13 Delegation: Level 1

Feeling behind isn’t always about your calendar, sometimes it’s about leverage. We open part one of our three-part series on delegation by focusing on level one delegation or "task assigning." Instead of trying to do everything yourself, we show you how to pass off repeatable, low-risk work without sacrificing quality. You’ll learn a simple assignment formula—do X, using Y, by Z—that creates instant clarity, how to define “done,” set realistic deadlines, and align on quality standards. We share practical examples you can hand off this week.

We also tackle the typical objection that keeps high performers stuck in busywork. If you’ve ever said, “It’s faster if I do it,” we break down the math that proves the opposite over time.  With templates, checklists, and short Loom videos, you turn one-off instructions into reusable systems that speed every future delegation.

By the end, you’ll have a clear playbook to start today. This is how you move from bottleneck to builder freeing your hours for strategy, deep work, and relationships all while growing your team’s capacity.  If this helped, please subscribe, leave a quick review, and share this episode with a friend who needs to free up their time.

Ink & Imprint Books - https://inkandimprintbooks.com/

Bookshop - Bookshop.org (Select Ink & Imprint Books as your store)

Buy Back Your Time - https://www.buybackyourtime.com/

Loom - Loom.com

Blinn Bates - BlinnBates.com

Woods & Bates, P.C. - Woodsandbates.com

Right Fit Evaluator: https://blinnbates.com/right-fit-evaluator

Transcript

Series Setup: Delegation Level One

Why Delegation Multiplies Impact

What Task Assigning Really Means

What To Delegate First

The Clear Assignment Formula

Define Done And Set Standards

Midpoint Check-Ins And Feedback

Beating The “I’ll Just Do It” Trap

The 25-Hour Annual Payoff

One Task Challenge And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Welcome back. Do you feel overwhelmed behind? Like you're constantly putting out fires? There's a pretty good chance you're not going to have a time problem. You have a leverage problem. Today I want to start our part one of a three-part series on delegation. I'm starting with level one, which is going to be what we're going to call task assigning. There's a really good book I read at one point, and it's called Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell, and he talks about some of this delegation theory in that book. He covers a lot of other important topics in that book, and I would highly recommend reading that if you're a business leader. I will put a link in the show notes to that book. I'm also going to put in a shameless plug for my wife's bookstore here in Lincoln, Illinois, Ink and Imprint Book, 125 North Kickapoo. She has a copy of that in the bookstore. If you're local, if you're not local, you can support that bookstore at bookshop.org. You can buy that book on that website and you can select Ink and Imprint Book as your local bookstore to support. So we appreciate you doing that. I will put all that in the show notes also. But this book talks about delegation. Dan is big on delegation. I'm big on delegation. I think that's how high-performing professionals are going to multiply their impact because the reality is we can't scale our results if it's just us. It's just our time and our energy. There's only 24 hours in a day. I would strongly suggest that you shouldn't be using all of them to try to scale your business. Delegation is what's going to create this leverage and it's going to allow us to move forward even when we're doing something else. So we want to be doing what is the highest and best use of our time. And if we're doing everything, we are becoming the bottleneck and we're also becoming the barrier to the growth of ourselves and our business. So what is task assigning delegation? This is what I would say is level one. This is basic delegation in its simplest form. What you're going to do is you're going to assign the task, somebody else is going to complete it. That's it. You're still going to be the one that defines what needs to be done. You're still going to be explaining how to do that task. You're going to be checking the work. You're going to be the one that's owning the outcome. So we are not necessarily handing off responsibility at this level one. That's going to come later on. We're handing off the execution of the task. So why does this matter? This is one of the fastest ways that I can think of that you can reduce your overload. You can clear your plate of these tasks that are lower level tasks, not the highest and best use of your time. Stop doing work that you repetitively do on a consistent basis that somebody else can do and free up your time for these higher value tasks, decisions, strategy, things like that. So we want you to be engaging in leadership, relationship building, deep work, strategy, like I said. And even some of these small delegations can create big relief for your calendar so that you can do the things that bring you joy that you're built to do. So we're going to focus in this level of delegation on tasks that are highly repeatable, things that happen weekly or daily. These could be admin routines, checklists, follow-ups. They're pretty low risk. It's not going to create a disaster if it's only 90% perfect. And these are great for building trust and momentum and working on that delegation muscle. So we're going to start getting into the habit of delegating. These tasks can be time consuming, but they're not necessarily very high value. They take your time, but they don't necessarily require your expertise. So, you know, we could be talking about file creation, copying documents, scanning documents, scheduling and calendar coordination. That's something that drives me nuts is emailing back and forth, trying to find a time to have an appointment or have a meeting. That's something that really grinds my gears. Routine emails, formatting documents, creating checklists, gathering information, compiling notes, pre-written content, maybe posting that, follow-up reminders, data entry, file organization. These are pretty easy to define. So they're going to the delegation is going to look like I want you to do X using Y by Z time. Okay. Deadlines are really important. We want to make sure that we have a deadline on the task. And we want to make sure that we agree on those deadlines also. We want to make them reasonable. You know, if I'm assigning a task that should take two hours, I can't reasonably say I want this back to me in an hour. So we want to agree on those deadlines with the person that we're delegating to. And I think the rule of thumb here is for all the perfectionists out there, if someone can do it 80% as well as you can, you should delegate it. So how am I going to be able to assign these well? One of the things we want to do is we want to define what does done look like and when is it due? So this is how this should look when it's done. And initially, we can provide the how. Maybe we have a template that we use. Maybe we have an example of something we've used to do the task before. We have a checklist that needs to be gone through to make sure the task is done correctly. Perhaps there's a short instructional video we can record. I have a program I use that's called Loom. Had a lot of success with that. You can record your screen, show yourself doing the task, maybe five-minute video. People can replay that. They don't have to ask you questions. It's a great program. But we want to define what the success looks like. What's the quality standard? You know, I expect there's not going to be typos. What's the length? What's the detail expectations? And at first, I'm going to suggest that you set a check-in to review this and not wait until the deadline to do that. Maybe pick a midpoint and say, let's check in on such and such a date, make sure that we're on the right track here at first. And then we're going to confirm that it's completed, give any feedback that may be necessary so that we can improve that process for the next time and continue to get better and better at delegating that task or having the person that's doing that task get better at it. So we're not just dumping this on them. We're leading, we're showing them the way and showing them how it should be done so that they can do it the best way possible. And then that's going to free us up to do our highest and best work. Common objection: it's faster if I just do it myself. I don't have time to delegate it. That is true in the moment, but that thinking is what's going to keep you trapped, also. There is certainly a short-term cost of teaching someone else to do something, but there is an extremely long-term payoff. And that is the freedom of not having to do it. So just for example, if I have a 30-minute task every week and I do it every week, I do it the same way every week. And it's something that I could delegate, but I just haven't done it because I know it's probably going to take me an hour and a half to teach somebody else how to do that. That's a long time. You know, it's only going to take me 30 minutes to do. So why would I spend an hour and a half teaching someone else? Well, here's the deal. If you do the math on that and you take a 50-week year, a 30-minute task every week, if I spend 90 minutes teaching someone else to do it and I don't have to do it anymore, I've just netted myself about 25 hours in that year. That's a lot. That's a lot of time. So take that over a lot of tasks, and you're going to regain a lot of time by doing this delegation. So today I want to challenge you, pick one task that you're doing that somebody else could do. Write out what it looks like to have that task done. One, two sentences, assign that task this week, and set a check-in date. I guarantee you, when you start doing this, you're going to start doing it more because it's going to free you up to do the things that you enjoy doing. Now, in the next episode, we're going to talk about level two delegation. And this is where we start delegating outcomes, not just tasks. So we're going to level up next week. Look forward to hearing stories about what you've done this week. And when you do this, you're building leverage and leading with intention. And that's how we're going to maximize our time and elevate our life.