From Taskmaster to Leader: How to Stop Micromanaging

Anthony [00:00:00]:
So, I’m working with a coaching client right now who’s really struggling to delegate, to build out his team, and to move to get himself out of the way effectively. He’s just been that quintessential entrepreneur who’s done everything throughout the years and has grown a successful business as a result, and is now having a hard time of letting go. And so what’s ending up happening is, it’s very classic, is he starts to hire people, and he then gives them tasks that he said, okay, do this, and then they come back so he can check their work, right? And if you think about this is really like a hub and a spoke situation where there’s a single brain at the center telling everybody, here’s what to do and how to do it. And then that single brain has a thousand different hands that are all coming back and reporting. The problem with this is that as the hub of the wheel, he can never remove himself as the constraint, as the. The linchpin, the thing that’s constraining the whole system. Right? Because everybody’s reporting back to him, and it’s starting to overwhelm him and burn him out. And what he has is a job, not a business, that can operate without him.

Anthony [00:01:05]:
Better would be to empower all of those different spokes, because each one of those people has a brain, and ideally, they are an awesome brain that can do awesome thinking, because why else would you hire them? Is to not tell them what to do, but tell them what you expect the outcome to look like, what you want the end result to be, and then let them figure it out for themselves, and then figure out a cadence of communication that they can report back. So you can keep your finger on the pulse, and you can help course correct and coach as they’re going. But you’re not the one that’s telling them, do this, then this, and come back, and then do this. Right. You’re not the taskmaster. And so the way I like to think about this is you delegate outputs, not inputs. So instead of saying, I want you to go make 25 calls to the brokers, get this many people lined up to do this, and then have this many sales calls, and then close this many. Right.

Anthony [00:02:02]:
Instead of delegating the inputs, you delegate the outputs, which is, hey, we want to increase our. We want to increase our revenue by 30% this month, and your job is to figure out how to do that by bringing in more leads. Good luck. Godspeed. We’ll see you in a week or see you in a day. Right. You’re telling them what the outcome is that you’re trying to achieve and you’re letting them figure out how to do it. And until you get to that place in your business where you can delegate outputs, not inputs, you will always be the linchpin holding the whole thing together.

Anthony [00:02:36]:
And I’m telling you, as the business gets bigger and the more weight and, and friction and stress is put on that singular point of linchpin, the more it’s going to start to crack and break and you’re not going to be able to sustain it. It’s going to be a terrible feeling where you just feel crushed beneath the weight of your whole business because your whole business is relying on you. So this is the way that you build your teams so that they’re not relying on you, is to delegate outputs, not inputs. And I hope that brings you a little bit of value, something to think about as you’re building your own business. And that’s going to do it for me. But we’ll catch you guys tomorrow in the next episode. Until then, stay up and focus, my friends. Bye.