Morning car ramble today instead of an evening walk ramble. We’ve been at the office all week getting ready for an event and the walks were the first thing to go.
This one has come up in almost every conversation I’ve had lately. You hand something off at the office and it just keeps coming back to you. They’re asking you a million questions. The same situation comes up over and over, and you’re still the one making the call on something you thought you gave away months ago.
Most owners look at that and decide they hired the wrong person. Usually that’s not what’s going on.
Two questions to ask yourself
The first one. Did you hand over the whole role, or did you hand over the tasks? You can teach somebody every step of a job and still never teach them the thinking behind it. If they know what to do but not why they’re doing it, then the second something comes up that isn’t on the list, they’re back at your desk. They’re not being needy, they just don’t have what they need yet.
The second one is the one that gets people. Can they make a decision without worrying they’re going to get in trouble for it afterward?
Think about it from where they’re sitting. If a wrong call means a hard conversation with you, then the safest thing they can possibly do is ask you first, every single time. So that’s what they do. And then you get frustrated that they keep asking, when they’re doing exactly what you taught them to do.
Let them get it wrong
I know it’s scary. You built this thing. But the world is not going to fall apart because somebody made the wrong call on a scheduling question or a conversation with a client.
And a wrong call you find out about is a coaching session. You sit down, you walk through why it went that way, and they come out of it with better judgment than they had before. There’s no way to teach judgment except by letting somebody use it.
The 1-3-1 rule
One I really like, and I think this one is Dan Martell’s, is the 1-3-1 rule.
They bring you one problem, three solutions that would actually work, and which one they’d pick. Then the two of you talk through why that’s the right call or why it isn’t.
You’re still in it, you’re just checking their thinking instead of doing it for them. They’ve already done the work by the time they get to you. And over time you find yourself agreeing with their pick more and more often, which is the whole point.
So if something keeps landing back on your plate, before you decide you hired wrong, go back and check. Did you teach them the whole role or just the steps? Are they actually allowed to decide? Those two things fix most of it.
Jen