She’s That Founder
132 | How Female Founders Delegate High-Stakes Tasks Without Losing Sleep (Using DiSC + AI Pattern Recognition)
Your delegation process didn't fail because your team member was incompetent. It failed because you gave them the wrong instructions.
Hey, hey, hey. You're listening to She's That Founder, the show that helps ambitious women stop drowning in decisions and start owning their CEO seat with a little AI magic.
I'm Dawn Andrews, and today we're talking about why your delegation attempts keep failing and how to fix it without becoming a micromanager. So I know that opening line stings because you're already drowning or you wouldn't need to delegate. The way that you're trying to delegate, and someone might have just botched the thing that you finally trusted them with, but here is the pattern that I see Everywhere. You delegate something important, they miss the mark, you grab it back, or worse, you redo it yourself. And now you look like a micromanager. They feel like a failure. And you've confirmed your worst fear. It's faster to do it yourself.
So you stop delegating and you become the bottleneck. Let me tell you about Janet. She has full hiring authority in her department, unlimited budget. Her boss shared there is carte blanche for her to hire whoever she needs. Two years later, zero hires. Why? Because she can't predict what instructions someone needs to succeed.
They're placing all the weight on hiring great people, great qualifications, great recommendations, et cetera. But rather than risk redoing the cycle, she stays in protectionist mode doing the work of three people and drowning. So here's what you're getting today, the framework that shows you why competent people keep missing the mark.
It's an instruction mismatch, not incompetence. I'll share the AI diagnostic that figures out what went wrong so you can fix it. And the prediction system that tells you what instruction someone needs before you delegate to reduce the redos and the risk emissions. So I am in a quarterly check-in with Janet and her business partners.
One partner's frustrated. I can't catch up. There are too many things going on. Then the other partner says there's carte blanche for her to hire whoever she needs, her area is critically important. I'm concerned about the amount of responsibility she has
without having a full and proper organization to execute against it. So I ask, how many people has Janet hired in the last two years? Zero. She hasn't brought anyone new into the company. So here's what's really happening.
Soften your hearts as you hear this. Janet does not know what instructions someone needs to succeed. So every time she imagines, delegating, she pictures, giving them the explanation that she would want. And when she imagines them doing it differently, she assumes they'll do it wrong. So the delegation never happens.
It just goes around in a circle and here's what most founders miss. You think the question is, can I trust them? And it's not the right question. The real question is, have I given them instructions that match how their brain processes information and aligns with what the company needs? Most delegation failures aren't competence problems.
Their instruction mismatch problems. You're speaking Greek, they're hearing Mandarin. And then you're both confused about why nothing got done, right. We know that delegation failures are not competence problems because you're hiring extraordinary people. You've reviewed their resumes, you've sent them through tests and projects, throughout the hiring process.
You are hiring good people. So let's address what you can do to be able to give them better instructions. So this is a story about another one of my clients, Maria. She had a brilliant COO who kept botching client onboarding with their team, missing steps, forgetting key parts of the welcome sequence.
Maria was super frustrated. She's like, I don't understand. She's good. She has the experience. Why does she keep messing this up? I asked, did you explain to her why the onboarding matters? Well, no, she's a COO. She should know that onboarding is important and of course it is.
But here's what I found out. The COO thought that onboarding was administrative busy work. It was like checking off the paperwork boxes, making sure things were signed. She had no idea that for Maria, it was the core of her client retention strategy, that the 60% referral rate that Maria got for her company and for her business came directly from that onboarding experience. So Maria sent one message. This onboarding sequence is how we create raving fans who refer to us 60% of the time.
When we nail this, we don't need outbound sales, we don't need to up our marketing spend. When we miss this, we lose six figures. That's what's at stake. Her COO's performance transformed her. The performance of her COO and her team transformed almost overnight. Same person, same skillset, same task, but different instructions.
So the takeaway here is that competence without context creates mediocre execution. So here's the framework. Most people need one of these three instruction styles. They need a detailed process, instruction style.
One, a detailed process. Here are the seven steps in order. Here's what good looks like at each stage. Here's what not to do. Those folks need a roadmap and without it, they freeze or they make it to a certain step and fall off the stages.
The second instruction style that people might need are outcome and autonomy. Here's success, here's the deadline. Go. These people resent detailed steps. They want the destination, not the directions, and they need the creativity to move within those parameters.
And then the third instruction style that someone might need is outcome, context and check-ins. Here's what we're accomplishing and why. Here's what success looks like. When done well, here's success and let's check in on Thursday. They need the why and the availability, not micromanagement, but not abandonment.
So the problem, you're giving all three of these types of people the same instructions in the style that you'd want. So I'm curious, do you recognize yourself in one of those three styles? Because if that's the case, you might be failing at 70% of your delegations before your team even gets started on them.
And this is why Janet is. Frozen with hiring. She needs a detailed process and precision. When she imagines explaining something, she pictures breaking down her 47 step process, then she imagines them skipping the steps, and in her mind, that's failure, but here's what she's missing. Not everyone needs those 47 steps.
Some people would thrive if she gave them the outcome and got out of their way. So the question isn't, will they mess it up? It's what instructions do they need to succeed? So how do you figure that out? Here's what you do. So this is a diagnostic that I use called the Delegation Failure Diagnostic, and you can use Chat, GPT, Claude Gemini, whatever your LLM is.
Here's the prompt I delegated. The task in as much detail as you can. Share it to the person and give your LLMA name, whether it's their name or not. Here's what I told them. And then paste the instructions as clearly as you could. Remember them into the prompt. And here's what went wrong.
Describe the outcome. Where did they miss the mark? And then ask, this is the last part of the prompt. Tell me? What instruction style did I use? What style did this person likely need, and how should I re-explain this to match their processing style and include an acknowledgement of what we did before and how we're doing it differently. Hit send and then in 90 seconds it will show you the gap in what you did say and did do that got you the results that didn't work, and what you need to say next to get the results you want.
Here's a real example. A client delegated social media with instructions post three times a week, keep it on brand. And the team member kept asking, should I post this? Is this okay? What about this caption? What about this photo?
And meanwhile, my client is losing it. Why can't she just decide? She's asking me. Diagnostic AI told us you used outcome and autonomy, but this person needs outcome, context and check-ins. They need structure around decision making authority.
So we created a framework, decide on your own, create that daily content following brand voice, positive comments, scheduling, uh. Then escalate anything controversial, crisis situations, partnerships over 5K, and then the questions dropped from 15 per week to two. Same person, same task, different instructions.
So here's what you can do pre delegation. So if it hasn't already gone off the rails yet, here's something that you can do to prepare to delegate. Here's a prompt for you. I am delegating the task in as much detail as you can share to the person with a name based on how they work. And then describe their patterns.
Do they like to work quickly? Do they like to work autonomously? Do they ask you a lot of questions? So based on how they work and describe their patterns, what instruction style do they need, create. One. Instructions tailored to their style. Two, a decision framework, and three, a check-in cadence, and then hit send.
This prompt is CEO level strategy. You're diagnosing first and delegating second. But here's the thing. These prompts help you fix mismatches after they happen. But if you want to predict success, before you delegate, skip the trial and error entirely. You need to map communication styles across your team.
So we're going like a step deeper now a little bit deeper into how your team operates, and that's what the DISC profile does. So y'all know probably from listening to the podcast, I'm a DISC certified provider, and I use it across teams on multiple levels, in sales, in product, to help resolve conflict, and most especially with high performing leaders.
So when I introduced Janet to this framework, we mapped her style. She was high results focused, high precision and control. It makes her excellent at crisis management, quality control, and optimization. It makes her not so great at people development and relationship building. I asked, what roles do you need to hire for to fill out your team with strength?
Her answer, someone who can do what I do, and I can appreciate that. I mean, my God, wouldn't, we all love to clone ourselves, but unfortunately that's not quite the right answer because what she really needed was an operations person. An operations person who loves. Maintaining systems finds comfort and consistency.
This is a great compliment to her strengths. She needs a client relationship person who runs on human connection. Again, a compliment to her strengths, and she needs a sales person who closes fast without getting bogged down. None of those people work like Janet, and that is the point. But here's the breakthrough.
Once Janet understands what instructions each person would need, she wasn't scared anymore. She wasn't thinking, will they mess it up? She was thinking the ops person needs my detailed process. I can give them that. The relationship person needs context and autonomy, and I can share that.
Or I can create it with them, and the salesperson needs outcomes and deadlines, and I totally got this. Suddenly we were over the hump of hiring. It was no longer terrifying. It became predictable, she also let go because she wasn't trying to make sure that she was hiring a cloned version of herself.
She was hiring collaborators. She was truly hiring team members that played complimentary, but different roles on the team from her. So this is what I want for you. This is why I'm sharing this episode today. Not, I hope this works, but I know what this person needs to succeed and I'm setting them up for it.
That is the difference between delegation anxiety and delegation confidence. So, hey, if you realized you've been giving everyone the same instructions, grab the feedback Fix at hellodawn.live/feedbackfix. It's free and shows you how to adjust your delegation instructions after something goes wrong and how to diagnose the mismatch and fix it.
Even the right person will fail if your instructions don't match how their brain works. Grab the Feedback Fix at hellodawn.live/feedbackfix.
All right, let's wrap it up. My lovely. Here's your quick recap. Why do delegation attempts fail? They fail because of instruction. Mismatch, not incompetence. You've already hired great people. You're giving them instructions that you'd want, not what they need. Here are the three instruction styles.
A detailed process, like a step-by-step roadmap, outcome, and autonomy, which is the destination only, and they figure out the how or outcome. Context and check in wins. So why it's important and availability of your time to check in with them. And then here are the two AI tools. We talked about the failure diagnostic, so you can figure out what went wrong and what they need, or the pre delegation setup so you can figure out custom instructions for that person before you even hand it over.
And then finally, the prediction system, the disc assessments, the DISC leadership assessments map, communication styles, so you know what instruction each person needs before you delegate. So here's your action step. Think about your last delegation, wipe out, run the AI diagnostic, figure out what they actually need, and then try again with adjusted instructions.
to be clear, that whole process takes about two and a half minutes. So it is worth the investment of time because that same person will succeed when you speak their language. Okay? If you wanna predict success before you delegate, not just fix mistakes after, that's when you sign up for the disc.
Deep dive with me. It's a 90 minute private session where we map your communication style, your leadership style, and how it creates bottlenecks. We assess your team styles, and then we build custom delegation frameworks for each person. We create decision making structures so that they stop asking you a million questions and it pays for itself.
Week one, when you reclaim up to 10 hours, that could be a huge number in billing capacity for you. So you can book a call with me to see if this is right for you at hello don live slash disc. So the feedback fix helps you learn from mistakes. This disc deep dive helps you avoid them entirely, and that's reactive versus strategic delegation.
And wouldn't we all like to be more strategic? So real talk. Janet's not unique. Most founders stay in protectionist mode because they can't predict what people need, but the question was never can I trust them to do what I need them to do. It's have I given them the instructions that match how their brain works?
That's delegation confidence, not delegation. Hope.
All right, lovey, it's time for this to get a whole lot easier. So grab those prompts. Take some time to think about your people and give it a test drive this week. Can't wait to meet you up at the next episode.
Talk to you later, lovey.
