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Transcript

Welcome to another episode of The do good work podcast. Today we're going to be talking about the underlying reasons why leaders struggle to give up control. And this is any leadership team that I've seen, it doesn't just have to be from the topic can be mid level or even low level managers struggle to give up control. We're going to go over why. And we're going to go over what to do about it. So let's get down to the three reasons that I've seen why leaders struggle to give up control.  

First reason is, there's a lack of clarity of what's actually being done in the role or the work that they want to give up. They know what they're doing, but they haven't actually defined exactly how they've done it or what they're doing in a clear process or in clear buckets of time. That's number one. The second is they lack trust of the process or the ownership, if they're handing it off to someone else. If you have trust in the process, that you're going to know that it's going to be done right but if there's no process in place of how things are done, What's actually being done, and there's no trust and no trust leads to inaction and fear, because you don't want to give it up and you fear that somebody might break, because you're not doing it. Okay. And the third is having a lack of pulse in the company. And by what I mean by pulse is actually lack of knowledge of what's going on exactly at this mode at any given time, either looking at dashboards at numbers or reports, okay. And that doesn't mean that they're not looking at the reports. They're just not tying together, what that means for the full picture of the current state of the ecosystem, or the company or the business at this very moment. Right. And you don't have to have the answers all at once. But you can get the answers in three to five minutes, right. But that's where I see the bottlenecks that breaks in businesses. And this is what we're going to do about it.  

I kind of condensed this into four simple steps. It doesn't have to be four steps, it can be three, two, but essentially, this is what I want to be able to see progressively for my clients as well as for your company. So the first thing is having clarity, the first Having clarity on what's being done, right, even if it's just listing out the actual roles and job descriptions, or even just listing out the actions being done on a daily, weekly basis, and being able to see that in a full map or on a piece of paper, what is actually being done. And then the second piece is, how is it being done. And this is where a lot of people trip up, because you could be doing, you know, pulling 5060 hour work weeks, but you shouldn't, you could probably do the same amount of work in 40 or 35 hours per week. And I've done that I've helped individuals reducing cut hours out of their work day, simply by re shifting the way that they approach their work, and the how they do what they do. Now, the third thing, once you have clarity, if you're a leader or you're helping the leadership team is saying who is actually going to do this work, and are they skilled enough, are they trained enough or do they have the resources in order to complete this work properly? Because if you know that there's trained, you know that they have the resources, and you know that you're making an environment where success is inevitable that you can trust the process, you know that the other person you're handing the work off to is gonna get it done, right. It's either there's something wrong with the process that you've laid out, or there's something wrong with the resources you've given. Because it or it's the individual, right? It's one of the three, but you can at least trust the process if you're putting your part in as a leader. 

Now, the fourth and this is the most important part, this is highly overlooked. accountability.  How can we ensure that we have active feedback loops from the person doing the work and giving us accountable reports, accountable feedback, so that we can see that they're actually getting the work done? Or we can see progress? Or we just see results? Right, depends on your industry, depends on your business, depends how you operate and how you flow. But how can we keep the people who are doing the work or the machines or the vendors or the partners who are doing the work that we're handing off? How can we make sure that it's being done correctly? How Make sure that they're accountable, and how can we make sure that we don't find out, you know, three months down the line, right. So the best way to do that really is to have you know, a centralized place of communication, having a centralized, you know, job description and understanding and expectations of both relationships, as well as having, you know, dashboards where you can see the the numbers or the reports or the feedback in a very fluid way. So you have the pulse of the company or the situation at any given time. And again, you don't have to know like the back of your hand immediately, but at least you can find answers within three to five minutes, 10 tops, you know, 10 minutes tops, you know, being gracious there. So, those are the things again, the issues why leadership at the end of the day, it's not ego, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, but at the end of the day, it's really lack of trust, not in themselves, but trust in the in the fear of the unknown, because if you fear like you don't know, if you're handing off a job or a role, someone else, you fear that it might get screwed up and it might break momentum, I break the progress. And that's just The typical fear of the unknown. But if you start uncovering and uncovering the unknown, over time and making that more clear and making it very obvious what's being done, how they're getting it done, who's doing it, what's the accountability, then it becomes easier. And then for you, as a leader, you get to relax.  You get to breathe a little bit, and know that it's not all on your shoulders, or on your leadership teams shoulders, and you can empower leaders within your company that take more of a role if they're in their career path to become future leaders of the company. Right. So that's how you're able to clear a bandwidth for potential leaders in your company, as well as bandwidth for yourself. So goes in so many different ways that this benefits in organization, especially if you're trying to grow something a little bit bigger than just you. So that's the underlying reason why leaders struggle to give up control. And those are some of the things that you can do about it today. We'll see you next time.