share it with a friend and also make sure to follow the powerhouse Revolution podcast on your favorite listening platform so you never miss an episode and leave a review. I absolutely love reading them. And I would love to hear from you. Until next time, bye for now.
