15 Delegation: Level 3

Stop being the bottleneck and start building leaders who move work without you. Today we break down how to shift from delegating tasks and outcomes to delegating decisions so your team acts with judgment, reduces interruptions, and keeps momentum even without you. If decision fatigue is draining your energy and approvals clog your day, this strategy gives you back focus and creates a culture of ownership.

We start by clarifying the three levels of delegation and why Level Three—decision delegation—is the highest form of leverage. You’ll hear how trust, clear values, and visible standards guide choices when you’re not in the room. We also tackle common fears like "What if they mess it up?" and "What if they leave after you invest?" 

You’ll leave with one clear assignment: pick a category you’re clinging to, grant authority with boundaries, and set a weekly review to build confidence. The result is fewer pings, less context switching, and a team that scales your impact instead of waiting for permission.

If this epsiode helps you reclaim time and clarity, please follow the show, share it with a leader who needs it, and leave a quick review telling us the first decision you’ll delegate this week.

Blinn Bates - BlinnBates.com

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

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

Transcript

Levels One And Two Recap

Defining Level Three Delegation

Reducing Decision Fatigue And Bottlenecks

Trust, Values, And Standards

Boundaries, Escalation, And Feedback

Coaching Judgment Without Punishing Mistakes

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Welcome back. If you want to grow, lead, and scale your impact in your business, you have to stop being the person who makes every decision. I know that's difficult, but today we're going to be talking about level three delegation. And this is decision delegation. This is the highest form of leverage that you can get. So we've had two prior podcasts. We talked about levels one and levels two. Level one delegation is where you're delegating tasks. You're telling someone, here's what you need to do, go do that. And then level two delegation, the next highest level is delegating outcomes. So you're telling someone, this is what I need the outcome to be. Here's what it looks like to be complete. Here's what it looks like to be successful. Need you to go out and figure out how to do that. They're still reporting back to you, checking in, doing those things. But then level three delegation is the highest level. That's going to change everything for you because you are delegating decision making. So you are delegating authority. This is when you're going to empower somebody to make those decisions on your behalf, solve problems, handle issues, move work forward without you needing to be the gatekeeper or the person that makes every single decision. This is the point where the team stops asking for permission and they start acting with judgment, with common sense and learned decision making. And you're going to have to train them on that, which we'll get into. I know for me, at the end of a busy day, I have decision fatigue. I've made so many decisions at that day. I get home and maybe my wife says, What do you want for dinner? And it's like, I don't know. I can't make any more decisions. I've been making decisions all day. Just bread and water is fine. Just give me something. But delegating that decision making is hopefully going to help reduce your interruptions, reduce that decision fatigue, reduce your approval requests, your mental clutter that you're dealing with day in and day out, and some of the context switching that you're having to do, which gets you out of your flow. It gets you out of what you're doing, and then you have to get back into that. And that can be really, really disruptive. Hopefully and ultimately, this is going to create a team that can operate and improve without you being there, without you being the bottleneck. Your goal is to not be needed for everything. Your goal should be to build something that runs well because you led it well and you built it up to run without you. So this requires several things. It's going to require that the people around you have trust in you, and vice versa. You're going to have to build that trust, and you're going to build that through the level one and level two delegation that we talked about getting to this level. You want to have clear values. People need to know what's guiding your decisions, things like that. Maybe you have a mission, maybe you have a vision. Those things need to be made clear and they need to be exemplified by you. Your standards are what they're going to look to. So what good looks like for you is what they're going to look to for what good looks like for them. And also, you need to set some boundaries still. You know, there may be some things they can decide, some things they shouldn't decide without input. Some of these things may still require escalation. You definitely are still going to need to have some feedback here. So this isn't going to be automatic. You're not automatically going to be able to delegate decision making and have it be done the way that you want it done. You're going to have to review decisions, coach those decisions, maybe help refine the judgment. And we're not going to want to punish mistakes here necessarily because mistakes are going to happen. You're not just delegating these decisions. We're hopefully building people that are decision makers on their own. It's that whole teach a man how to fish principle where we're going to help them learn how to do these things and how to think and how to make these decisions. So, how do I do this? Okay, so we're going to start small. We're going to say, you know, I need you to make this decision for me. And then when you've made a decision, why don't you come to me and ask me before you take action? So this is kind of a bridge from the level one and the level two into the level three. And then maybe from there, once we get comfortable, we're going to say, I need you to do this. Bring me some options and your recommendation. And that's going to help us get to the point of saying, okay, I need you to go handle this. But let me know after you've done so. Maybe that's a quick Team's message that says this is taken care of, or whatever the case may be. Maybe they carbon copy you on an email so that you can see this taken care of. And then, you know, at a high level, once you get to that point of trust and competence, handle this, and that's it. That's all you need to do. Maybe they let you know even better, maybe they don't have to. So the goal of this is to move people up towards independence and away from relying on you to make judgments and make decisions. Biggest common fear in this is what if they mess it up? Well, it's gonna happen. People are not going to make the same decisions that you would necessarily make. But if you never delegate these decisions, you are definitely going to stay overwhelmed. Team is going to stay dependent upon you, and your growth is going to stay limited. So, in my opinion, the better approach is to work at this and delegate decisions gradually and get people up to the level where you want them, and starting with low-risk decisions, coaching them up, helping them make these decisions, and eventually getting to the point where they're making those decisions on their own. I think that kind of goes back to the old uh premise of, you know, if you spend all this time, what if they leave? Well, what if you don't and they stay? So we want to help people become independent. And the short-term discomfort is going to create some of our long-term freedom, if you will. So today I want you to choose one category of decision that you're holding on to that someone else could own. Give them the authority, let them decide, maybe have them check with you before there's an ultimate decision and start moving yourself up this ladder to get them to independence. Maybe review this weekly, build confidence, build their judgment. This type of delegation is leadership leverage. That's how you're going to be able to scale because again, you only have 24 hours in a day. So level one gives you back your time, level two gives some more capacity. This level three, this is going to allow you to scale. All of these levels, in my opinion, are useful at any given time. So just because you've gotten to level three doesn't mean you're not going to have some level one delegation in your life. Also, I think the gurus want you to believe that once you're at level three, that's the only delegation you should be doing. And to a certain extent, that should be maybe with some people, but that doesn't mean you're not going to have to go back occasionally and do some level one task delegation when you get into new things, different things, training people to do new things, new people coming in. So we're going to use all of these levels all the time to leverage our time and grow our business. But ultimately, what we want to do is we want to be building leaders, not people that are dependent upon us. That's how we're going to maximize our time and elevate our life.