EntreLeadership - #305: You’re Doing Delegation Wrong with Dave Ramsey

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

News flash: When it comes to running a business, you can’t do it all. Sure, you can survive 90-hour work weeks for a season, but ultimately if you’re interested in building a business bigger than you, you’re going to have to delegate. And it’s not as simple as telling someone else to do something for you and hoping for the best. Tune in to hear Dave Ramsey explain the 10 basics of delegation, the same ones that helped him build his business from scratch and develop it into an international brand with more than 800 team members. Also joining us are Ramsey Solutions’ own Daniel Tardy and Sarah Sloyan who share why—and how—to develop new leaders within your organization. And finally, StoryBrand CEO Donald Miller weighs in on the undeniable value those leaders add to your bottom line. If you’re feeling even the least bit overwhelmed, don’t miss this powerful episode.   entreleadership.com/podcast Want more content like Dave's lesson on delegation? Join us this fall at EntreLeadership Master Series. Download The EntreLeader's Guide to Delegation Podcast listener discount: $20 off EntreLeadership 1-Day Donald Miller's website   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Delegation is the most misunderstood and abused area of leadership. People delegate stuff that shouldn't be delegated, at times that shouldn't be delegated, and they don't delegate things that should. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation.

This episode is jam-packed. You don't want to miss a second. We're going to lead off with Dave Ramsey speaking from one of our live events, Daniel Tarty and Sarah Sloyen, our leaders of Entree leadership, having a very personal but practical conversation on delegation. And then Don Miller back with us. And we're talking about delegation with him. So the theme is delegation, delegation, delegation, but please don't delegate listening to this program to anybody else. You need to listen to it. Let's get right to it. Dave Ramsey teaching on the 10. basics of delegation from one of our signature events, Entree Leadership Master Series. Here's Dave Ramson. When it comes to delegation, how many of you are like me you have been accused of or have accused yourself of being a micromanager or a control freak? I used to really think I was horrible. It's a control freak. I'm a micromanager.

There's just something wrong with me. And then I figured out it wasn't me. It wasn't me. I didn't understand delegation. See, delegation is not where you know how to do something with excellence. You expect excellence. You expect a level of customer service. You expect a process to be done in a certain way.

And so you hand it off to someone blindly hoping that they might do that. That is not delegation. That's stupid. And if you don't want to do that and you resist that idea, then you're not a control freak. And you're not a micromanager. You're wise. Don't hand things off blindly to only see them not get done or get done poorly. Don't do that.

Don't do that. That is not delegation. Delegation is a process, and there are steps involved in delegation, and then only a fool wouldn't delegate when you've got it set up properly. But when you don't have it set up properly, only a fool does delegate. And so let me tell you who accuses me. I've found it over the years. Who accuses me of being a control freak?

Someone who's immature and not ready for delegation and is delusional and thinks they are. And they don't like that I'm going to give them keys to a brand new Porsche when they've never had a driving lesson. And they're all upset about it. Well, you're just a control freak. No, I'm not an idiot. This is a new Porsche. You freaking don't know how to drive. to give you the keys would make me a moron.

That does not make me a control freak. That makes me wise. And so you can't listen to those voices that accuse you of that. Now, there are times that you can be a control freak or micromanager, and we'll talk about that, when you should release and you don't. And we'll talk about how to walk through that process. Mastering the Rope, delegation, the best way to build a bigger business than you. you've got to build some people, build a team that you can release to because that's when there's joy in this.

Otherwise, you have to do it all yourself, and that's no fun. So a man's gift makes room for him and brings him before great men. Now, there are 10 basics of delegation, 10 principles of delegation. If you understand and do these 10, you are ready to delegate. But understand, before we got here, we hired carefully. screened and filtered thoroughbreds. We compensated them properly. We've installed them into a culture that was already working. We've recognized proper behaviors. All of these things are already happening. Then we talk about delegation, not, hey, let's just start and throw

junior the keys. There's a difference. Do you feel that? We've been laying layer upon layer in this foundation before we got to this point in the wall. Delegation. Delegation, is the most misunderstood and abused area of leadership. People delegate stuff that shouldn't be delegated, at times that shouldn't be delegated, and they don't delegate things that should, and they can't turn loose when they should. It's so screwed up and misused, it's become a toxic word. It's become a word that, from an emotional standpoint, it kind of feel with guilt and shame, like I don't ever do it right.

It's the most misunderstood thing out there. I often get questions from business people. How did you learn to delegate? I can't seem to delegate. And then they start telling me about their stable full of donkeys. Right? And I'm going, well, you shouldn't delegate. You got a stable full of donkeys.

What would you delegate to? There's nobody in there you can trust that you've named so far. Or this guy is good at this, but you want to delegate this. Well, he can't handle it. He doesn't have that skill set. He's not proven himself in that area. Number two, an entree leader can only delegate tasks, responsibilities, and concepts to a team member when both are.

mature. Now, if you're a young leader, meaning you're a beginning leader, not chronological age, but you're a beginning leader. You may not be mature enough in your leadership style to have confidence in yourself yet to release. That's maturity. And if you've got a young, not chronologically necessarily, but sometimes chronologically, young go-getter on the team that's immature, they're not ready to be delegated to. The requirement for delegation, one of the requirements is both are mature. The process of building a team to which concepts can be delegated is lengthy but rewarding. It takes time to fill your stable full of thoroughbrates. And you can only delegate to thoroughbrates. You cannot delegate to donkeys. You cannot delegate to beginners. You can't go there. It won't

work for you. And you should control that. You should control the quality. You should control the process. You should control the customer experience until you've got thoroughbreds that can do it with you. In order for a leader to completely delegate, they have to come to trust in the team members' integrity and competency. You want to learn how to delegate? Circle that statement and put stars all around it. That's the thesis of this lesson. That's how you delegate. It's how I learned to delegate. And you shouldn't delegate until you've spent enough time with the person to trust their integrity, and until they have proven their competency. And the more competency they have proven, the more you can delegate to them,

and the more integrity they have proven, the more you can delegate to them. And so you can use all kinds of metaphors to explain this. The one that drives me crazy is when our kids were teenagers, we would go out to dinner with our friends who had kids that were teenagers, and the mom would always say something like, you know, George, he just started driving. And when he left the driveway, I was just... I'm like, well, why the flip did you let him leave the driveway?

Is there something wrong? Have you got an emotional problem, or is he a horrible driver? Which is it? Because at our house, Daniel's not leaving the driveway if I'm terrified. Because if I'm terrified, it's because he freaking can't drive. And so you don't get to leave the driveway until you learn how to drive. So when you go get the learners permit, I get to ride around the car and stop and stop signs for days. And we get to talk about not eating while you're driving. And every time we pull up behind somebody in the left lane, they're eating or they're talking on their stupid cell phone. And they drive like they're drunk.

Son, watch that. They're worse than a drunk. Look at him the way he's driving. It starts in the church parking lot, right? And you're like, oh, God, I'm glad. Angels are here to keep him in the car. It's just. And so the first time, the Daniel left the driveway, and he touched the brakes and he turned the corner to leave, I was not freaked out.

I was like, dude, I'm really glad I don't have to do that anymore. You've now learned how to drive, and I don't have to carry you everywhere. That's awesome. And then a few months later, he left the driveway, you know, two wheels, and we parked the Jeep for a little while, okay? So there's some check in there, right, y'all? But what is the idea that you just toss somebody to know how to drive the keys and then freak out about it? Why not only let them drive to the extent they have proven they can drive? Why is that hard to grasp?

That's delegation. That's all it is. And to the extent I'm going to let you lead a large team is how well you have led a small team. If you're faithful with the little things, I will give you more to manage. I heard that saying? You know, it's really not any harder than that. Common sense says don't give people stuff to do and then turn your back and walk away and hope they can do it until you've watched them do it several times. Or they watched you do it for a while.

Then they did a little bit of it and you did a little of it. And then you stood back and watched them and you course corrected them and you course corrected them. And you watched them do it 200 times. And then after you've watched them do it 200 times a year for 10 years, you don't even have to think about them doing it. By then they should actually be teaching the next person, right? And you're delegating only to competence. That right there solves it. Trust and integrity.

Trust their integrity, trust their competency you can release. Before the hire is made, you've created this culture. We've been talking about a culture of motivation, of fun, of rewards. and of a crusade. The delegating leader always sets the tone for the team with integrity, work ethic, and speed. So we're not expecting to delegate to them and go play golf. We're expecting to delegate to them and then see if they can keep up. See if you can bring it.

It's game on. We're in it to win it. When the new hire enters this culture, they're able to move past the first few obstacles real quickly because they're an environment full of winners. They are pulled along by other people's success. Their first 90 days can have an unbelievable curve into production if they walk into a productive environment that's prepared for them. And they have a computer and a phone and all that stuff, right?

Everything's paved out here. And basically you're releasing them into a situation that's already prepared. At the start of a new position, it's impossible to overmanage. In those first few weeks, it's not micromanaging. It's called training. When you hire somebody for the first six weeks, you see them working for you, or are they working for one of your leaders? You need to be walking around, looking at them. And every time you see them, you need to pretend you see a shirt in their hand.

They're saying, who's going to take my money? Who's going to serve me? Is there any customer service here? Because they're still waiting on trying to figure out where the bathroom is. They're still trying to figure out how to turn on the computer. computer and what the passwords are. They're still trying to figure out the easiest way to get to work and beat the traffic pattern. They're still trying to figure out how life's going to work here. And your job as a leader is not micromanaging when you're training them and you're all up in

their business for that short period of time. The faster you pour into him, the more you pour into him, the more you see competence, the more you can release. But if you just stand back and say, I wonder if he can do it. Let's see. We'll laugh when he falls. He's walking around on a shirt when somebody give me service. Is there a real? any service in this store. As the person proves themselves, you lengthen the rope a little at a time until little follow-up is required. You let the rope out. As they prove themselves, you give them more rope, more room, more freedom, more liberty, because they've proven their integrity. They've proven their competence. Again, we use kids as a metaphor for this, but it's a pretty

good metaphor. When our kids hit the teenage years, we started discovering that the sole greatest motivator of a teenager seems to be, I want to be treated like an adult, to which my constant response was, freaking act like an adult. And then we'll consider treating you like one. And the more you act like one, the more we will treat you like one. Our goal is for you to be an adult. So someday you leave. So we're all on the same page. We have the same goal. Now act like it, right? But they don't. because in this 15-year-old body lives a 4-year-old and a 34-year-old. And you have no idea when you walk up to them, which one's going to come out.

It's like multiple personalities, Sybil, right? You come up and you go, and one of them, she was going off on her mama one night, and I said, listen, maybe you may talk to your mother that way, but no one talks to my wife that way and lives through it. I will take you out. You will no way. I said, listen, you're acting like you're four. If you act like you're four, I'm going to treat you like you're four.

If you want to act like you're 34, and sometimes they can. They just amaze you. And you go, where did you, what did you do with your evil sister? You know? They act like they're 34. They get to treat them that way. So our deal, our metaphor with our kids was the rope. That's what we told them.

We said, listen, you go down the movie theater and we're going to pick you up from the movie theater. When the movie is over at this time. That's our deal. Anything else happens. It's going to be a problem. This is the deal. Spit shake, pinky swear. This is the deal.

Hey, I'm at McDonald's. We walked over here after the movie. Wrong. That is not what we said. Don't bust the trust. Humpty Dumpty's hard to put back together again. You say you're going to do something. You better do something.

Otherwise, you get nothing. No life. You stay in your room the rest of your life. Duck tape will be involved. right you know you're going to do what you said you're going to do if you want more freedom you want to be treated like an adult you act like an adult we're going to delegate more of your life to you and so or they go to that they're 15 years old and they go to that party and they call and say dad uh problem here dad there's left-handed cigarettes and adult beverages here and uh i need to

get out of here because we explained to our kids when they bust a party like that they bust all the people, the people doing drugs and the people stupid enough to stay with the people doing drugs. And all their names are listed in the same list, except the ones that have named Ramsey, and they're on the front page. That's how it works, okay? And right there on the front page, they're stupid, they're a rack, okay? Right there on the front page. That's how one would happen.

And so, kid, get out of there. For your sake, my sake, and for the sake that way we can let you live. So, I mean, get out of that party. So true story, one of them picks up the phone calls, this is bad. the parents left. This is getting dumb. Come get me out of here. Man, I'm there in seven minutes, right? Quick as I can get there. You know what you get for that phone call? Lots of freedom. You just proved your ability to make quality decisions because my goal is to teach you how to make good decisions. And the more you make good decisions, the more opportunity you have to make more good decisions.

The more I'm going to lengthen the rope and lengthen the rope. And I'm going to pull the rope in when you mess up. And then I'm going to lengthen the rope. Every time you make a good one, every time you make a bad one, we're going to adjust the length. And the worse you are, the closer you got to stay right here because I've got to watch you. And the better you do, the longer I can let you go. And the longer I can let you go. It's a pretty good metaphor. So when our oldest child, Denise, got ready to go off to college, as Rachel tells the story, our middle child,

which is probably not a proper perspective, but she remembers it as a funeral wake. That the oldest child is leaving to go to college. And so mom gets out, you know, we eat in the dining room. with cloth napkins. Fancy, right? It's like a big deal. Get the china out. Her last dinner, it's like a funeral. And it's her last dinner before she leaves to go to college. And we sit around and we talk about Denise as if she's not there. You know, it's, right? And this is how Rachel tells it anyway. I don't remember it being quite that way. But I do remember this part of the story as being true. I ran by Michael's the little hobby place, right? And I picked up some drapery cord

a rope. And so at the end of the dinner, I pulled this out for Denise. And I said, honey, I got to tell you, your mom and I are so proud of the woman of God you have become. You make good decisions. You know who God is. You walk like that. You talk like that.

You study hard. You have a good work ethic. You have a sweet spirit. and I am not worried about you going to college. You are going to go there and succeed. You are ready. You're awesome. We're so proud of you.

And all your life, we've talked about lengthening the rope. You're going to be almost 300 miles away, and the rope doesn't reach that far. And so we brought you your rope. This is your right of passage. You are moving into adulthood. And we tied it with red ribbon to represent your academics. With orange ribbon because you're going to the University of Tennessee. Go balls.

With purple ribbon to represent your spiritual walk. With white ribbon to represent your purity. And with yellow ribbon, because if you need something from home, it's always here. This is your rope. And everybody cried. It was so precious and cheesy because I'm cheesy. And she packed it away with her stuff. took her to college. And we went back to college about, went down to UT for a ballgame,

about four or five weeks later. We went into her dorm room because you get to visit the dorm room. Oh, goody. It looks like a prison cell. And we go in there, but this thing is hanging on the corner of the bedpost. Because I figure cheese factory is going in the bottom of the closet here, right? It's on the corner of the bedpost, right out there in plain view where everybody can see it. I'm like, hey, Denise, what's up with the rope? Hanging on. on the bedpost. Oh, dad, the rope is a legend. Girls come from three dormitories over to hear the story of the rope. We have a new sorority called the Order of the Rope. It's just, you know, I mean, it's crazy. But it had that much of an impact because it was that metaphor that we were

delegating to someone who was ready. Integrity and competency to make the decisions. And that's really what you're trying to build in your team as well. You want to build quality children that grow up and leave and bring grandbabies back, right? This is what we want to do. But, you know, we don't want to grow people who are dysfunctional on purpose anyway. And the same thing is true in our organization. So we let the rope out according to integrity, according to competency. The last one is complete delegation is when the entree leader is now approving large decisions and checking only results.

You're no longer watching details. I told you earlier. I get involved in two areas of the company. new things because they're unproven and probably the leader of the team is unproven in that area and broken things because something screwed up. And these are the areas I spend my time on other than stuff like today where I'm being the product. But when I'm involved in something in the building, it's new things and broken things. Operational things, I don't need to be involved. Fully delegated. I'm following the metrics. I'm reading high points, touching places,

random checks, just to kind of keep the pulse of what's going on. But I'm in very little time on areas that are working. All right, hope you enjoyed that teaching from Dave. We've got a great guide for you. The best way to build a business bigger than you. Hint, it's about delegation. This takes Dave's 10 basics of delegation, which you heard a bit of. In that teaching we just gave you and puts them down on paper so that you can keep them in front

of you and so that you can actually implement these delegation basics to help you not just delegate, but really to model it. So the rest of your team gets it, they do it, and you win. So to get this great resource text the word delegation to 33444, that's delegation, text that word to 33444, or we have the link for you in this episode's show notes. Well, it's always fun we can get two of our leaders, Daniel Tarty and Sarah Sloane, they really do work together to lead this division of Entree leadership so well. They're in the trenches and they are practicing what we preach. So we put them together in the studio and have a very personal conversation

about how delegation ultimately takes place through relationships and feedback. Here are Sarah and Daniel. Sarah, this is the biggest problem in small business, probably in business anywhere. All we talk about is the work. All we talk about is what got produced, what widget was punched out. How are the metrics? How are the numbers? Are we hitting our goals?

Is the performance on pace? Perform, perform, perform, produce, results, work. And I'm all about results. But if you don't stop and have relational discussions about how are you doing as a person, where do you want your career to go? How can this place help you get there? You're going to miss your best people. They're going to come in and they're going to fly right out.

I'm going to stop you because I think a lot of our people are like, but I don't know how to grow people. That's why I'm listening to this podcast. I don't know how to delegate. So how did you learn, what I'm hearing you say is just asking people to write questions. I would say I would go upstream just a little bit and go, it starts with a habit that every week you've created a lot of space in your calendar to prioritize discussions that don't have anything to do with just getting the work done. It's lunches, it's one-on-one meetings where part of that meeting isn't. Tell me what you did this week for the company, but it's, how are you?

How are you feeling? What's on your mind? What's driving you crazy right now? Those are where those questions come up on, okay, let's think about this differently. you're having conflict with this other person on the team. Let's talk through a better way to solve that. Have you reached out to them? Have you initiated with them?

Have you told them that you're frustrated with them? Have you connected and tried to figure out what does winning look like for them and how can you support them? So all that mentoring and developing and leading people, it starts with saying, we're going to have space in our week where that's actually all we're talking about. This should be a major bucket for you. This is something that you have to spend time on is developing your next leaders and your next influencers. And even if there's not an official title, I'm hearing you say, go ahead and

start planting the vision and the seeds of how we're going to get there so that that is an official role that you need them to fill. Yes, absolutely. And if you're the leader, your goal should be that someday you're spending 90% of your time having developmental conversations with people who are then going and doing things the way that should be done, the way that you would do them. But the fallacy is, okay, I have to do everything. I'm the guy that got this started. I'm the lady that sold the first customer, this thing. I know how it works better than anybody else.

So I'm just going to keep doing it. And you can do it. And you can add actual business value. But if that's all you ever do, you're never going to get to a place where you're guiding and building a team. And that's the only way your company can scale. You're only going to cap out what you can possibly throw 80 hours a week at. If you're stubbornly committed to doing all that stuff and you're,

going, I never have time to build my people. I never have time to teach them how to think. I never have time to sit around on a whiteboard for two hours and go, this is how we should be doing this thing with our culture and our values and our standards. If you don't have time for that, you're never going to have time to see your family, to do what you want to do in life, because you're going to be working 80 freaking hours a week grinding it through instead of building a team. Yeah, I love it. So we've been using this analogy with our team, the idea of 20 pound weights. if I took one of these team members into the gym tomorrow and I said, hey, I want you to lift 200 pounds, they would hurt themselves, right? And that's what it would be like. Today, if you took all the tasks on your plate and you went to one of your team members and said, okay, tomorrow I want you to start doing all of this. They would have at some point quickly a very visible burn down mode, right? So what do you do? I think in delegation, there's two extremes that are terrible.

One is you do it too fast and you say 200 pounds, lift it now, or you never go to the gym. Right. You know, and if people will just consistently go to the gym and exercise two to three times a week, and every time they exercise, they add just a little bit more weight. Maybe, you know, the weight's gotten easy, so add another 20 pounds this week. But then work out with that weight for a month or two until it's easy again and then add a little more weight. You'll look up one day and you'll be the fittest person in the day. the gym if you're just consistent. And the same thing is true for delegation or anything that matters

in life that has the roots of a habit and a discipline that you're going to adopt. And a delegation as leaders, if we'll just stop and go each week, we're going to make sure that when we make a decision or when we're talking about the work, we're also going to spend a little bit of time going, hey, in the past, I've always done this. Next time, I want to give you a 20 pound weight. I'd like you to do it. I'll be in the room with you. I'll watch you do it. And I'll have your back. If it gets squirrely or weird. In fact, we had an off-site yesterday where a guy that I'm working on, I gave him a 20-pound weight, kind of as a surprise. He thought I was going to get up and leave part of the discussion, and I gave him the marker on the whiteboard. I said, hey, you put this

thing up there. And he did okay. But I could also tell he was a little nervous. There's a bunch of senior leaders in the room. And I'm going to give him some feedback on some things I saw and observed. It wasn't a failure. It was kind of a low-risk environment. But the temptation I had in that moment, five years ago, I just would have done it. And I wouldn't have seen that as an opportunity to give somebody a 20 pound weight. And I promise you this guy, I know him, he's thought about that every hour since that moment. Like, how did I do? Did I do it the right way? Could I do it better? And the next time we meet, knowing him, he's hungry, he's always seeking feedback. He's going to go, hey, that day when you had me get on the whiteboard and draw that stuff

and kind of lead that part of the meeting, I don't think I did that good. How could I, you know, and then that's a teachable moment. Oh, man. Let's talk about that because people want more responsibilities, but the people who grow the best, what are the habits that they're doing that as a leader allow us to grow them? For me, it's like pull feedback. Oh, yeah. Say more about that. I mean, pull feedback is number one. Like, if I have somebody that asks me great questions and wants feedback, now, not that annoying, like constantly in your face has no idea of all the other responsibilities you have going on, but someone who appropriately asks for feedback on a regular basis, that is like, I mean, in the formula of success, that is a huge weight for me.

Like, if you can ask the right questions at the right times and seek that feedback, you will grow exponentially. Right. This is huge. If you're working for a leader right now and you're listening to this, you've got to hear this. This is so monumental to your growth. Your leader, if they're normal, does not want to give you feedback.

It's so uncomfortable. We do not want to come to our team and say. you're not doing a good job or you could do this better because we want to talk about all the things that are going great and hope that you just get the memo and figure it out. And none of us actually love receiving feedback if we're normal human beings because we have a fear that it means that we're a failure. And if we're a failure, we're going to get fired. If we get fired, we're going to be homeless and we're going to die in our worst nightmares. It's like, that doesn't happen. But we put feedback on that level of fear where it's like, oh my gosh, if we talk about uncomfortable

things, it's going to be a problem. And the truth is, it's the only way we develop self-awareness. It's the only way we grow. But ask your leader. And if you're leading a team, ask your team for feedback. When you ask, you're inviting people into that discussion. And they go, do you, okay, do you really want to know? Yeah, yeah, I really want to know. I'm not going to be mad at you. Just tell me. They go, well, actually, it's kind of obnoxious that you're always five minutes late for the meetings. Oh, I didn't even realize everyone care. Okay, cool, I can work on that and then you get better. But to have to come and tell somebody like, hey, you're five minutes late for the meeting all the time, what the crap, get your stuff together. No one wants to really come

off that hardcore. You know, no one wants to be a bossy boss. Yeah. Unless there's, I mean, some of you guys are listening to like, my boss does well, then you're working for the wrong person. Get out, get out. There's people who have a heart and who have decency. But most leaders don't want to get feedback. So I think it's a two-way street. When you pull feedback, you're asking, what could I do better, what in my area that I'm responsible for, do you think I could be doing a little bit better, doing differently? And you're just making it safe and you're disarming the other person to go, I really do want to know. And I really do know that we're going to be friends, even after you tell me something that may be uncomfortable. And I'm actually going to see that as a gift. I'm going to see it

as a blessing. I'm going to see it as you're helping me get better. Not you're telling me something you don't like about me. And now all of a sudden, I'm going, I must be a failure in life. Right. I want to hit two tips that you've shared with me in the past that I feel like have been a game changer for me. One is our initial reaction when someone asks us for feedback is, as you described, we just go, oh, you're fine. Yeah, you're great. Yeah, let me tell you all the good things about you. Okay, if you want real feedback, you ask a specific question and you say, on a scale of one to five, how do you feel like I'm doing on this thing or fill in the blank? Because then people will sit and they'll say, oh, well, you know, you're doing great.

you're really doing great. You're four and you're like, okay, well, what would make that a five? I want to make it a five. And then you get to the heart of that because it is so uncomfortable. It forces you to go, oh, so there is a gap. Right. Share with me. So doing that, I love this tool because it simultaneously lets the other person compliment you and say you're a four, not a one. Because that's their fear is that if they give you feedback, they're going to think that you think that you're a one and they're going, that's not what I mean. It creates a safe way to say, you're doing awesome on all. all of these things, and if you're talking about some growth or improvement, I do have some perspective on that. Right, right.

So, yeah, scale a one to five. That's a great technique. I love that. Well, I got it from you. You're welcome. Oh, well, it's brilliant. Absolutely. Okay.

So my second tip is to consistently ask for feedback and make the space for it. So don't hear ask 50 times a week. But consistently, so in our one-on-ones, every week, I ask, we've worked together for six years, and I ask you the same. questions at the end of our one-on-one every single time. And it's around, what is it about my personal brand I may not be aware of and that I should be? Is there anything with Entree leadership that you worry is a gap for me? And is there just anything that's top of mind that's worrying you right now and keeping you up that I should know? And it forces you, you're not hiding that stuff from me. But you're so busy. Well, I'm not always thinking about it. Right. Or then I'll think about it on

the drive home and go, oh, I need a gift to Sarah this feedback, but then it's going to feel like I just blindside you if it's out of nowhere. So it makes it just a normal. So it makes it just a normal. part of the discussion. I will tell you if you're leader listening to this, you're probably going, oh, I'm going to make my team ask those questions all the time now. Don't do that. Don't do that. They're going to go, oh, really? This is now that start doing it to them. Like, model this first. Your team is so intimidated by you just because you're the leader and you're never going to hear from them. They're always going to tell you what you want to hear unless you go into their world and go, hey, I'm your leader and I'm sure it could be awkward sometimes for you to tell me things

could work on, but I just want you to know, is there anything as your leader that I could do a better job in supporting you and believing in you and clarifying the vision? If you start to model this first, then three, four months from now, you've gone first and said, I'm going to be vulnerable with you and I'm going to be open to your feedback. And also, when they give you feedback, don't go, oh, no, no, here's why you're confusing. You shouldn't see that way. Take what's true about it and actually go work on it, even if it was only 10% accurate. Then later, you could kind of change a perspective a little bit, as long as they're not argumentative. Then three or four months in, you've been doing this. You've been seeking feedback. You've been pulling from your team.

Now you can go, hey, you know how I've been asking for your feedback? I love for you to start doing that with me. And then you can introduce that. So don't go back and go, we have a new feedback policy. You're going to ask me every time we meet, can I do anything better? It's so lame and plastic. And that's the stuff I was talking about. It's a check the box. Yeah, it's a check the box thing. And that's where I was saying in my kind of early 20s as a younger leader, I would hear a technique like that, and I would go jump in and just try to implement the technique, and I would miss the whole heart and the relationship and be a decent person. Connect with people where they're at. Don't come off as like, I found a great technique that's going to somehow robotically create a

relationship that's not actually coming from a place of authenticity. Right. So it's interesting. We started talking about delegation, and it feels like we have really moved into kind of this whole discussion around feedback, but tie those two together. Why is it so important? Well, you can only As Dave said, you can only delegate when somebody has the competency and you trust their integrity and their character. And the only way you're going to have a real sense of their competency and their character integrity, the only way the trust is felt with the absolute certainty that has to be there before you lengthen the rope is through these conversations around how are we really doing together? How's our relationship? How's the feedback loop?

Is your awareness of how you're doing actually consistent with? what's true about how you're doing is my perspective and your perspective aligned on how effective you're being in your role. And if you're not having those discussions, the whole competency thing, you're not going to know if they're competent on these things. Also, their trust could be there in terms of like, yeah, trust them as a good person, but actually knowing how they're going to respond and them convincing you that they're ready for the thing. Like that happens in real discussions over a lunch, over a coffee, not over, you were in the middle of a project, and you're just shooting off an email going, hey, I think I'm ready to delegate this to me. So I think you just,

you got to lean in with your team, and it's never convenient, it's never easy. But I'm here to tell you 15 years on the other side of it, there was a day when I had 5% of my time was available to do this, and 95% was just, how can we get everything done? And today, it's the complete inverse. 95% of stuff that has to get done. We have an incredible team that does it. And I spend the rest of that time helping encourage and nurture and build vision. And you do this too. And so we're getting paid more now for who we're growing and not what we're doing.

And that really is a thing that's possible if you'll be intentional about this stuff. Right. And I think it's important to call out our role is now a coach role. We're not your cheerleader. We're your coach. We're that person who's going to push you. We believe in you. And we're going to push you to take on more than you think, faster than you think. but we're going to be there to walk alongside you and do that with you.

Yeah, that's right. Good discussion. Got to delegate. Got to do it the right way. You guys got this. And as always, at Entree leadership, we're here to support you and cheer for you guys. If there's anything we can do, just give us a call, drops an email. We want to see you guys win.

Go get them. Big thanks to Daniel and Tara for hanging out with us in the studio and sharing some real leadership talk. All right. So let's talk about an event where you can begin to put all this together. It's a great event for you, and for your team. The event is our entree leadership one day, and it's coming to you live stream. That means you can watch it anywhere in the country. February 19th is the date. Dave Ramsey, Christy Wright, and yours truly are all teaching from the stage, and it is a great way to invest

in your team, not just yourself, but your team, because you can watch it in the office, you can watch it in the hearties down the street, as long as they're okay with you taking several hours there in the corner. You can watch it in your church. You can watch it anywhere you want to watch it. If you've got the old intraweb, then you're going to be able to tune in to this great event. And we're going to give you a special offer. If you click on the link in the show notes, you're going to get $20 off of the live stream pass. So who doesn't like a discount? And it's already way too cheap. I would have charged you people way more. But you know what? They're smarter people, kinder people when it comes to charging you. This is a great day. I mean, folks, we give

the entire playbook for a ridiculously low price for what you invest in your company. But why not go get the $20 off? You can thank somebody else for that. I would not have done that. I think we've made that clear, but it's a great deal. Well, we've got some more fresh content coming from a recent conversation I had with my good friend and your friend, Donald Miller, who's been on the program many times. We're going to hear a little bit of him talking about this idea of thinking closer to the comma. It's a great way at looking at delegation in the terms of as a leader, you need to be thinking close to the comma and that's going to affect what you're delegating and how you're delegating. So here is Donald Miller. You do this in your own company and you challenge other

leaders to think closer to the comma further from the decimal point. Yes. What in the world does that mean? Well, it's actually really simple. Yes. You know, my company made just under 10 million. So let's actually take the number 10 million and spell it out in numbers. 1.0.com. That's right. 0-00-coma, 0-0-0-0, decimal point 0-0. That's 10 million. What you want to do as a leader is be thinking way up past the second comma. You want to be up here in the millions.

In other words, the things that you should be thinking about should be million-dollar ideas and million-dollar innovations and a million-dollar. Or if you're smaller companies, hundreds of thousands of dollars, whatever. Not the decimal point. The decimal point are $100,000. problems, $250 problems, those kinds of things. Now, if you look at that number and you circle around the decimal point, there are millions of jobs that pay that. If you solve problems around the decimal point, you get paid a percentage of the numbers around the decimal point. So,

McDonald solves the problem of lunch, hunger. Well, that's around the decimal point because that's an $8, $6 problem. What's the person working at McDonald's going to get? a percentage of $6. Right. Are they working any less hard than the person who's making millions? Probably not, right? They're working just as hard. But their mental energy is solving a small problem.

So what you want to do is stop solving those problems and start what I call climbing the commas. Now, the problem is millions of jobs, 162 to 163 million jobs in the American workforce, most of those jobs around the decimal point. The air starts getting thin. There's less and less jobs. Middle management. vice president, C-suite, or owner of the company as you keep going to get into hedge funds and they're way up on the other comments. Those people are solving bigger and bigger problems.

Now, how does that play out in practical reality? I'm walking into our new office the other day, about an office on Music Row in Nashville. There's a lady who's been there cleaning the banisters because we had to paint the whole place. And she stops me as I walk into the office. She says, Don, they installed a coffee maker and there's a screw, a thread on the back of the coffee maker that the plumbing goes into. It has been leaking overnight. There's a huge puddle of water on the floor. I put a bucket under it.

I cleaned it up, but water has gotten it seeped into the floor. I am trying to, I'm walking to the door to think about a pitch that I want to make a division of our United States military in order to actually develop their entire. Right. That's what I want to do. Yeah. This is a $10 million problem. That's right. And the most that this problem could cost me in the long run is $1,500 with a plumber and some drugs.

wall. I need to get away from that problem as fast as I can. I need to say, can somebody else solve this? Thanks. And I'm gone. Exactly. Because every amount of energy I spend around the decimal point, I'm not spending in the comments. And it's not just you as the leader. You literally want to train everybody in your organization to get away from that decimal point and get toward the commas as fast as possible. Solve bigger problems and we will get bigger percentages of bigger amounts of money. That's really good. Now, to that end, what is the leader? have to do to let go of the decimal points and let somebody else make those decimal points decisions so they can begin to focus on commas. Well, you explain that if you make good decimal point

decisions, we're going to move you up. Yeah. It should be an honor for you to fix the coffee machine, because if I see you do that and you actually have to follow through, right, you have to say, I'm moving you up. You know, we had this issue recently. One of the guys on my team has an executive assistant. She has been unbelievable, unbelievable. And she came to him and said, I'd love to move up in this company. I realize the company I'd love to move up. He came back to me and said, I can't lose her. She's been an incredible assistant. And I looked at him and I said, you have to. You have to. You have no choice. Right. I get it. She's saying, I want to climb the commas. Yeah. You have to. Yeah. And he was like, I know. I just wanted to tell you, you know,

wanted to see what you'd say. Yeah. He got to move her up. Yeah. And she's just going to make everybody more money. If she's actually climbing the commas, I have to pay her more. Right? But the only reason I'm paying her more is because she's making more money for the company. And then you enter somebody else. And what everybody starts seeing is, oh, you're kidding. If I make really great decisions around the dustful point, they move me up. Yes. And you swim upstream like a salmon. That's exactly right. So you and I both have multiple friends at Chick-fil-A. Both know Dan personally, Mike Rale, several leaders. So we could throw all these names out. One of the things I've always been impressed about with that company is when you get to their corporate headquarters or you meet some of the people, you find out where they started out. Yes. And they are very intentional at Chick-fil-A to take good people, get them in here, watch them, develop them, right? Give them opportunity. And they will move them up. Some of the top executives started out and what we would think of as menial positions. Right. It's extraordinary. Is what you just said, isn't that what really happens? Then you have a culture where you just see people continue to climb up the commas. Is that what you're essentially telling us? That's exactly what you want. And the more people you have climbing the commas, the more money that company is going to make.

And so what that means is you instill a sense of that from the beginning. We have one customer service person. Her name is Bethany. She's incredible. And each of our teams are in the process right now. About 13 days from now, they have to turn in each team's business plan. Okay. You know, for how they're going to run the organization? So I'm sitting there looking at Bethany, and I'm going, we have one customer service person.

She's going to release a plan for her division. So I said to Bethany, Bethany, I want you to write a plan for when you were the boss of 10 customer service reps, meaning you're going to have to have policies. You're going to have instruction book on how. they do their job. And you could see in her face this sense of, oh, you're kidding. That's where. Yeah, that's exactly where you're. Not just possible.

It's happening. We're going there whether you like it or not. And I want you to be the boss because you know what you're doing. Yeah, that's good. And so you instill that sense of this company's going somewhere where you want to be. You know what we did. We actually put together at our January 4th meeting to start the year. We have 20 employees.

We put together a graph of what the company looks like with 100 employees. Blank lines in the C-suite. Blank lines in the middle manager. Blank lines here. And we looked at it and said, you guys, we're going to fill these positions. I want to fill them out of this room. I want everybody moving up. I had a friend of mine, Doug Kime, he's turned around many billion-dollar organizations who works with Cox Communications.

And Doug said, Don, when a $10 billion dollar company goes to $100 million, he said, I've never seen anybody in the room at $100 million who was there at $10. everybody's gone. And I said, Doug, that's a leadership problem. He said, exactly. They didn't develop their people. Wow. They didn't tell them where we were going. They didn't tell them this thing was getting big.

That's right. They didn't save the customer service person who's sitting there all alone. You need to learn to manage people right now. Right. Because we're going. And I need a manager. Learn to do it right now. And so they lost their people.

Yeah. And these poor people, that's not their fault. No. You know, they were loyal. They showed up every day. That's right. They were just never developed. And so we took a little.

look at that chart and said, where do you want to be? Let's go. And immediately, I think maybe two days later, one of my guys in Dallas, Texas, who's kind of had his foot in a different career, he's been one of our star salespeople, so we don't lose him, makes a million dollars a year for the company. He's got his foot in the acting world, and it's going okay. He's been on some commercials, those kinds of things. He calls me and he says, we're moving to Nashville. And why? He goes, I want to be around this company. I saw those blanks. And I just, just realize I want to be there. I want to be at the top someday. My guide director, who we just moved to the content department, I said, where do you want to go? And she looked me in the eye,

Ken, and she said, I want your job. And I said, bring it over. Fantastic. We're moving her up. Yeah, it's fantastic. But if you don't show those past to people, they don't get excited, they don't know. And here's the other thing, you've got to tell the truth. That's right. You know, so I've had people come and say, I want that job. And I had to say, I don't think you're qualified for that. I don't think you're ever, you're not wired that way. But what about this? And they go, ooh, I didn't think about that. That's right. It's right. It's so true. People want to see a ladder. They do. They want to know that if they do a good job and earn it. They're going to have a chance to grab hold of another rung and get up there and just keep climbing. Every, if you show them a ladder,

climb the commas, and every comma they climb past makes you more money as the owner. Everybody wins. Yep. Everybody wins. Good stuff. Don Miller. Thanks for hanging out with this. It's always a pleasure, man. Thanks. Big thanks to Don for hanging out with us as always. Well, I told you that we were going to cram a lot of information in your head, and that's what we do. Thank you for hanging with us because you've got a lot to do, so go do it. On behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Hey, folks, I want to make sure that you're aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions.

Here's a sample of the Chris Hogan Show. I am so excited to be able to talk to you all week in and week out. We're going to talk about your money, your life, your dreams, and your goals. You know why? Because I'm your coach. Whether we're talking about building wealth, paying off your home early, investing, paying for college, and guess what, how to become an everyday millionaire. We're going to focus on taking your calls because you matter to me. Together, we can do this. This is the Chris Hogan Show. If you'd like to hear full episodes, just search the Chris Hogan Show in Apple Podcasts, or go to Chris Hogan 3,000. 60.com.