What Smart Women Get Wrong About Delegation with Emily Morgan

Most of us have tried delegation. We've handed things off, watched it fall apart, and quietly decided it's more trouble than it's worth. Emily Morgan has spent nearly 20 years studying exactly why that happens and what the people who actually crack it are doing differently.

Emily is the founder of Delegate Solutions, a fractional executive assistant company, and author of Let It Go (2nd Edition, out July 23rd). She brings real frameworks to this conversation, not just the mindset piece, but a full system for figuring out what only you should be doing, what's draining you that doesn't have to, and how to actually hand things off in a way that sticks. I walked away from this one with a few things I'm changing immediately.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why delegation keeps failing and what the people who actually crack it are doing differently
• The four-quadrant Delegate Freedom Analysis, including what Emily calls the "suck bucket" and the "martyr zone"
• The "Act Your Wage" exercise that puts a real dollar amount on every task you're holding onto
• Why the people on your team actually want to be delegated to
• What tasks people think are "too personal" to outsource and why that thinking is costing you

Connect with Emily
Website: www.delegatesolutions.com
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/delegatesolutions
Facebook: www.facebook.com/DelegateSolutions
Sister company: www.learnwithverve.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right, friends, I can't wait for you guys to meet Emily today. We're going to be talking about a topic that is hard for some people to hear, but it's so important, myself included, which is all around delegation. So if you have a friend that you feel like is struggling to let go of some stuff, you definitely want to make sure that you share today's episode with them. Emily has been in this space around like really mastering delegation long before the whole world knew about virtual assistance. And she brings actual systems and frameworks to this topic, which is why I love it so much. Her new book, Let It Go, just came out. Now, when we had our conversation, I will tell you what I learned so much. And I walked away from this conversation with a very different way of thinking about how to identify what in my life is a great candidate for delegation. So let's go ahead and jump in. Welcome to the Work Life Harmony Podcast. Guess what? You don't have to feel constantly overwhelmed, exhausted, and stressed out. There is another way. When you have the right systems and tools to plan and manage your time, you can live a life of harmony. If you're ready to stop feeling overwhelmed, this is the show for you. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Work Life Harmony Podcast. I am thrilled to have our guest Emily on today because we're going to be tackling something that sounds so easy and beautiful on paper. But when push comes to shove, I know it's something I struggle with, which is maybe letting go of control and actually being really good at delegating. True delegating, meaning you're not micromanaging and checking in every 30 seconds. So, Emily, welcome to the show. I'd love for you to introduce yourself, tell our listeners about you, and then we are going to dive in really to a discussion around how we can stop being that bottleneck, or as I like to refer to myself, the control freak, how we can break that habit to actually start delegating so much better.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Yeah. Well, thank you for having me. I am part of your audience. So it's great to be here. My background is I founded Delegate Solutions in 2007. That's a fractional executive admin company. And about 15 years in, I wrote a book on delegation called Let It Go. It brings together delegation frameworks and a system and just almost 20 years of experience working alongside entrepreneurs and leadership teams that are really struggling with letting go. And we took that content and we turned it into a training and development company called Verve, which offers workshops, coaching, and certification in our content. And I spend my days writing and I'm also a lavender farmer. So I have a big lavender farm here in New Jersey when I'm not running those other two businesses.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

I love when you when you said that women have a hard time letting go. I instantly, as a mom, felt Elsa singing in my house the let it go song. I'm sure that you hear that quite a bit. I think women know intrinsically that we need to let some things go, right? We need to delegate stuff, we need to get things off of our plate. But in the moment or even out of the moment, we still end up doing everything ourselves. I know I personally fall in the trap often of being like, it's just easier, right? It's just easier. I don't have the time to do all of that. So let's start with that and really think about what's going on between that gap of knowing we need to delegate, but then actually getting into action to do so.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

A lot of this is tied to our self-worth and to our identity. And we see this across men, across women, at various leadership roles. I think it's a universal truth that especially for women who are high achieving, they have become successful because they've managed to hold it all together. They've managed to keep the balls from falling. And so when someone's telling them you need to let go, they're just hearing, like, well, you're telling me I have to stop being who I am, right? And so what is the work that needs to happen from a mindset perspective to help you start viewing delegation as an energy management system and being able to identify the best use of your time so that you're not doing all the things, but you're doing the things you're supposed to be doing really well, the things that only you can do. I feel like we could just end right there.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

You've said so many powerful things. When you said it's really about energy management, can you dive into that a little bit? What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yeah, I think that that's a really positive mindset shift that we can all make professionally, personally, with delegation, because a lot of the times we're told we need to delegate, we're we're told we're not good at it. We've we've tried, it's failed. We throw up our hands, we're like, I stink at this. I don't want to do this. This just creates more work for me. But when you can shift your mindset away from delegation being something you're supposed to do and reframing that thought around this is a way that I can help manage my energy. And at the end of the day, my energy is the most important thing that I bring to my family, my work, my personal life. Then it just becomes an affirming way to think about it, which is a great first step.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

The way you phrase that, it's like we're separating this sense of worth and purpose around that I'm holding on to everything to know I'm protecting my actual energy. And I've never thought about that relationship in inside of delegation. I know that's how I got over the hump of actually honoring my personal time for myself was along that energy management line. I've never thought about it from a delegation perspective. That's really powerful. So for the person that is struggling to delegate, I know you've talked about the fact that there are a lot of hidden costs of being stuck in that place where we're not delegating. What does it look like for someone when they are being that bottleneck around delegation where they are not willing to let go? What does that kind of look like day-to-day life? What does it feel like?

SPEAKER_00 6:20

I think for your listeners, if if, you know, the there, there's five bottleneck behaviors that I teach in the book. And at any phase of those, it likely doesn't show up as chaos on the outside. Like these women are strong, put together, handling their business, handling their family. Nothing's falling through the cracks. But what's actually happening inside is that we're creating ourselves to become a single point of failure because we are at the center of everything. And so at some point, there's just an opportunity where that falls apart. And that can become like almost an identity crisis, right? Because you're known for holding it all together, striving, putting great things out into the world. But if you're not looking at how your energy is being used and you're creating these bottlenecks around you, you're really not able to build a foundation of a team. You're not able to utilize personal resources like nannies, housekeepers, things like that, because it's become part of your identity to hang on to those things because you think no one can do it as well as you can.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

So true. And even when you talk about nannies and housekeepers, I know, you know, early on in my life there was that feeling of if I did that tied back to your self-worth, right? This was a sign that I wasn't capable enough, right? If I had to get that outside help. And I think there's still some stigma around that with a lot of people as well. One of the things that I so appreciate about your work is that you have frameworks and systems. It's not just this, oh, well, just, you know, outsource this or just quote, let it go, which sounds so simple on paper, right? So let's say someone's listening right now and they're see, they're hearing themselves in this, they're recognizing that, yeah, you know what, maybe I don't want to be that single point of failure. I think that's a really smart way to think about it. Um, your work talks a lot about, you know, the mindset, which we've touched on a little bit here around the self-worth, but then also habits and systems all working together. So how do those pieces all kind of combined together? Because I think for a lot of people, they're like, oh, I'll just follow the step-by-step system, but without all of it working together, they wonder why they continue to not be very successful with it.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

100%. And that's why we teach, we're gonna start with the mindset first. And that's the first third of my book is we look at the backstories, the self-sabotaging thoughts, the limiting beliefs that we bring to the table just by who raised us or what we've had to overcome in our lives. And we all have them, but until we get really clear on what the best use of our time is, that's no delegation should happen until you're clear on that piece. So, step one, we're we're addressing our mindset, we're looking at what maybe is holding us back from doing this well. Then we're going to start looking at what the best use of our time is. And so one of the exercises that we teach, which you may be familiar with, we call it ideal day. And so just writing what your ideal day looks like, what you're spending your time on, what is your most impactful contribution with your time and energy, and getting clear on that. And then when you have that picture, you can compare that against the day you're currently living, and you can do this over and over again to get closer and closer to your ideal day. But it gives you a vision of what is your most impactful contribution and what you want to be spending your time on. And then it gives you a lens so you can see all the things you're doing that are not that. So that's really where we start.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

So I want to talk a little bit more about this ideal day, because I think for a lot, like when someone tells me, Megan, what's your ideal day? I go to fantasyland. Like, well, I wake up on the, you know, somewhere in Greece overlooking the water, and someone brings me, like, okay, my that's not ever going to be, well, who knows, but most likely not going to be my reality a year from now. How do we craft or think about an ideal day under the lens of not fantasy land, but our life and some of the obligations, you know, responsibilities that we have? How can we kind of marry those two without going way overboard to something unrealistic?

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yes, that isn't a vacation dream day. We're just talking about day in and day out. You know, what do you want to be spending your time on? Our time and our energy are the two things that we can control. And so if we're really clear, the most impactful use of my time. So I'll give you my example. Awesome. Most most impactful use of my time is creating, connecting, collaborating, and learning, right? So, how can you simplify what those things are and make sure you're doing those things in your day? So there's some exercises at the end of the chap, the early chapters in my book where you can kind of work through that process. From there, I would take those four criteria and like make sure I'm doing those things each day or as much as I can across my week because it brings me energy, it brings me joy, it's things that only I can do, and it's things that I like doing.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

When we think about that ideal day, I know in my life, I kind of think of two buckets of my time. So there's my ideal day for when I'm working here as the CEO of the Pink B. And then there's my ideal day in my home in family life. Do you marry the two together, or do you have people thinking about maybe those different roles that they play a little bit differently, or is it the same process?

SPEAKER_00 11:56

When I teach it, my ideal day is like I wake up, I go for a walk, I have a fresh smoothie. I this was when my son was young, but I take my son to school, right? So like I want to be showing up in certain ways of my life. So taking my son to school is not something I would normally delegate because it brings me joy and I want to spend my time doing that. Then I go into my work day. So I'm sitting down, I'm going onto a podcast, I'm collaborating with a peer on a new idea that we have. I'm writing an article for ink or something like that. And then I move into after work. Okay, after work, I am taking my son to the park. We're going to get an ice cream, like that kind of thing where perfect. You can visualize it, you know?

SPEAKER_01 12:42

And I notice when you're describing your ideal day, what's not in there is the, and then I'm cleaning up the breakfast dishes, and then I'm starting a load of laundry. And I think maybe that's where some of those nuances start to come to light of seeing where so much of our time is going that maybe doesn't have to be us at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Yes, I mean, adulting is is what is what it is, right? We all have to do adulting. But within that, there's a lot of opportunity for delegation. But we always say start with your goals, start with the vision of your ideal day and be really clear on the best use of your time. And then it just really re gives you a whole new perspective on where you can start delegating.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

I love that. So for anyone listening that is, whether they're running their own business or part of a team at work, right? For anyone working outside of the home, if they're in a leadership position, which is usually where there's a lot of opportunity for delegation, what patterns do you see with teams where they have a leader that actually starts delegating versus being in an environment with a leader that doesn't delegate? I'm sure there's probably some big differences between those two environments.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Definitely. We talked in the beginning about being the single point of failure. So are you the single point of failure in your company is another lens to look at this under. But when we run workshops, we'll do workshops with emerging leaders. And one of the biggest things that they say is that they want to be delegated to because it creates opportunity for them to learn and grow. And so, as CEOs, as leaders, for us to keep that in our mind that, you know, a lot of people are like, I don't want to delegate because I don't want to dump this on this person. But first of all, it might be something they like. Like I've run a team of executive assistants for forever and they love scheduling. They love inbox, they love doing personal talking. Okay, did you just say they love inbox?

SPEAKER_01 14:40

I think people need to hear that. Like there are people out there who really do love that kind of work. Because I think people believe nobody wants it, right? If they don't like it, they think everybody's gonna hate it.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

That's exactly right. So it's it's a lot of just like doing the mental work around, okay, first of all, we all have 24 hours in a day, right? So let's say we get clear on what we want to spend our time on. We now see all the things we're doing that are not that. Another exercise you can run if you need more data is take your annual salary, divide it by 2080, get your hourly wage, and then we run something called act your wage, right? So are the things that you're doing that dollar amount of work, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Yeah, and that 2080, where's that number coming from?

SPEAKER_00 15:27

That's like 40 hours, 40 hour, okay. 50 weeks, I think.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

It's like if you have employees, 2080 is the number kind of the average number, perfect.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Yeah, I love that. It's something I've thought of before, especially as running your own business, right? When you really start adding up, how many hours do you actually work? Because for a lot of business owners in particular, they're working way more than that sometimes, versus how you're paying yourself. It helps see what things you should should stop doing, be doing more of, et cetera, when we can put that hourly rate on it. And I think for home life as well, that exercise you talked about is really important. I know I've read some interesting studies, and the number ranges depending upon what city we live in here in the States. But when you add up all of the typical, I call it COO household work, the cooking, the cleaning, the caregiving, the errands, the scheduling, the form management, all of that, the studies are showing that if you were to outsource all of those, this is equivalent to a salary that's around $200,000 a year. And this is typically unpaid labor, right? But I think when women, if they are in that position, if they understand this is the value of the work I'm doing, we get to look at it very, very differently as well, instead of it just feeling, you know, insignificant or something that we shouldn't say. Hey, you know what? Actually, I would like to protect my energy and get rid of some of this. This is what this looks like financially, everything that we're juggling. So I love that exercise. I think it's awesome. What would you say to someone at home who is maybe struggling to delegate? Because the dynamics are just different. Like if you're a if you're a leader in a work environment, I feel like it can be easier to delegate because that's kind of expected. It's part of your job. Maybe you're a supervisor versus a household environment where there's a certain harmonious world that we want to have in our homes with our partners, with our children, et cetera. Any suggestions on kind of having that conversation around delegation there?

SPEAKER_00 17:37

The theories transcend, right? And so if I think where you're leaning into is in a relationship with a partner talking about the best use of both of everyone's time and what is the vision that you want for your day. I know there was an exercise I did years ago where I wrote down a history of what my time looked like five years out, right? So I wrote down like I'm in a healthy, happy relationship. I'm doing X, Y, and Z. And five years later, I found that letter. And it was like my life that I had visualized five years before. And just being able to visualize that exercise really helped me manifest that. So I think this this is sort of a conversation that you would have across partners at home about the best use of each other's time and energy.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

But yeah, it can be. And I love how you brought that five-year vision. I feel like that's similar to that ideal day, but now we're projecting it out, you know, even farther down the road of what would that look like? So for folks that are listening and they're thinking, okay, yes, whether it's work, whether it's home, I'm ready to stop being that single point of failure, what would be the first like step one, step two that they could actually put into place today? Obviously, getting your book being one of them. But outside of that, what is something they could start getting into action on like now to start removing themselves from being that single point of failure?

SPEAKER_00 19:13

So one of the things you can start doing today is just starting to take an account of how you're spending your time, right? That's easy to do. Keep a counter. And like, so in the book, there's an exercise called the delegate freedom analysis. So let's say you do it for a week or two. You can take that information and lay it out in it's a pie chart with four categories. So we're gonna start in the top left corner and we're gonna think about what are the things I want to spend my time on. We talked about most impactful contribution. Then we're gonna drop down to the bottom right quadrant and we call that the suck bucket. These are the things I hate doing and I'm not good at, and I'm spending laundry. Laundry's one for me too. Oh yeah. I'm really good at getting it like two-thirds of the way done. And then we move over to the bottom left quadrant and we call that the martyr zone. So I would imagine a lot of women are here, right? We're doing this begrudgingly. We we don't like it, but we're kind of good at it. And then we go up to the to the top right quadrant and we call that the letting go of excellent quadrant. So these are the activities that our identities are tied to. We're really good at it. We kind of like doing it. It's still not the best use of our time. And so that's a really tricky quadrant to work through. Yeah. If you take the bottom two and you do some math, let's say you find 25 hours down there, multiply that across your actor wage number and get real with that number. And then as you look at some of those things, you know, ask yourself, does this require me? Like, what is am I doing this more than once? That's another thing we teach in delegation is look for the repeatables. So things you're doing over and over again can become a process and hand it off to someone.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Is there one of the quadrants that people typically start zeroing in on first for delegation? I'm wondering, is it the martyr or the other one? The suck bucket, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

The button, the suck bucket at the bottom right. Because that's just like you don't like it, you're not good at it, just get it off your plate because it's journeying your energy.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

And would the martyr bucket come next, the one where you're doing it? Because maybe you're good at it, but you absolutely it doesn't have to be you and you do not enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Yeah. And so look for the repeatables within there. Like, let's say it's paying the bills every month or ordering groceries or something. Like, what is the process to do that? How can you automate that, hand that off? I know at delegate solutions, we do tons of personal work for people. So don't get stuck into this idea that you can't delegate your personal tasks to an assistant because it's part of our world world of work.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

What are some of the examples of The stuff that people might think, no, no, no, it's too personal. Someone can't do that for me. What are some of those that you guys typically see?

SPEAKER_00 22:07

Doctors' appointments, calling and dealing with insurance issues, registering kids for camp, ordering grocery delivery every week. Like there's so much opportunity there that people get stuck. Oh, it's not a professional task. It doesn't matter. At least in my company, we don't care. We're we're human focused. So what are the things we're trying to get off your plate?

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Oh, I love that so much. Cause it's funny, even every single one of those that you mentioned would be the first things I think of. Well, I can't possibly outsource that. I think to your point, we think of the traditional, oh, I could outsource cleaning because there are businesses that are just cleaning businesses or things like that that don't feel quite so personal. So for anyone listening that's interested in like, oh, what would this look like to work with an assistant, the the company that you have? Tell us a little bit about that. How does that work?

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Sure. So we're a fractional EA business. Our team's here in the States, and we start at one to two hours a day providing executive assistant services. We work in small teams where you get a strategist and an implementer. They work together to create a very robust support structure. We build a delegation strategy that's unique to you, and the team executes on that, and we can refresh that every 90 days. But we work with mostly entrepreneurs and small business owners. So that's been our space for 20 years.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

And is this all done virtually? This does not need to be a physical person in your city. 100%. Oh, that's amazing. And what is the website? Where can people go to learn about that? Delegatesolutions.com. Okay, awesome. And we'll put links to that in the show notes for everyone as well. I cannot thank you enough for being here today, Emily. I think what really hit home for me is this idea of single point of failure, because I think about that from a work perspective often, but I don't always think about it outside of work. And so I know that's where I'm going to be kind of reframing that in my head of where am I, that single point of failure. And I'm definitely going to do that pie chart challenge. I have a feeling I have too many things in the martyr box that I probably need to start chipping away at. Thank you again for being here. It was such a pleasure. Likewise. And the book comes out July 23rd. July 23rd. And name of the book. Let it go, second edition. Okay, we will have links to that as well. And when everybody orders it, especially if you currently have or have had a young daughter in your house, please channel your inner Elsa. Feel free to melt it out with our Let It Goes. Thanks so much, Emily. Getting on top of all things, time management, organization, and productivity doesn't have to stop just because this episode is over. If you are feeling overwhelmed, your calendar's out of control, or you're just running in a race that will never end in terms of your to-do list, I have great news for you. I have an app in both the App Store and Google Play called the Pink Bee. And it is chopped full of small but incredibly powerful trainings to help you get out of overwhelm. It includes my signature Ditch the Overwhelm training and introduction to my time management framework built specifically for women. So open up either your App Store or Google Play, do a search on the word The Pink Bee, all one word, and download the app to get started today.