269: Delegating Begins with Hiring 

Michele Williams: Hello, my name is Michele and you're listening to Profit is a Choice. Joining the podcast today is Selina Johnson. Selina is a team operations strategist and a go-to expert for reclaiming your time and embracing an enriched and peaceful life. Her mission is to empower CEOs to build efficient teams that don't rely on the CEO 24/7,  I know I could use that, and probably so could you. We're going to talk about where delegating really begins and the best practices to get started. Enjoy.

Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice.

Hi, Selina. Welcome to the podcast.

Selina Johnson: Hey, Michele.

Michele Williams: I'm glad to have you with us. You are joining us from, as we would say, and maybe you would say, across the pond. So, it's so nice to be able to communicate and not feel like we have to be in the exact same location to do that.

Selina Johnson: Yes, absolutely.

Michele Williams: Today we're going to talk about delegation. You're going to share all types of tips and tricks and best practices with delegation, how to do that, and how to create an operation strategy that works with great team members. But before we jump into that conversation, I'd love for my listeners to learn a little bit about you and hear a little bit of your journey to create the business that you have today.

Selina Johnson: Thank you for the intro. So, yes, my name's Selina.  I'm based in the UK, if you couldn't work that out from my accent, I am an organization freak. I think I'm a Virgo so that's just natural. I'm always looking at how we can make something more organized and free up your time so that you can focus on the stuff you love to do, whether that's more time to go on holiday vacation, more time with family and loved ones, or more time to grow your business. And a real game changer in my business has been delegating. Delegating to team members, but also at home delegating to family members as well. Naturally, I think I just get given everything because I'm an organized person, but actually, I want my time back. I want free headspace to actually do nothing. So, delegation is something I do on a day-to-day basis, and I'd love to unwrap that with you and look at some strategies and key takeaways that we can discuss with your audience today.

Michele Williams: Selina, when did you realize the power of delegation? I mean, you know, like most of us as young people, little girls growing up, little boys growing up, we're not thinking, I mean, certainly we want to get out of our chores, so we're looking to have somebody else help us do that, maybe that's the first signs of delegation. But when did you realize the power of delegation? You know, we all go into business and take different routes. When did you find that that was something that either you worked on or that came naturally to you or that you saw as a strategy to truly reclaim some of your time?

Selina Johnson: It was actually when I started my business seven years ago. I had a virtual assistant agency, and I was really good at understanding the client's needs, understanding what tasks to delegate out, and then matching them with the ideal person who really wanted to work in that business and could take it to the next level. So, I was matching these perfect teams together with business owners, but then what happened was the CEO was not utilizing them. They got into this kind of trap it's easy for me to do it myself, I can't communicate what I need them to do, I have no time, or I'll just do it quickly. They just never seem to have the time available to actually download them and utilize them. So, they had money going out, but they weren't seeing that return of investment. I was like, well, I've done my service here by matching you with this perfect person, but you're not delegating. You're not actually using them. This person is like an A-star team player for you, why are you not using them? So that's when I started to realize that I was good at actually guiding them and actually saying to them and giving them that support, to say, well, you're trying to get to this vision, and in order to get there, you need to start delegating if you want to reach this financial goal or you want to sell your business in this years’ time or you want to have more time to go and see your son's soccer game, then you need to give something to a team member to do. So that was the real effect of when I saw delegation was a game changer in other businesses.

Michele Williams: I love that because so often as I coach business owners, and they'll say either they've hired it could be a VA, or it could certainly be someone sitting right in front of them, it doesn't matter, a team member. But I do see it a lot when they talk about a VA well, I've hired them, but it's going to take me longer to show them or to teach them, so I'll just go do it myself. And they're not really understanding the compound effect of showing and teaching them, and then you never have to do it again. So, yeah, in that moment, it might be faster, but over the long haul, it's not. I know one of the team members that I worked with at one point, we were calculating, even if you handed off something that was ten minutes or 30 minutes or an hour a day, the compounding effect of having that hour back every single day was almost like a week's vacation. It was insane and so just really kind of dialing back and realizing the power of that. But I think that we don't delegate for a few reasons, and I'd love to see if you have more to add to that list. I think we don't delegate because we don't know where to start. Quite often, we hire someone or bring someone in, to delegate to when we're so overwhelmed that we haven't created space to be able to hand something off properly. We don't know what to hand off. We're too busy to hand off. We don't know who to give it to. We don't know what form to give it to them in to get it back. And then we have this internal conversation, I can just do it myself, even if the rate is something that makes sense. I've seen often, you know, the person that we're supposed to be delegating to sitting there going you're not giving me anything. You're not giving me anything. And them going, well, I don't have anything to give you. I can just do it faster. It kind of creates this loop, if you will, that it's hard to break out of without changing our thinking. I think it's Rory Vaden who has a great book that talks about this principle of what is important and what is urgent, and he talks about what is significant. The significance of investing the time to teach it so that you don't have to do it again. And quite often, the significant parts fall to the bottom because we're so busy chasing the urgent and the important. Whereas if we would create some space to do the significant, the urgent and important would actually reduce because everybody's not running around with like a fire drill.

Selina Johnson: Yeah, that's a great overview there. And I feel like a lot of people, when they do come to me, they're in that reactive mode, not being proactive. They say, okay, in three months’ time, I'm bringing out a new book, or I'm going to be more influx of clients are going to be coming through. So, I need to get someone in now. It's almost like I'm in the waters, I'm in the trenches. Help me, somebody. And when you're in that state of mind, you often can't think logically, and you can bring somebody into your business who's probably not the ideal match for what your business needs. So, it's always best to review your business, like every quarter, as you would. You probably advise on the finances to look at your business. It's good to look at it from a team perspective also of, okay, how is my business operating right now? Do I have the right team members? Are they equipped? Are they freeing up my time? Or is there something else I need to be doing? Do we need to increase their responsibility, or do we need to bring somebody else into the business? It is quite a crucial step to start thinking about. So that you're always staying in that proactive state of mind rather than being reactive is the first key point. And then the point you mentioned about, I call it like zone of genius, which is played on quite a lot. But for me, my zone of genius is showing up on these Podcasts and, getting more access to the world and advising them about my talents of helping you to free up your time and to delegate effectively. And it's to be able to also have free time to think and have the headspace and be creative. So, anything else that falls outside of that is not the best use of my time. I can often find myself for example, oh, my website needs updating or That information is not quite right. Let me just go in and change it quickly. It will only take me five minutes, and then I go down a rabbit hole. It actually took me an hour because there are always glitches. So, it's really important to determine what's your core focus in your role and, what could you start delegating every morning, even if it's a small task, to somebody else in your team.

Michele Williams: You're right, we do the review of the financials. It's interesting in my Aim with Intent, which is my trademark signature course, we look at three things over and over and over. We first talk about what is our foundation, our mission vision, and our why. We talk about how to build our strategy. Then we are constantly looking at our people, our processes, and our profitability. We're looking at the money, we're looking at the processes that run the business, which could include delegations. and we're looking at, do we have the right people in the right seats doing the right jobs and that is a constant. Those three things together, I would go as far, and I truly believe that you think the same, because we touched on it in 2 seconds before we went on air, but delegation starts with hiring. I know even in my modules, when I just teach about it more in a general form, we talk about the fact, like, that if you've hired the wrong person, you can't delegate to them. Delegation really starts with the building of your team and having the right people in the right positions to do the job that you need to delegate to them because even if they understand it and even if they acknowledge it if they can't do it, it does you no good to delegate it to them. Even worse, you have a non-compliant person on your team who doesn't want to be delegated, doesn't tell me what to do, kind of like an obstinate three-year-old who says “I do it myself. I do it my way” and that's not going to help a team move forward. If you don't mind, let's kind of divert for just a second and talk about how we hire to delegate, and how we think about the delegation process in the hiring process.

Selina Johnson: Yes. If we look at it from a bird's eye view, there are three core areas that I talked about and that's hiring, onboarding, and delegating. And often we're quick to hire, and we expect these people to be at top-notch levels straight away. We kind of say to them, sink or swim, and they're left to their own accord, which is very dangerous and can be very detrimental to the business because you can hire people at different levels, whether they're junior level entry, person, or they're someone who's got years of experience. But if there's no true onboarding to get them into the business, to give them the clarity they need to know what success looks like. If they're not given the information during the hiring process, like the job description, what does the business do, what are we about, what are our ethos, because sharing that information is really key because you're going to attract the people that are interested in those values. It's the same as when you go to a concert. If you're not into rock music, you're probably not going to go to a rock concert. So, it's the same way. You really need to spend time advertising what it is that you're looking for so you're attracting those people and then you're also following that through during the interview questions that you're asking them to make sure that they're fully aligned with those day to day tasks that they're going to be doing in your business. I think it's often an area that's quite skipped because, when we run the business, we're thinking about the money and what we need to bring in to get the money like the marketing side and the sales side bringing clients in. But your team is so important because you can't do everything on your own to uphold the business. You need this team to be with you on your side because there are only so many hours in the day that you can actually operate and function clearly. So, you need duplicates of yourself to uphold other areas and other aspects of your business at a high standard. So, we need to make sure we're spending that time bringing in the right people into the business. And part of that is getting clear on who those people are, and documenting that before you actually start the hiring process.

Michele Williams: I know I've done it really terribly, and I've done it really well. I would say my last probably ten hires have been great, but it came to the benefit of doing probably ten that were not so great, and the things that made my initial hires not so great, it wasn't that the people weren't great people. It had nothing to do with that. It had more to do with my ability to discern what I really needed help with and what the skill level was, and then also making sure that I set them up for success. I didn't do a great job because I was so overwhelmed. I didn't know what I needed. I didn't have clarity. I was going so fast. I remember, and I've shared on multiple podcasts, but I remember one time I hired someone, and we were moving fast and moving quickly, and I didn't have a good outline of what I needed. So, then she was left to her own devices, and the things that she was creating just kept missing the mark. But it wasn't because she wasn't trying. It was because I couldn't give her clear directions on what I wanted. I didn't know myself in my business well enough at the time, and I didn't know how to articulate what it was. And then there was no way she could hit the mark that she didn't even know was there. We kept kind of missing each other. Another hire that I had, she got overwhelmed and kept saying, yes, yes, yes, when I would delegate, and I should have recognized as the manager and right, that she was saying yes too much, but I trusted that she was saying yes to the right things, and I really should have had another hire come in earlier to alleviate some of the work. And so, some of it is learning. I know what I do now is very different. I have a very clear job description. This is what you're going to do and be as clear as I know how to make it. We talk a lot about character in the interview process. We talk a lot about values. You know, what do they value? What do I value? And honestly, in my software company, one of the most fun aspects of hiring for that was I said, I only want to hire people who love what I'm hiring them to do. So, in the same way, that I want to love and work in my zone of Genius, I want them to do that, too. I don't want them to be in some catch-all position that they don't even love what they do. We tend to do better work when we're working in an area that we love. I actually had two or three different job descriptions that I thought they could do, but before I even showed them the full job description, I said, what do you love to do? What lights your world on fire? What makes your heart sing? And then that was the job description I pulled and interviewed for. So, it was a slightly different approach, but everybody was like, oh, my gosh, I feel like I'm working and doing fun things at the same time because it was the first time I've seen it play out that way where it was a true match. I love to do this, and you're giving me the opportunity to do this.

Selina Johnson: Yeah, I love that because I've noticed that when you have a fully engaged team that is going to rock up and enjoy the business as much as you do, the trajectory of the business just rockets because everybody's on the same page. Everybody loves what they're doing. Their productivity is increased, and it just makes your life easier because you feel like you can trust them. You're not kind of micromanaging them or double-checking everything. You're leaving them to get on with it because they know they can come to you when they need support, but they have that role and responsibility to do the stuff that they love to do. And nobody wants to go to wake up in the morning and think, oh, I've got to do this today. I've got to go and complete this for Michele. I don't like doing it. It just doesn't work. So, I love what you said up there, and that sounds like a great system.

Michele Williams: What's been interesting about that was kind of having that open conversation, and I think this is an open conversation in the delegation. I am giving this task to you because it fits within your job description, you have the ability and the skill to do it. Here's the expectation of when it should be done, and what it should look like on the other side. Here's all the things that you need to be equipped to do it well, you know, I'll check in the first couple of times to make sure we're on the same page and getting the desired results that we want. And then I usually make a comment. I might spot-check as we go along just to make sure where we are. If you have a question, come and ask me. And the more I realize that they're on it, the less I have to spot-check or I'm going to spot-check in a different place. But in addition, I usually say to those people I work with, we all have to do things we don't enjoy. Sometimes in work, like, it's called work for a reason, it's not play. However, if you get to the point that you hate your job and don't like what you're doing anymore, I need you to let me know. Like, don't sit and stew in it and then walk away. Come talk to me about what you don't like, what's been delegated to you that you don't like or don't find joy in anymore. And let's see if we can adjust the role, adjust the position, adjust the work so that you can reclaim that joy if that's something that you want to do. So those open lines of communication on whether it's working or not working or how it's working, I think is critical to great delegation skills. What do you think about that?

Selina Johnson: Yes. Communication is one of the things I talk about constantly, especially with remote teams where you are kind of speaking on Zoom, maybe, or you're interacting through platforms. Communication is so important for having team catch-ups, for having team building sessions, and also, as you said if they need to come forward, if they've got any concerns or not sure about something, they need to have that open door policy where they feel like they can come and communicate with you. And I find sometimes that if we're not communicating regularly enough, so often we may just email someone to do something, and then there's no follow through or check-in of that work until a month later, which could be a month pass where the work's not to the standard, where it should have been, or it's not completed on time. So those checkpoints are quite critical to have. And this client I'm working with at the moment, she's brought on a junior PA, and she's noticed with this junior PA that he needs more handholding. So he's constantly sending her WhatsApp messages on a daily basis. She said it's affecting her focus on being creative and doing the stuff that she needs to get on with, but she feels like she has to spend that time with him to get him through what he needs, but it's still like a constant battle. And I said, well, why don't you take it off WhatsApp and move it to maybe 15-minute check-in calls every day at a scheduled time? It's in your diary so he can ask you specific questions so you can get things resolved much quicker than 20 messages about one topic. It's just crazy. And, the feedback I've got from that, is she loves it because they're able to resolve things much quicker. She can see how he is thinking and give him thoughts of, like, what's going through her mind and why that would be a good idea. So, he's getting more understanding of the business and, like, her way of thinking and the logical process of agreeing to something and declining invitations so that he can be more accountable and more responsible for decision-making later on down the line without her having to do it all herself.

Michele Williams: It's so interesting, Selina, because in interior design, I know, the designers that I work with, or window treatment specialists, anybody, the one thing that we hate is that back and forth from the client. What about this? What about this? What about that? Right? The peppering of questions in any given timeframe and what normally stops it is saying, it looks like we need to have a meeting. Can we hop on the phone? Can we hop on Zoom? Do we need to set up a call so that we can answer everything at one time? Let's batch it all together, and then we can move forward. It's a distraction. I get it because your mind is trying to go in the direction of the work that you have to get done, but it is a start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. And you can't not answer the question. We have to be able to answer some level of questions for the other person that we've hired to continue moving. Just a good reminder that the things that we don't enjoy when our clients do it to us, we need to put ourselves in a position to support our teammates the same way. Having those ten and 15-minute check-ins, I know in some corporate environments like my sister is in, she works in software, my husband works in software, and a lot of those companies, they all do daily stand-ups, 15 minutes at the beginning of the day, and they call it a stand-up because they don't sit around a desk. So everybody comes in, stands up, and asks your questions. Where are you? Anything hindering your work, any question that you have for somebody on the team, and even if it doesn't get answered in that m moment, it's a setup to say, I need to talk to Michele, and Selina about this. Okay. What time can you two talk? All right, 01:00 we'll meet the two of you back, and let's go over this. Right, but it's that orchestration of question-answering work that will get you through the day so that you're not peppered, and then everybody can go focus on the things that they need to do. So, what I'm hearing in all of this, as well, is not only having great processes and practices for hiring but having really great communication and great processes and practices for managing the task on the day-to-day. Some of this communication and some of this question and answer and all of that I know comes and is born out of trust. Trust from the business owner that I trust that I've hired the right person. I trust they can do the job, and then trust from the person who's being assigned the work. I trust that they're giving me work that I can do, and I trust that they're wanting me to be successful. I think sometimes it is easy if there's not an overall trust in the hiring process, to think they're trying to make me fail or they're purposefully not giving me something that I need. So that when that idea of trust is broken, we can start to look at the negative of why we don't have what we need or why we don't know what we think we need to know versus looking at we're all here, to your point earlier, with the same idea in mind, to make this company work, to use our talents, gifts, and abilities, and to work together in a concerted fashion to move the business forward. Because I know that if you have an agency and you're trying to, you know, attach a resource with a business need, and you're trying to make that commitment for the two together, trust has to be built, and it's got to be built pretty quickly to be able to kick that relationship off in a great way. How can we build that trust and how important is it?

Selina Johnson: Absolutely. And I just wanted to take a step back and I always look at how I would feel in that situation, so I reverse the role to make sure I'm making that person feel comfortable because they're essentially representing my business. I like to look back at previous jobs I've worked for in corporate, and there have been jobs where there's been no handover. I haven't had a warm welcome, and I've just had to get into the job and figure things out for myself. And that's taken a lot of time and capacity of wasted hours trying to learn things. I've been in jobs where I've had a meeting with people, they've introduced me to the team, they've walked me around the office, and I've got a downloaded document of what I need to be doing today. This sets me up for success so much quicker than I would without it. And then it makes me feel warm and welcome to then actually do the job and they're trusting me to do the work. Whereas if I don't have that information and I've got a kind of figure out the puzzle pieces and it's like, what do I do now? “Am I meant to do this way?” and you question yourself. That's where you may feel like there's no trust or why have I come into this? You might regret the job because not all the information you need is readily available or there isn't anyone you can talk to support you. So, I think the same within your business, whether that's interior design or in the creative industry, it's looking at what tools and resources they need. What software do they need? Can you carve out time in your diary to sit with them or to have a phone call with them to explain what it is the business does, and what you need them to do? Be honest with them to say, okay, the business is quite chaotic at the moment because I haven't organized my Google Drive or the files are all over the place, but that's why I've hired you to help me to construct that. Or don't be worried that people are going to be seen in a negative way because something is not quite aligned. They're there to support you, to uphold you and their creativity and their zone of genius is the stuff that you necessarily don't like to do. And I think that the more that you open up and show your weaknesses in a sense that I haven't got this bit figured out, they're going to see that, oh, this person is actually human, and they're opening up to me, and I really want to help them to succeed so I'm m going to jump in and do these things to support them. I feel it's really a two-way conversation to get to know them as well as they need to get to know you.

Michele Williams: I like to use the analogy of when I am inviting someone into my home, I'm going to make sure the guest room is made up. I'm going to make sure that maybe I have their favorite snacks or drinks at the house. I'm going to set up an agenda of what we're going to be doing or if they've got a favorite restaurant, I'm going to make sure we have reservations. I'm going to do things to make their time with me pleasant. But I'm also, even if it's chaotic, I want them to come in knowing that I want them to be there. I'll give you an example we have been through over the last few years, both of my sons have gotten married, so we've gone through all of the engagement parties and the wedding showers and all of the events that needed to take place. I threw a lot of the parties for the families, and so it can sometimes be very chaotic. With all the moving pieces and parts. We've got 50 people coming in for a party. We're having it at my house and my sister came in to help me give every one of the showers and every one of the events. And so, as she's coming in to help me, everything's kind of, like, crazy here. Right? But she's coming to help, meaning she's coming with the idea that I'm going to delegate work to her. But she's also coming in as a guest in my home. I still went and made sure that I had what she wanted, and that I had her room ready. So even if I was harried because I didn't have everything in order or as organized or as planned out as maybe I wanted to, or maybe just a time constraint, I still wanted to welcome her and have a list of let me give you the overview. Let me tell you what I'm going to hand to you. Here's what you can do for me or her saying how, oh, I can take that off your plate, too. But it was a welcoming event. I think quite often we bring people in, and I have seen this play out with some people that I'm very close to where they were brought into a job to help because they were so overwhelmed and chaotic. They weren't given the lay of the land. They weren't given, like, a high level here's what happened. There was no transfer of trust introduced to anybody. And so when this particular person is now in a new business and they're going around asking questions nobody's answering because they don't know who they are, they don't know why they're there, and they don't think they need to give them any information, because there wasn't that transfer of trust from the business owner to the new hire and then not from the new hire to the rest of the organization. And that new hire has been left to try to figure everything out. It was like inviting a guest and not being ready for them, not taking them out to eat, having no food in the pantry, and it's been a disaster. And that new hire certainly doesn't feel wanted. They don't feel welcome there, and they feel like they're fighting upstream and at some point, to your point and mine, it's not worth that fight. That's not their fight. They're not even invested in the fight. Like, they're having to fight against what's happening just to be invested. And that's when I think we're asking too much of a new hire when we're asking them to fight a fight that they really shouldn't even have to fight yet, just to get invested enough to push the business forward, because we aren't ready. We aren't prepared. We're not carving out time. We're not doing the legwork to be ready for them to come into that business.

Selina Johnson: Yeah, it's an awful position to be in, and I feel that we need to have the time capacity when we're bringing somebody in for them. And if we don't, then it's something that we have to persevere until we have that time. That is a really key point.

Michele Williams: Let me ask you this. So, we've talked about hiring and we've talked about good delegation, like really equipping them, that transfer of trust, if you will. What do you see as, a great arc of leadership that can be provided to make sure that teams that have had delegation already happened, are successful and allow it to continue in a way that the team members are growing and that that business owner is growing so that everybody has the time to do what they need to do with at least a reduction of some amount of stress.

Selina Johnson: Yeah, I like to look at the delegation steps and like, we've got steps from zero to seven and the levels change as the responsibility changes. So, zero is, I've asked you to do something, but you haven't done it and I've had to action it. Then five would be, you've done this for me, but I've had to quality check it and make sure it's right and give you feedback. Then the highest seven would be, you've taken care of something. I didn't even know it needed taking care of, but you've handled it, handled it. So, zero is where it needs 100% of your focus and all the way up to 0% focus is at the top. And typically what happens is we bring people into our business and we're expecting them to be like a five or six, where they're doing things without the need for us, but in actual fact, there are two or three because there hasn't been that leadership, there hasn't been that guidance injected into them to be able to hold that responsibility, and have that autonomy relationship in the business. So, we need to identify where is this person's skillset at, where ideally would you like them to get to, and then what do they need from me. What tools and resources do they need to get them up that level to free up my time, but also to give them more responsibility? So, what can leadership do you need to do to bridge that gap? And I like to do that visual representation because it's good for the CEO of the business, but it's also good for team members to see, to really get it, to say, oh, I get it now that actually I can help you do way more if I was actually able to take this task by doing more because we talk about delegating and delegating effectively. Delegating is do this, give it back to me, and I'll review it. Okay. You haven't done it quite right. And it's like this ping-pong back and forth of one task. So, it's never off your plate. It keeps coming back to you. Whereas when you're delegating effectively, the whole responsibility of that task is with that individual to follow it through from start to end. And maybe you'll get some updates about it, but you don't really necessarily need to have your finger in the pie because they've handled it. And that comes through effective leadership and guidance and having that visual representation of, okay, you're here, we need to get you to here. What do you need from me? Do you need coaching? Do you need resources? Do you need training to get you up to those steps in the business? And that's a real game changer in most businesses.

Michele Williams: I like the idea of having a visual representation. I know that a lot of times I'll say to my hires, I'm probably going to check in more at the beginning just to make sure that you have what you need. But when I can see that it's happening and happening effectively, I'm going to stop checking in on that. I might spot-check it here and there because I don't think we ever, as owners, have to take our eyes off everything. But I'm sure I might move to another part of the task or another part of the job that I think needs more attention. So, you're moving around. But then I, think what's so great about having kind of this open conversation is if your hire is giving work back that is consistently not up to standard, they're going to realize that they are inviting you back into checking things again at a much more detailed level because they're not able to produce at that detailed level. So, when you're able to produce at this detailed level, we're going to check here, right? And so, let's say that we move up and then they get sloppy, because that's what I see a lot is they're not being checked anymore, and then people start getting sloppy with their work. And we find it often, just heard it again yesterday when people leave the job, and when they leave the job, we find all these things that they didn't do, all these things that were done wrong, all these things that had been trusted because they had been checked at the beginning but never checked again. And so, you know, I think there's that balancing act between, I'm not micromanaging, but I'm also not taking my hands off and not managing. There's a fine line in there of managing to make sure things are actually happening, having kind of touch points and KPIs all scattered all around the business that can help raise the flag if something is not being done or not being done effectively. But I love the idea of having more sevens. The more sevens we have, the more everybody can work autonomously. And we're working with each other. And it's just a totally different workplace where you feel like people are actually able to work at a high level and do the thing that they've been asked to do without somebody standing on top of them or micromanaging it. But I think you're right, we come in and often move people right up to seven when they should have been. If we had taken the time to do the two, three, four, we can get them to a seven. But if we throw them at the seven and then they can't do it, a lot of times we think we need to fire them and start over, as opposed to going back to the two, three, four and working our way back up.

Selina Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like this isn't something. Don't feel like you need to rush this and do this in two months. This is an exercise that you have to keep doing it. It's not like I've done it now. They stay there. It's constant guidance, constant training, and communicating with your team members to see if they actually like this task. I've seen clients who say, for example, they've got someone whose role is more technical. They may give them a role that's more creative, but they think they can do it. But actually, when they produce the work, there's no creativity flair there. So, the quality of work is not great. It's really important to make sure that the work delegated is within someone's skill set. and when you've got that right and you've got these people at the higher levels of five, six, and seven, it just frees your time. A great result of that was like, three years ago, for the first time, I was actually able to go on vacation and not be constantly on my laptop. Before that, I was going on vacation and waking up before everyone else and doing work. I was taking calls when I should be out at the beach or my mind just wasn't free because I was thinking, okay, I'm going to go on this excursion when I get back, I'm already thinking about when I'm going to fit in my work in between everything else. I couldn't relax fully, and it felt like I needed another vacation. So, my last vacation, well, three years ago, I went to the Caribbean, and I spent five weeks there and my team handled everything. I think I only worked like 5 hours and that was amazing because I was able to fully switch off, because I feel like I'm constantly moving all the time. So, to be able to have dedicated time off to spend with my family, just to be with the kids, to enjoy the time I have was an instrumental piece of me realizing that I don't have to do it all and I can actually give and trust my team members to onboard new clients to cater for what needs doing. And me not having to feel like I'm firefighting in the business is a great place to be. What we touched on all those key points are areas that we must keep constantly evolving with and staying in tune with it and not taking our foot off the pedal. We have to constantly be communicating, delegating our team members, making sure we're bringing in the right people, and asking the right questions, like, are you okay? Are you happy in the role? Is there any other support you need? These are the types of things we need to be asking because these team members are human, and the more in touch with them, making sure that they are happy and doing the work that they enjoy, the more chance they're going to stay longer within the business and you're going to have a fully engaged and productive team.

Michele Williams: Such great ideas, such great thoughts. I'm curious. We've talked about all the great things. Is there anything else that you think we have not touched on that may be something that we do wrong when we're delegating, or that we need to be aware of outside of the things we've already mentioned? Have we missed anything?

Selina Johnson: I'll say the main point is that we delegate, but we don't give the key information. So, at the moment, I'm going through the process of looking through clients, and the current SOP system. I'm looking at the manuals that she's given to team members and instructions on how to do something or how the business operates. And it's interesting for me because I'm looking at it from the outside. So, when I'm looking in, I want to know, okay, can a five-year-old read this and understand what needs to be done? For me, it wasn't clear as to, okay, you've given them the task, but there's no understanding of why they're doing it, what's the purpose of it, and what happens next. It kind of leaves these black holes of like, okay, they're doing that task, so they feel like more like a machine. What I want to think of is, that you look at a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. They've just been given one piece of the puzzle, so they're just constantly punching at that puzzle, not really understanding how this works in the business, how it relates to the vision, or what the goal is of the business. We want to give them all the other pieces in the puzzle so they can see the whole picture of why they're doing it, and why it's so important. So, they actually feel part of moving forward in the business in terms of, okay, I've done this, this has helped them to achieve this, and then they can also see missing parts that maybe you haven't thought about because they've been given that information. I feel that is detrimental to the business when you don't give all the key information when you're delegating.

Michele Williams: That is an amazing point. I usually talk about it as connecting the dots. If people don't know how they fit in, then to your point, does it really matter if I punch that one puzzle piece? They don't know yet when we tell them, here's what has to happen upstream for you to get the puzzle piece, and here's what flows downstream from your puzzle piece so that you can see if you slack on this work or if this isn't done or if it's not done properly, you may not see where we have to pay for it, but we have to pay for it down here. Same way, if these people upstream aren't giving you the pieces and parts that you need to do your job effectively, they may not see the repercussions of that in their direct area, but you're going to feel it. What we also do is I try to help everybody in their company know where they fit on the P&L because there is a dollar amount tied to the work that they're doing, even if it's not sales. Direct sales, that's easy, salespeople know how much they're bringing in. They know that information. But when we're in more of a support role, we don't always think that we're tied to an area of the profit and loss statement, but every single person is. Being able to equip them properly is important. I think a really great point that I just want to highlight that you've brought up multiple times is really explaining the whole outline for the whole company to the new hire, even at the lowest level. If they understand the full picture on the front of the puzzle box, then they can start to see how things work together. So often we are so dialed into, like you said, just that role, that one job or task that we have them doing, we're not giving them the full picture, which then actually gives them the ability to see upstream and see downstream, to be able to be part of a solution instead of just that, you know, button pusher that they might somehow think that they are. So really just a great point at the very beginning. That's part of that onboarding, actually, it's part of the hiring process. The more that we can describe at the beginning of the hire, I know even in my software company, Metrique Solutions, some of my developers, they're not accountants, they're not bookkeepers, they're not financial people. So, when I am telling them this is a new modeling tool we need, I write out the full business need at the top. This is the business need. This is what the business owner is trying to solve for. Here's why it matters to them, and here's what they're doing. What it does is it gives them a different understanding of what they're building to know, maybe a little bit more of how they might use it versus say, Michele's given me another spreadsheet to go code. So now what they're doing is they have an idea of the full business and then they're coding to match the business need. Quite often they come back to me and say, I know you said this, but I was thinking over here, if we did this and we did this, it could be more effective. I'm like, yeah, go for it. But if I had not given them the business case study behind it, they wouldn't even know to look at the data that way. It's just flat data in a spreadsheet. It is important that we can help them understand how they fit in and that the job matters. It matters if it gets done. It matters if it doesn't get done. And it matters if it gets done well. Because if they think that it doesn't matter, then you're going to get, it doesn't matter work.

Selina Johnson: Exactly. That's a great analogy as well. I like that because if you look at the comparison where you don't, you give them a general overview versus you give them every piece. The results that you actually get back as well are completely different. Like you said, they're giving you even stuff that you didn't ask for. But it's actually, oh, I didn't think of it like that, because they've got the actual probably more experience in what they're doing than you. Expecting them to come back with more. So, because you've done that, you've seen it. So now you've seen the results. So next time, again, you're going to continue on that path because you're seeing them light up, they're excited about it, and you're giving them the opportunity to do the creative thinking or crafting things. That's within their zone of genius, which is a huge shift from if it was just a general task overview.

Michele Williams: What I've also noticed in that process is if I forget to give them something, they might come back and say, as I was working on this, I was wondering, would they ever do this? Would they ever need that? And I can be like, like, huh? Yes, they would, or no, they wouldn’t, or they would under this circumstance. So, they're now starting to engage with that work differently, as if they own the work, as opposed to if they are given the work, and when they start to feel like they're an owner of the work, then their relationship with that work shifts.

Selina Johnson: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I've seen that change as well.

Michele Williams: So, Selina, where can people find you? This has been such a great conversation. I know others are going to want to follow up with you. Where are you hanging out on the web and the Instagrams?

Selina Johnson: Yes, you can go to Instagram. I am Selina Johnson, and most of my information is on my website, Selinajohnson.com. I’d also love to give you a freebie today because we touched on hiring. It's called the Ultimate Hiring Blueprint. So, it's for you. If you're just about to make your first hire or you've hired and fired multiple times and it just hasn't worked out, it's going to give you the key principles to interview questions, the actual steps you should go through for interviewing, and I'm going to give you a job description template that you can rinse and repeat in your business and just follow the guidelines within the video training so you can go to Selinajohnson.com/hire.

Michele Williams: Perfect. Thank you so much. Well, it has been such a pleasure to talk to you and I thank you for your time today.

Selina Johnson: Thanks, Michele.

Michele Williams: Thank you so much, Selina for the great conversation. Check out her hiring guide at her website for practical help on how to get started in delegating right by hiring correctly. In the podcast today, you heard us talk about looking at the business as a whole and managing forward. Here at Scarlett Thread Consulting, we love to assist business owners with a holistic approach to running a solid and efficient business that sets you up for growth and scaling. If you're looking for answers for your company's financial questions, KPI management, and modeling, you can check out MetriqueSolutions.com. And if you want to learn more about what we do in the coaching realm, check out scarletthreadconsulting.com. Choose to surround yourself and your business with people and processes that make you profitable. Because profit doesn't happen by accident. Profit is a Choice is proud to be part of the designnetwork.org where you can discover more design media reaching creative listeners. Thanks for listening and stay creative and business minded.