On today’s episode of No Bullshit with Alex Willis, you’ll explore ways you can organize your own thoughts and tasks. Alex gives clear examples from his time in the construction industry, and guides you through ways to effectively determine the importance and urgency of tasks at hand, and how to communicate those to others.
Ever wish you could be in 2 places at once? What about 3? Or 10? While you can’t duplicate yourself, leaders can use delegation to effectively mobilize colleagues, as if you are there in the room yourself!
On today’s episode of No Bullshit with Alex Willis, you’ll explore ways you can organize your own thoughts and tasks. Alex gives clear examples from his time in the construction industry, and guides you through ways to effectively determine the importance and urgency of tasks at hand, and how to communicate those to others.
In our final segment, The Frame Out, we take our to-do lists and learn how to delegate them to others. Alex provides crucial tips for respecting everyone’s time, and shows you how to automate and simplify your processes!
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[00:00:00] Alex: Hey, welcome back to episode nine, the Frame Out, my Friends, where we are talking about delegation. Hey, we've gone through the definition of what it is. We've talked about urgent versus important. We've talked about how to maximize your time and to-do list and all that stuff there. Hey, if you struggle with that, Go check those other segments out and trust me, it will save your life.
[00:00:32] Alex: Now, in this segment, we're gonna frame out just how do you delegate through people? So, so understand this. Number one, bad delegators tell people what to do, right? They tell people what to do. Whereas great delegators involve people, they involve people, and they understand the power of the delegation cycle and what that looks like.
[00:00:51] Alex: So, so when I talk about this thing called a delegation cycle, what is the delegation cycle? Well, please understand. The delegation cycle is a vicious cycle, man, because typically, typically we, we hold and we do everything ourselves. No one can do it as good as me, Alex, I get it. So you think I got it? I got it.
[00:01:10] Alex: So, so you hold it yourself. Now you finally get the error to give it to someone else, and you give it to someone else. You ask someone else to do it. When you do that, what happens? They jack it up and you're like, damn it. See, this is why I don't delegate. And what do we do? We take it back. We take it back and we do it ourselves.
[00:01:29] Alex: And so we go through that vicious cycle. Finally building up enough trust, giving it to the person. They don't do a great job. We take it back, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I wanna challenge you to think about another way. What if we didn't do everything ourselves? We didn't tell them what to do yet we just guided them more.
[00:01:47] Alex: We begin to guide them more and begin to do less, right? So what do I mean by that? When I say guide them more, it's important to understand that. Number one, you gotta delegate. Please understand, there's too much to do, my friends. So you can't do it yourself and understand no one's gonna do it exactly like you, but that doesn't mean it's wrong, right?
[00:02:07] Alex: So when you can begin to understand those key concepts first, it helps you out. So, so why do you have to master this thing called delegate? Number one is no one person can do everything. Number two, it helps them empower your leaders. Oftentimes, you are crippling your people because you haven't given them tasks to do, even if it's bite-sized tasks.
[00:02:25] Alex: You need to be able to hand that over to them so they can begin to understand what to do and how to do it. Number three, it gives personal growth. You begin to not only empower them, but you begin to develop your leaders. I, I like to call this the AAA league, right? So in baseball, everyone doesn't make the majors right away, but you're still developing skills in the minors so that one day you get called up.
[00:02:46] Alex: It's the same thing for you, my friends. And then last but not least, please understand when you begin to give away tasks. The person takes ownership for it. They take ownership for it. So, so what's the delegation process? Here's the delegation process. Number one, agree on the expectation. So, so oftentimes we tell people what to do and we don't agree on the expectation.
[00:03:07] Alex: Agreeing on the expectation does a great job of really communicating clearly what it is I want, what it is I need, and really beginning to make sure they understand it very, very clearly and understanding, making sure they have everything they need. They're empowered to do the job. Hey, they understand it clearly, and you begin to just hand it over to 'em.
[00:03:25] Alex: This brings us to number two, step two in the delegation process, which is stay engaged. Don't hand it and leave and never come back, my friends, until the very end. Most times we do that and it's too late. We realize that the project is jacked up. Stay engaged. Hey, call 'em. Say, Hey, how are you doing? Do you need anything from me?
[00:03:43] Alex: How are you coming along with that project? Talk to me. That way you can begin to correct things before it's the end product. Right? Which brings us to number three, create accountability and learning. Now understand, let me give you a sports analogy here. Most teams benefit actually from a loss, especially if they begin to dissect it and analyze what happened.
[00:04:06] Alex: Now, understand, just because someone turns a horrible product after delegation doesn't mean all is lost. Why? Well, because you can use this as a great teaching moment to learn from this for yourself and the communication process and how you handle things also for them. And oftentimes they get much better as a result of that.
[00:04:25] Alex: Right. Which brings us to the last thing, which is a, you have to have situational leadership. So that you understand your team very, very well, understanding their strengths, their weaknesses, what they're good at, what they like doing, what they can do, and when you can begin to do that, my friends, you do a great job of knowing how much of the tasks they can handle so it comes back, right?
[00:04:47] Alex: Right now you have to take these things. Agreed on expectations, staying engaged, creating accountability and learning and adaptability, and you have to wrap them in what I like to call, making sure you get good, good, good feedback from the person, and you are really making sure you do the repeat back process.
[00:05:06] Alex: What do I mean by that? Well, oftentimes we give the task away and we walk away and we leave. Well, before you walk away and leave when you've done those four things, the last thing is through the repeat back process and say, Hey, listen. Jim, Sarah, to make sure you understand things correctly and that I did a great job as a leader communicating correctly, what did you hear?
[00:05:28] Alex: Oftentimes you can catch a lot of errors in the repeat back process, so when you do the repeat back process, you begin to be able to correct them before they get started, or you can walk away with confidence knowing they know exactly what to do, how to do it, and the job's going to get done well. Right now, doing that helps you do a phenomenal job of delegating my friend.
[00:05:49] Alex: Right? The last thing I wanna say in this segment of framing it out, as you frame out your day, as you frame out your 20% of activities, knowing what you can do and what you can give away, you have to do a great job of these four other things. And what are those things? Well, number one, analyze what you can automate.
[00:06:08] Alex: What can you automate? What can you delegate? What can you eliminate? And what can you consolidate, right? So what do I mean? Well, automation of things like putting things on your cell phone calendar that are meetings that are coming up in the upcoming weeks, that's a way of automating that process so it can come back to you.
[00:06:29] Alex: You don't have to think about it anymore, right? Delegating, using people. Also using software. Hey, what can you eliminate? You find the tasks that are bullshit tasks in your day that truth be told doesn't bring you a great value or move your team or the project forward. And last but not least, consolidate.
[00:06:45] Alex: What are some activities that you could bring together, like a site walkthrough, a well as communicating and talking and having a meeting with the person who's already on that site. I'm consolidating those tasks when you begin to do that, my friend. You begin to master this thing called delegation. You begin to master time management.
[00:07:00] Alex: You begin to get your life, and that's what you need to do. If you can begin to do that, you can have energy and focus for those that we love at home because you do a great job of being extremely disciplined, create a phenomenal rituals that you are hardcore hell bent on sticking to so that you know how to take control of your day and not let your day control you.
[00:07:26] Alex: I want to thank you so much for being here with us in episode nine as we talked about delegation. You've been phenomenal. Hey, listen, I now knight you to go for and delegate my friends. See you soon. So I wanna thank you again for tuning in to No Bullshit with Alex Willis, the number one go-to source for leadership development in the construction industry.
[00:07:49] Alex: Hey, be sure to subscribe to YouTube and your favorite podcasting platform so that you can be notified when we release new episodes. And remember my friends. We are here for you. We wanna make sure that we answer your questions. So if you have leadership challenges, if you come up with different problems at work, please, please, please leave us a comment so that we can make sure we answer those because we are here to help you be phenomenal at both work and at home.
[00:08:16] Alex: So with that being said, see you next time.