100. Does Everyone Understand You + Stop Assigning Tasks

Transcript – Episode 100:Does Everyone Understand You + Stop Assigning Tasks

Joe:
Are there times when you feel like you’re being clear, but the people around you don’t get what you’re trying to say? We’ve got some help for you ahead. Plus, if you want your employees to take more ownership of their work and do more critical thinking around it, you may need to change how you assign that work. Play that theme music now – on Boss Better Now.

Suzanne:
You’re listening to Boss Better Now. The show is sponsored by Joe Mull and Associates. Now here’s your host, speaker, and author, Joe Mull.

Joe:
That was like a big kind of Ed McMahon going to Johnny Carson… Really dating myself… Now on the, on the intro there, Suzanne. Wow. I love the energy. 

Suzanne:
I’m doing big for you, Joe. Felt like it was a good day to give it a little more punch.

Joe:
And the reason Suzanne is saying that friends, is that this, right now, today is our 100th episode of Boss Better Now.

Suzanne:
Yay.

Joe:
Gotta bring the noise effects there. The sound effects there. I cannot believe it is our 100th episode. I, I don’t even know what to say about that. I, I, I so enjoyed doing this show. And when I first started out, I had no idea whether this would be a one-year thing or a multi-year thing. So, we have just moved into the start of year three for the Boss Better Now podcast. We do a little bit of a hiatus in the summer. And so that’s why there hasn’t been a new episode every single week for three years straight. But one hundred episodes is still significant, right?

Suzanne:
Joe one hundred is a lot.

Joe:
It’s a lot.

Suzanne:
It is a lot. And I’m so proud of you. Yeah, because you know, I mean, to make that decision, number one then to make the commitment, then to keep on keeping on to find relevant content and making sure you’re finding and being creative enough that you’re reaching your listeners and meeting their needs. I’m proud of you and I’m proud to be part of it with you.

Joe:
Thank you. Well, the whole reason we even got to one hundred episodes is because of the people listening to, to the people that we have come to call BossHeroes. Those people who show up to work every day and say, I really care about my people. I really wanna create an environment that works for them. I really wanna inspire them. They do great work. I am at their service. People who embrace service leadership. These are BossHeroes. And these folks keep coming back to the show and keep engaging with us with questions. And I cannot tell you the number of times when I will travel someplace to speak at a meeting or a conference and do a keynote. And the people who come up to me and say, by the way, I love your podcast. Which is so cool because, and, and I’ve talked about this a little bit on the air as a speaker and a trainer, I’m used to getting immediate feedback. If I tell a joke, I know whether or not it was funny. If I say something helpful, I know right away by the body language or the nodding or the writing down in a notebook, you get none of that when you do a podcast. There is no reciprocity at all when I’m literally in a room by myself talking mm-hmm. Right? This is like a one-person zoom call with you and I <laugh> and <laugh>. It’s hard. Yes. Then we polish it up and set it out there into the interwebs and hey, it turns out that people listen. And you know, we’ve been ranking on Apple’s top 100ish in the management category now, pretty consistently. And that’s because the people listening to this show, they tell others about the show. They share episodes of the show with people in their organizations — and so sincerely to everybody listening the, the achievement of getting to 100 episodes was driven by you, and I thank you.

Joe:
And we are gonna get to work. We, I was telling Suzanne about this right before we hit record, that I did think about — should we do a special episode? Like, do we bring, we play our favorite bits or something like that? And I was just like, no, let’s just keep doing what we do. Let’s just keep doing this work. And so, we’re gonna talk today about clear communication and ways to more effectively express your thoughts so that everyone will understand you. And this topic was brought about after an article was shared with me by, believe it or not, the actor Alan Alda. Now I know you’re a fan, Suzanne. So, tell everybody who Alan Alda is, because that’s a, he’s, he’s been around for a while and some people listening may not know who he is.

Suzanne:
Alan Alda was one of the stars of M*A*S*H, my favorite sitcom. I think I even, I think I still have the TV guide with the M*A*S*H cast on the front celebrating their last episode. Yes. Do you think I can retire off of that if I sell it, Joe?

Joe:
Probably not. 

Suzanne:
Don’t think it’s worth anything? Maybe?

Joe:
So, maybe a little something

Suzanne:
Little something-something… little something. Yeah. I loved the comedy writing on that show. I loved it, loved it, loved it, love it. And I had no idea that Alan was a scientist.

Joe:
Yes. And just to give people some perspective, cuz I’m in this in-between generation where I remember M*A*S*H ending on TV and then the reruns being huge for years. M*A*S*H was the biggest TV show in the world for a long time. And the finale of M*A*S*H was watched by more people than who have ever watched anything ever in the history of television. Because this happened at a time when there were only three or four channels on TV. M*A*S*H is, has a cultural influence on our society that can’t be measured. What’s funny about this is that Alan Alda also had a brief stint in my favorite TV show of all time, which is The West Wing. And in its later seasons, he played, a presidential candidate named Arnold Vinick. And so that’s what I remember about Alan Alda.

Joe:
But it turns out that he is a scientist. And so, a little bit about this he’s a longtime advocate for better science communications. He has interviewed scientists as the host of Scientific American Frontiers. He has won a science journalism award and he founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. And he, in the later stages of his career, has developed what is a, a playbook of strategies to help people engage in conversation and voice their ideas more clearly. And so, on the website, BigThink.com, a couple of weeks ago, he wrote an article called 3 Rules to Express Your Thoughts so that Everyone Will Understand You. And so, we will link to that article in the transcript of this episode on the Boss Better Now podcast website, which is bossbetternowpodcast.com if you’re looking for it.

Joe:
And let me just run down, Suzanne, the big ideas he shared, and then we can talk about them a little bit more in-depth. The first thing that he says is, if you are, you know, there are so many people who are big thinkers or technical thinkers, and they struggle to translate what’s in their head into words that come out of their mouth in a way that people understand. And so, one of the things that he says is to remember that the human brain can only store so much information in its short-term memory. And that we often absorb things in small chunks. So, his first piece of advice is to make no more than three points when sharing information or communicating with people. The second thing he says is that when we communicate, we need to explain complex things in three different ways. So, it’s not enough to just explain something and then walk away from it.

Joe:
You might need to come up with different ways of attacking that explanation. For example, use a metaphor or for example, do something visually on a flip chart or a dry-erase board, or explain it as a this means this, not that. And then the other piece of advice he gives us is to focus on repetition. Whatever your big ideas are, find a way to repeat them three times. So, he gives us this beautiful framework of three by three by three, right? Make three points, explain your complexity in three different ways, and then use repetition three times to reinforce the big idea. But more than anything else, he says that that alone is not going to help you communicate effectively. There’s another ingredient that is of critical importance, and that is what he calls connection. He says the true heart of communication is connection. And that your goal shouldn’t be to enthrall your audience with a creative metaphor or witticism. That’s really about rhetoric. It’s really about building a connection with the people across from you that is deep enough for your communication to work. And so, these are really at the heart of being a better communicator as a leader. Make three points, explain complexity, three ways, re repetition three times, and focus on connection. What a perfect recipe for learning how to do this well as a leader. Am I right, Suzanne?

Suzanne:
Oh, you are right, Joe. He is right, Joe. He is right. Yeah. You did there, you repeated all of those three times. Did you see that? Good job. (Joe: I did. Thanks.) Brilliant. Thank you. So very interesting that this comes out of this, you know, effort and this movement to help science be more understandable. So, I resonated that with right off the bat, cuz I always struggled in science cause I just didn’t get it. And I thought, man, if our science teachers, and I’m sure there are wonderful ones out there that do a really great job of simplifying it, but I probably just didn’t have the attention span to figure it out either. But love that, that this is where it’s coming from. And then I, I can totally relate as a communicator. So, someone doing a training class or someone who’s trying to present information of how you’ve got to make sure you’re putting it out there in a way that it can be absorbed, yeah.

Suzanne:
In a way that it can be consumed. And sometimes we’re so wrapped up in what we learned or what we wanna share, that we forget how to make it consumable or relatable to others. So, I think this is a great reminder, I’m gonna hang on to this one to look at in the future. And then that rhetoric versus connection. So, he brings it home with the, I think perhaps the most powerful thing is that we can be loquacious. We can use humor, we can go to the, the sauce and find or the synonyms that, that, you know, help expand what we’re saying. But man, if we can’t get it down to simple terms, and I think it was Einstein said, you know, it takes genius to make something simple. Yes. is something to remember that straightforward, say what you mean and make it clear is, is a lesson we can learn over and over again.

Suzanne:
And as leaders, I think the other thing, one more thought I had on this was so many times that, that we want to communicate that message that we want to share, that we want to reach out to our teams with is something we’ve been thinking about for a long time. Yes. And we have to remember that we’re often hitting our audiences cold. Yes. They haven’t given us any thought. They haven’t perhaps had the argument that you’ve had with yourself or with others. They haven’t heard of the debate, they haven’t seen the research, they don’t know what you’re talking Yes. About it. And you come bam at them with something and you expect them to nod their heads and go merrily along the way, along their way, rather than following your decree. Yes. And it just doesn’t work that way. So really pausing and making sure, am I putting this in three points that they can grasp? And am I looking at it in different ways? You know, we have different personalities, different levels of experience, different moods in the audience. How can I reach those? And then repeating that so they have a chance to absorb it. I’m a huge fan. Good find. Okay.

Joe:
Love it. And you know, there’s other pieces of advice that we’ve heard around this that are sort of baked into part of what he’s saying. He talks about using, finding three different ways to address complexity. And one of the things that I have heard for years that has served me well is that we will reach most everyone in our audience if we can figure out how to explain something using fourth-grade language. You know, and, and sometimes we’re in college language and sometimes we work hard, and we drop down to eighth-grade language. But if you can get down to fourth-grade language, your communication is gonna be crystal clear. And so that eliminates a lot of vocabulary, doesn’t it? To think about how do I frame this in such a way or explain it in such a way that it can reach everyone. So that’s a, a, a kind of a helpful framing for it.

Joe:
The other thing that I think is really important to remember is the critical importance of storytelling. I, I pride myself on being a professional speaker and of understanding what types of rhetorical devices I have at my disposal to help people learn and have that learning stick. And I will, I will pound on the table, bang, bang, bang to make this point again and again, which is that stories are the most memorable form of communication out there. You can share data, you can make your big three points, but that connection that he’s talking about, that stickiness for your big idea also comes from stories. When I go and do keynotes if I see people weeks or months or even years later, they don’t remember the data point I made or they don’t remember the diagram I put on the flip chart, they remember the stories.

Joe:
You know, people will come to me and say, you know, that whole “I cure cancer” story that you told or the story about your son and the puzzle that he couldn’t finish. Like there… we remember stories because they activate a different part of our brain mm-hmm. And so, as a device for communication, don’t hit me with reams of financial data about what happened last quarter. Give me the two or three big stats and then say, let me tell you what this means. For example, in this department, we had this happen and then this happened, and then as a result this happened. And that’s tied back to our data. When you share stories, you actually are translating your big ideas into a, a, a way that becomes stickier for them to absorb.

Suzanne:
I love it. I love it. And, and, and I think some people, when they have the boss title mm-hmm. Or they feel that as the general manager or the manager of this, I should be the one that everything and I need to come across as the expert. And we’ve talked about this around about it in different ways before, but being loquacious or having your, you know, complex compound sentences Yes. Because you think it makes you sound smarter could in fact yes. Have the opposite effect. Not that it’s gonna make you sound less smart, but you’re gonna be less effective. Yes. So, you’re not gonna, great point. People aren’t gonna resonate with your or connect to what you’re saying or take that big idea and run with it. So yes, storytelling is awesome and that takes work.

Joe:
It does. 

Suzanne:
It doesn’t come easy to people. Right, Joe.

Joe:
And it’s the, the, I think the final point to make is that it’s not everybody’s gift. This is not something that everyone is innately good at. So, ask for help. Yeah. You might be the CEO, or you might be the team lead and your second in command may just be better at this than you are. And so yeah, you, you might feel like you need to be out in front to role model some things, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t run the remarks by this person and say, hi, I know I’m getting kind of caught up in the weeds around some of these ideas. Can you help me simplify this so that the message really gets through? Or maybe you break up pieces of that and you take some and the other person takes some mm-hmm. <Affirmative> or mm-hmm. Maybe you can be vulnerable, vulnerable enough to say, I’m gonna say the first two or three sentences about this, and then I’m gonna hand it off to you because this is your gift and not mine. All of those result in better communication. So, we don’t have to be a hero and go it alone. We can ask for help.

Suzanne:
Right. I love it. I love it. Yeah. You could have a high potential with that gift and look how generous you are in supporting their growth while getting a message across in an effective way. Love it.

Joe:
Absolutely. This is something that I continue to work on because as Suzanne mentioned, I’m a bit of an academic. I’m, I’m, you mentioned being loquacious. I’ve always been loquacious. I’m like, oh, there’s three phrases making up one sentence there. I gotta figure out how to cut that down. And one of the places where I practice this is in our twice-a-month, BossBetter Email Newsletter. I continue to try to move from like writing to the college level to the eighth-grade level to the fourth-grade level. And I will tell you that when I write these emails, the ones in which I really kind of nail the simplified communication are the ones I get the most positive feedback on because they’re the most accessible and easy to consume.

Joe:
So just a little plug for that. If you would like to get our twice-a-month BossBetter Email Newsletter with articles, observations, tips, tricks, and updates. Just text BossHero to 6 6 8 6 6, that’s all one word. BossHero to 6 6 8 6 6. And we will put you on the list and make sure that you get those.

Joe:
And we come once again, my friends, for right about the 100th time. We may have skipped one or two in there for special episodes, but right. We’re probably at 97 – Camaraderie Questions of the Week. That’s right. Bosses build camaraderie on teams by making it easier for people to find things in common with each other. That’s why here on the show almost a hundred times, we have given you a question that you can use at meetings to facilitate connection and build camaraderie. Our question this week, Suzanne, this is fun. I had to really think about this. I’m not gonna lie. I had to ask my wife and she nailed it. Here’s the question. Name a special occasion you celebrate, but that most others don’t. You want me to go first? I always make you go first on this, don’t I?

Suzanne:
Yeah, you do it. Go, Joe.

Joe:
All right. So, I did, I stared at this question and I’m going January, February, March, I’m like going through the year and nothing set out. Yeah. So, I texted my wife and I said, Hey, I gotta answer this question on the podcast. What’s a special occasion we celebrate but that most others don’t? <Laugh>

Joe:
And her answer is the right answer for us. It’s the start of Lent — but we are not Catholic. The reason we celebrate the start of Lent is because it’s fish fry season in western Pennsylvania. Yes. And we love a good fish fry. If, if you’re listening to this and you live outside of this region, you may have no idea what we’re talking about, but in Western Pennsylvania and a couple other parts of the country, but for sure here, when Lent hits on the calendar, churches, and fire halls every three miles hold these fish fries as fundraisers for their churches, for their fire departments. And people in droves go out on Friday night. So, every Friday night during Lent, you can go to a different fish fry in Western Pennsylvania. And let me tell you, you are going to eat and you’re going to eat well, we get breaded fish sandwiches, we get haluski, we get pierogis, we get mac and cheese, we get coleslaw, we get homemade desserts. It’s all homemade. You gain 15 pounds during this time of year. But man, is it good. So, we do, we get excited for lent for fish fry season.

Suzanne:
I love a good fish fry. That’s a great one. I love that one. So, and I think it’s a good thing to celebrate for sure. Yeah. And I struggled too, Joe. I didn’t phone a friend. I left myself on my own <laugh>. And this is something that we used to celebrate but don’t anymore. But this — for you young parents out there of school-aged children, so many times kids celebrate the last day of school, right? Yes. And I know when my kids were young, that could have involved silly string and shaving cream and whatever thing comes along that they do to celebrate. And, but my children and I, we celebrated the last day of summer.

Joe:
Oh, okay.

Suzanne:
Yeah. Because typically you’re, you know, they’re not in a, maybe they’re not in a good mood depending on the child. Right. And you’re fussed up about new bedtimes or getting the clothes or fighting over what we’re gonna pack for lunch. So, we, for many years I had just an end-of-summer celebration to kind of des you know, indicate the transition we are all about to go into. So, we’d do something fun, have a party, even with some neighborhood kids. And I think that was kind of unique.

Joe:
That is great. And it’s a great way to kind of put a final exclamation point, a final hurrah on that summer season before kids go back to school. We, we kind of do that a little bit too. I always find that day to be really sad, right? Because in my head it’s like, oh, another summer of having young ones is gone. Yes. And eventually, they’re not gonna be young. And you know, I get all sentimental about it, but aww. I should reframe it that way. I should make it a celebration. <Laugh>.

Suzanne:
Yes. It’s, and you know, and for me, I, I think I looked at it differently. I’m like, woohoo, they’re going back to school. <Laugh>.

Joe:
Yeah, that was right. There’s a little bit of that too.

Suzanne:
I was also trying to set the tone of there will be no complaining about going to school. Yes. Kind of just, it’s a positive thing. It’s wonderful. This is great.

Joe:
So good. 

Suzanne:
That was my answer.

Joe:
I love it. That’s the Camaraderie Question of the Week.

Joe:
And Suzanne, I don’t even know if you realize this, but you teed me up perfectly for our last segment, and it’s been a while since we’ve done one of these. So, I’m excited that we’re gonna Boss Like a Mother — still my favorite little musical cue that we have on this show.

Suzanne:
It’s really short though.

Joe:
Right. But it’s intense. It’s bringing the intensity. Right. Okay. So, I was thinking about this the other day as I observed my daughter, Lily, who is, you know, more than halfway through her first year of middle school. And I’ve just been really proud of the ownership she has taken on to be where she needs to be when she needs to be there. And I was thinking about like, how much credit do we get for that as a parent versus how much of that is innate in her personality versus what are the other influences that lead to that? And it got me thinking about what our expectations were for our kids around school. And we repeatedly from the youngest age made it clear to them that it’s their responsibility to, to handle their business. That we use that phrase a lot to handle your business as it relates to school.

Joe:
And, you know, when they’re real young in kindergarten, first grade going into second grade, you know, you’re right there with the homework and trying to help them get through it. But eventually you kind of create a rhythm and an expectation that you come home from school, you grab a snack, and you pull your homework out and you get it done and it doesn’t linger. And that’s, that has always been an expectation that we had and that’s continued. But last year when my daughter finished elementary school, finished fifth grade, and went into sixth grade, we sat down with her, and we said that we needed her to understand that we are not in the business of waking her up for school every morning. We are not in the business of going into her room three times to say, you gotta get up because she was having to move up an hour.

Joe:
Right. She now needs to get up at 6:15 AM every morning and the bus comes at seven 30. And so, she needs to get up, she needs to make sure her bag is packed if she’s taking something for lunch if she’s gonna shower in the morning or maybe the night before. But that is all her business that she needs to handle. And that, that was our expectation. We assigned her this responsibility and basically said, we are here to help you with any of that in the way that you need help, but we are a resource. Right. Not something that you’re gonna rely on for this. And to her credit, she embraced that. And so, I have never once had to go wake her up. She gets up with an alarm clock. She is she just turned 12. I have never once had to pack her bag for her.

Joe:
I have never once had to say, don’t forget to do your homework. And I’m very proud of her for this, but I also realize it is oriented or it’s rooted in us assigning her responsibility for it. And it just reminded me of a, a core principle that I’ve been teaching leaders for years that I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about here on the show. And that is that if you want people to take more ownership for their work and think more critically about it, we as leaders have to stop assigning tasks mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and start assigning responsibility. So, we see a lot of leaders who will say, I want you to complete this paperwork when it comes in, or I want you, for example, to create this calendar for our corporate social media platforms. And that’s all well and good at first when somebody’s brand new.

Joe:
But if you don’t move to assigning responsibility over tasks, that person just completely relies on you to know what they need to do and when they need to do it. And then you as the leader, you actually become a bottleneck in the organization because people can’t move forward without you. They need to check things against you. What we need to do as leaders is assign responsibility. So, I, I’m gonna go to my social media person and I’m gonna say, here are the three or four things that I wanna make sure happen on our social media platform all year long. It’s your responsibility to figure out the best way to do that and the right frequency for each of those things and the right days for each of those things. And how you’re gonna track each of those things. And then make sure each of those things are scheduled and report back on how each of those things are performing.

Joe:
But that all lives with you. That’s your responsibility. It’s the difference between saying to somebody, here are the 10 things I want you to do to for our next meeting. Versus saying, you have responsibility for planning our next meeting. When we assign responsibility and not tasks, we grant people more ownership. It requires them to think more critically about things, and then it activates the autonomy that they need to go away and do their work. And so, we ultimately are creating all these conditions that people need to actually experience and deploy commitment. So, with all of that said, Suzanne, I know this is something you believe in as well. Don’t assign tasks, assign responsibility. What’s your reaction to all of that and how have you seen that work at work?

Suzanne:
Sure. So great story to start it off with storytelling. It’s very important. So, I got the idea, I’m sure our, our listeners did too. And you know, our biggest responsibility as adults, as parents, I should say, is to raise adults.

Joe:
Yeah.

Suzanne:
Right. And so good job on you. Her responsibilities will only grow appropriately. Yes. As she gets older and she you’re setting her up for success. And the same thing you did with, with your daughter as you did in your example, is set those very clear expectations upfront. Yeah. And sometimes that’s really hard for leaders is to sit down, take the time and think about your expectations. You’ve gotta do that before you assign them. And that’s hard. And sometimes you change your mind and that’s okay too.  But having that open dialogue counts. And unfortunately, depending on some of the people on our team, their adult, their parents may not have raised an adult and you might have to be more patient with going from task to responsibility than you want. Right? 

Joe:
That was pretty diplomatic. 

Suzanne:
So, <Laugh>, did you like that? <Laugh>? Some, some parents don’t believe like we believe. Right. And or I missed that opportunity, let’s say. It was, you know, took me months to have Drew own the fact that mowing the lawn was his job now and evermore. And it was about that increase. He ended up with a sense of pride in the work rather than a sense of I have to do this as a chore. So, we went from crop circles to diagonals. His quality of work went way up over time. But it took patience on my part. And you as a leader, you be careful cuz you might slip back into, all right, you’re not doing this fast enough. I’m gonna slip back into telling you exactly what to do, how to do it, when to do it. So, make sure taking more of a coaching patient, supporting someone in that process, the benefit over time.

Suzanne:
You mentioned it I will add to it, other than that sense of autonomy that you’re giving your team, which means they’ll likely to stay, be more motivated. It also takes a little bit off of your shoulders. Yep. As a boss. If you assign tasks, then you go home and you wake up every day worrying about each and everything you’ve, you’ve put a bigger burden on yourself. So, it does relieve a little bit of the weight off your shoulders and allows you to focus on things that are more important. Like thinking through your expectations, working on your storytelling, listening to Boss Better Now. All these things that you want more time for.

Joe:
That’s great. That’s so well said. And I do not want to leave folks with the impression that this is always easy to do. I will fully admit mm-hmm. That I struggle with this. You know, we’ve got a hundred things happening right now with this book launch and all the different places that I need to be in all the different kinds of ways that we’re trying to, to shine a light on the book and amplify the book and, you know, you gotta send it to reviewers and you gotta appear on podcasts and we gotta publish things on social media and we gotta share excerpts and write byline articles. And I was micromanaging that at first, and then I kind of had that moment where it was like, Nope, man, you gotta practice what you preach here, and you know mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that you need to let go of some of the minutiae of this and just communicate the end game to people.

Joe:
And so, I went to my team, and I said, okay, I, you know, I need you to just own getting me on podcasts as a guest and I need you over here to just own that. We are going to send preview copies of the book to these 25 reviewers, and I need you to own identifying who those are. And, and, and I can advise and we’ll talk about it in meetings and stay on top of it, but for me to try to detail exactly how I want it to be done when I want it to be done and then reminding people that it needs to be done was never gonna work at the same time, we have to remember that we need to let people fail. So, when it comes to my daughter, I will let her oversleep. Now, it hasn’t happened yet, but if I look at the clock, you’re ready.

Joe:
<Laugh>. And it’s seven 15 and the bus is coming in a few minutes, and I haven’t seen her yet. I’m kind of looking upstairs like, do I go up? Do I, do I knock on the door and be like, hey kid, you know, you’re coming. And I just realized that there’s probably gonna be a time when I’m gonna be tempted to do that and I’m not gonna do it. Right. Okay. Because they need to experience the consequence of not fulfilling their responsibility. Now, between us, she’s an amazing kid. She’s never missed it. Yeah. So yeah. Probably the first time I’m gonna be like, Hey, you all, right? Knock, knock, knock. You good? Hey, don’t you got the bus coming? But if it happens again and again,

Suzanne:
Or it’s the day you don’t have to drive them –(Joe: Yeah. Right.) You are yeah. You let ’em, let ’em sit in it as they say.

Joe:
Yeah. Probably say, okay, one of these times I need to let this happen.

Suzanne:
Right. I was gonna say, and it’s the day you really don’t have time to take her to school and back again. You’re like, get up. Yeah. Yeah. <Laugh>. I think too, the one thing when I’m working with coaching clients who, who struggle, so you’re not alone out there. None of us are alone. You know, when we think about giving that thing up, it feels risky. It feels, oh gosh. 

Joe:
That failure can have a consequence that we have to clean up and that’s never good. Yeah.

Suzanne:
That we might then say my fault for later on. Yeah. In a different conversation. Right. but what I work on is say, okay, well what will you do with this extra time and extra energy? So, you’re a list writer, Joe. I hear you have lists of lists, but that you could turn around and say, one of your lists could be what I will do with my extra time and energy if I delegate mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And it could be anything. I don’t care if it’s taken an extra-long walk with the dog you know, help somebody with the laundry, trim the hedges, or read a book, or put work into your work, whatever it is. But you’re allowed to do that. And as a leader, your teams aren’t growing unless you’re making that space for them.

Joe:
Absolutely. So that’s the homework here, BossHeroes, where can you stop assigning tasks and start assigning responsibility? If you do that, you’ll Boss Like a Mother.

Joe:
All right folks. Thank you for listening to our show this week. If you liked what you heard, we’d be so grateful, if you would take a moment and share this episode on your social media networks. Go to LinkedIn and post a link to this episode, or go to Facebook or Instagram, wherever you hang out online, and share with the world that you’re listening to a podcast that provides advice, humor, and encouragement to bosses everywhere that helps us fill our mission of filling workplaces with better bosses. So spread the word, tell others about our show, we’d be so grateful. In the meantime, thanks for being with us and we’ll see you next time.

Suzanne:
This show is sponsored by Joe Mull and Associates. Remember, commitment comes from better bosses. Visit joemull.com today.