203: Why You’re Resisting Delegation In Your Business and What You Can Do About It

Welcome to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. Get ready to level up your thinking and expand your horizons. I’m your host, Andrea Liebross, your guide on this journey of big ideas and bold moves. I am the best-selling author of She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary.

I support women like you with the insights and mindset you need to think bigger and the strategies and systems you need to turn that thinking into action and make it all a reality. Are you ready to stop thinking small and start thinking big? Let’s dive in.

Hello, my friends and welcome back to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. How are you? How are you? What's happening? How are you feeling about fall? Do you feel like fall is falling? Is fall slipping away? Because we are literally in the exact middle of the fourth quarter and I think it sort of starts to turn to winter at this point.

Well, here's the thing. I'm guessing at this moment in time, you feel like you have 50 gazillion things on your plate. Is that you? I'm guessing it's you, that you feel like you have 50 gazillion things on your plate.

I'm also guessing that you're starting to think about how you're going to end this year and begin the new year. Normal, very normal. That's good news. I think you're probably realizing maybe that even though this year you said you are going to be better about delegating, you are resisting delegating.

Alright, so today's episode is about why you're resisting and what you can do about it. It was inspired by a recent Vision Into Action Intensive I did with someone who really wants to delegate more and isn't.

We've gone back and forth now a couple of times, even after her Vision Into Action Intensive. She stayed on for some ongoing coaching, so good move on her part. But I've gone back and forth on even if she were to delegate, this is scaring her because she's thinking, "What would I do? What would happen to me, what would I be doing?" Which is so interesting that her brain has gone there. There'd be so many things that she could be doing that she's not doing now that she wants to do, which I had to remind her.

But back to today's topic. Today's topic is really about why you are struggling with delegation. I get it, I totally get it. You've built this business from the ground up and now you're handing over tasks to someone else, and that really can be a huge leap, the handing over. But here's the thing. Not delegating is really often what holds us back from scaling.

So if you haven't taken my new quiz, Are You Ready To Scale Big? A little plug for that, go to andrealiebross.com/quiz, and you're going to find out if you're ready to scale. But not delegating is what holds us back from scaling and it holds us back from enjoying really the freedom that we started our businesses to achieve in the first place.

I don't know a person that didn't start their own business who thought eventually, they're probably pretty realistic and realized it wouldn't be on day one, but eventually, they might have more freedom than they did working for someone else and thus that freedom word is why I call the mastermind Runway to Freedom.

If you didn't listen to last week's episode which was about my Runway to Freedom group, you really should go listen because I think people are creating the freedom that they want to in there. All right, but nonetheless, let's talk about three reasons, why we resist delegating and how these play out specifically for women entrepreneurs.

I've done some other episodes on delegating, which I will link in the show notes. If you're not familiar with the five levels of delegation, I will also link that download in there. But the three reasons that I wrapped my head around why we resist delegating, here's what they come down to.

So here's reason number one: Fear of losing control. What do I mean by that? You've likely had the thought, “If I don't do this myself, it won't get done right. It won't be done the right way.” Does this sound familiar? I bet it does because I see this a lot, especially in clients who are perfectionists.

It's that fear that if we pass something off, we're going to lose control over the outcome or I might say what goes in the result line. Maybe you own a business and you've been doing, let's say you have actually an inventory, you've been doing all the buying, you've been doing all the marketing, you've been doing all the customer service yourself, and you're afraid to hand over even a little bit of any of that because what if someone messes up?

Those client relationships are the most important thing to you is what you will tell me. If someone messes up, you're putting the client relationship in jeopardy, you're going to feel horrible, yada, yada, but here's the thing, holding on to everything keeps you in the weeds, and staying there really means that you never ever are going to step into that CEO role.

You are the CEO, but you're not stepping into that role and because you can't step into that role, you can't focus on strategy and growth. You can't even think about scaling or growing for that matter.

If you're not going to delegate, then you're not going to be able to step into that role, CEO role in its fullest form, and you're not going to be able to think strategically and focus on growth or scale.

This fear of losing control is really just a story that you're telling yourself. It's just a story, “I won't have as much control and what if?” This then puts you into stuck stress. This is a great example of stuck stress. That's the one reason that you probably are struggling with delegating.

Here's reason number two: Perfectionism. I hinted on this a little bit before. But now perfectionism is a sneaky one. It is different than losing control because we convince ourselves that nobody can do the task as well as we can. So there's a difference between it's not going to be done right, that's fear, or what if something goes wrong? That's fear.

This “It's not going to be done as well as I could do it” is different. This is perfectionism. I once worked with a woman who ran a design firm. She was stuck doing everything from creating the concepts, the design board, to managing the invoices, to posting on social media.

Because she believed that no one could match her standard and that no one was good enough. This is where B minus work turned in is better than A plus work that never gets turned in.

Hiring someone to handle the admin or to handle some of these tasks, even if they don't do it exactly how you would, really frees you up to focus on your genius zone. In my free download called The Zone of Extraordinary Achievement, it's part of the toolkit for the book, so you could go to andrealiebross.com/toolkit, look for Zone of Extraordinary Achievement, I ask some questions about when you're ready to delegate or how do you know if you should delegate, and this perfectionism comes up in those series of questions.

In fact, that handout, Zone of Extraordinary Achievement, is a perfect thing to accompany this episode so I really do encourage you to go download that, it's like a rubric that's going to help you figure out why you're resisting delegating and what to delegate. But this rings us to our third reason, why you might be struggling.

The third reason is the time investment. A lot of business owners say, "I'd rather just do it myself than spend time teaching someone else how to do it." Yeah, have you ever thought about this? I'd rather just do it myself than teach someone else how to do it. I can feel guilty about this one.

The perfectionism isn't necessarily me. The losing control, definitely not me, but this time thing could be me where I'd rather just do it myself than teach someone how to do it. I see this, this is a big one for women balancing multiple responsibilities.

You've got a family, you've got business, you got personal commitments. We feel like training someone will take too much time and we're already stretched too thin. You can't add another thing to your plate.

But here's the truth. Yes, training does take time upfront, but once you've done it, the time you get back is invaluable. I want you to imagine that you are a business owner who spends hours each week on client scheduling and invoicing. Training an assistant to handle those tasks might take a couple of weeks, but the hours you will save every month are huge.

So, listeners, it's time to rethink delegation. If you want to grow, if you want to scale, it's non-negotiable. The question isn't if you should delegate, it's what you should delegate first. That's where that rubric, that Zone of Extraordinary Achievement rubric that you can access through the toolkit is powerful in helping you figure out what to delegate first.

It actually even gives you little green light, red light kind of things after you answer a couple of questions. Then remember when you are delegating, done is way better than perfect. Control can actually really come from building a solid team, not from doing everything yourself.

I do see that this perfect thing gets totally in the way like someone says, “I'm going to have to take the next three weeks to write these three emails.” What? No, you're not. That's perfect getting in your way. Or “I'm just not going to have time on my schedule to do it until next month.” What? If it's something important, it needs to get done now. Could you delegate it?

The three reasons why you're resisting: Number one, fear of losing control. Number two, perfectionism. Number three, time investment. So I want you to access in the show notes the Five Levels of Delegation because not all delegating is created equal, my friends. I want you to go back and listen to that episode about how to delegate using those five levels of delegation.

I also want you to look at the Zone of Extraordinary Achievement. What should you be delegating? That's going to help you. All right, that's it for today's episode. This is something that I really want you to consider getting good at as we go into 2025. As you start to create your goals, you don't have to be the only one executing on those goals.

This is another thing I see in these Vision Into Action Intensives. People limit themselves because they only think about what they have the capacity for and what they can do, which is a good thing to be thinking about. But are you considering the people on your team? What is the whole organization as a whole of the capacity to do? Or do we need to even expand on the team? That's another thing.

So if you're struggling with delegation or feeling stuck in that daily grind, I want you to get help on this. The best way, I've mentioned a lot of what I'll call sort of passive action ways, but the best way is to talk about getting support in the form of coaching. So you can head to my website. You can book a call. We can talk about how we can shift your mindset and free up your time for bigger things.

Actually, by the time this episode airs, I believe there are even a couple of options on the website where we don't even have to book a call, you can click and invest in some coaching immediately because after all, if you've listened to all these podcast episodes, you probably know enough that it might be helpful.

Until next time, my friends, keep thinking big. I'll be back here next week with another episode, but in the meantime, I want to know, what are you thinking big about? Let me know. Message me. See you soon.

Thanks for tuning into the She Thinks Big! Podcast. If you're ready to learn the secret to unleashing your full potential, don't forget to grab a copy of my book, She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary. It's available on Amazon and at your favorite bookstore.

And while you're there, grab a copy for a friend. Inside, you'll both find actionable strategies and empowering insights to help you navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship and life, and step confidently into your extraordinary future.

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