Ep57: Why Your Team Still Depends on You (Even Though You've Delegated)

Hiring a team doesn't automatically create more freedom.

In fact, many founders find themselves with a growing team while still carrying the mental load of every project, every launch and every moving part of the business.

If you're constantly checking in, following up, answering questions, or feeling like everything still lands back on your shoulders, this episode is for you.

In this conversation, I share one of the biggest leadership shifts I've learnt through building businesses with both in-house and remote teams, and through helping founders grow businesses that scale beyond them.

The difference?

Delegation and ownership.

Because while delegation removes tasks from your to-do list, ownership removes responsibility from your shoulders.

When we simply delegate tasks, our team members often don't have the context, clarity or confidence to make decisions without us.

But when we intentionally create ownership, we build leaders within our business. People who understand the bigger vision, know how their role contributes to it, and can confidently take responsibility for the areas they've been entrusted with.

Inside this episode we explore:

✨ The critical difference between delegation and ownership.

✨ Why simply hiring more people won't automatically reduce your workload.

✨ How founders unintentionally keep themselves at the centre of every project.

✨ Why context, vision and clear expectations are essential for creating ownership.

✨ The leadership shift required to help team members truly step up.

✨ Why letting go of control is just as important as training your team.

✨ How ownership creates more ease, autonomy and sustainable growth for both founders and their teams.

✨ Why scaling your business requires you to evolve as a leader, not just grow your team.

Because building a business that grows beyond you isn't just about finding the right people to help you.

It's about creating an environment where other people can genuinely own parts of the business alongside you.

That's where more ease, more spaciousness and more sustainable growth begin.

If you've ever wondered why you still feel like everything depends on you, even though you've delegated, I hope this episode gives you a new perspective on what your business might really need next.

If you had a takeaway or "aha" from this episode and want to share it with your business besties and community, screenshot and share it on Instagram, tagging me at @jada.businessmentor.

💬 Let's connect!

Instagram: @jada.businessmentor
Email: jada@jadadegoey.co
Website: www.jadadegoey.co

If you're ready to grow your online business in a way that creates more profit and ease through aligned strategy, smarter systems and stronger leadership, I'd love to hear from you.

And if you've been enjoying the podcast, I'd be so grateful if you'd hit follow, leave a review and share this episode with another founder who's ready to step further into their CEO role.

Transcript

Episode 57. Welcome to the Aligned and Thriving Podcast for ambitious female entrepreneurs, where we align systems, strategies, and self. My name's Jayda. I'm your host. If you are new here, a huge, big welcome. I'm so glad you have found this podcast and me, and I look forward to sharing with you. If you are a regular here, welcome back.

I absolutely adore having you with me. This episode is around teams and growing teams in a way that is going to create more success for you, for your business, and your team so that you can grow with more ease, less frustration, and have a team that also feels really lit up alongside you. This is coming out of learnings from my own experience with teams, as well as helping other founders to bring on team members and to [00:01:00] train them This is for you whether you are at the stage where you're looking at bringing on a team for the first time soon, whether you have a small team or even a large team.

What I'm gonna talk to you about is gonna help you no matter where you're at Let's get into it

Now, I have worked in the space of having team in-house in a bricks and mortar business. I have also built business with teams who are remote, both in the country and overseas, and I have worked with other founders to help them to grow their businesses, bringing on team members and helping them to build the structures and the onboarding to have more success within their business, as well as for their business.

I also know that for a lot of people, bringing on team feels really scary and/or for a lot of people, they experience a lot of frustration around team [00:02:00] members. . And what I've really discovered through trial and error and observation is that there's a huge difference between when we are just delegating tasks to our team versus bringing them on board with the vision and helping them to take ownership, allowing them to have ownership Shifting ownership from ourselves to them, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, often with training and feedback, but it's a very big difference, delegation versus ownership, passing over ownership.

It's a huge difference for our team members, it's a huge difference for the outcomes in our business, and it's a huge difference for us as the founders. Now, when we stay in the delegation of tasks mode, this can become very frustrating for us [00:03:00] as founders, but also for our team members. Because what often happens, at the early stage especially, but also in bigger businesses with bigger teams, is that the founder just wants to get everything...

Not everything. They wanna get certain things off their desk, out of their to-do list, and they want to do that as quickly as possible so that they can move on to the other pieces. And fair enough, our attention as we grow needs to shift and move into the areas that only we can do, and we really want to, as quickly as we possibly can, delegate out, and I will use that, that word, but move out from us to other people, give ownership of areas of our business to other people who might have even higher skills in those areas, or where that's their zone of genius, or where you want to train somebody else up in particular areas that you either don't like, you aren't good at, or just aren't a good use of your time.

And [00:04:00] so we really wanna move that off our plate as quickly as possible, But when we look to pass a list of tasks to someone without proper context, and when a lot of those tasks fit within bigger projects or more moving parts, if we don't take the time to inform and share and create kind of a, that bigger picture vision of what is actually happening and where those pieces fit in, then our team members don't understand the importance.

They don't understand the ramifications of what they're doing or not doing. They don't understand, you know, the importance of those pieces and how they fit with the rest of a project or a system or a structure or a strategy or your whole entire business. So, the strongest way to get the best results for your business, for you, and for your team member is [00:05:00] to take the time to share what the bigger mission and vision is for your business So that they are really clear and they understand it and they are on board with it.

They understand how all the pieces and everything that they do on a daily basis fits into that. And then when we go smaller, when we're looking at del- delegating, passing over pieces, that we look to do that in a way where they can take ownership either for the piece that they're working on or ownership over a whole area often works in a much stronger way, even if you progress towards that.

Whether it is a smaller piece that they're taking ownership over and they understand where that piece fits in with other people's pieces, or whether they're taking on ownership over a whole area, that needs to be really explicit. We need to make sure. That we are clear around what our expectations are, what deliverables there are, what [00:06:00] ownership looks like, how we would like it delivered, when we would like it delivered.

We need to be very clear with all of those pieces, and we need to let the person know that we actually want them to take ownership. We need to be able to also then let go of ownership as the founder. Generally, we have built to a certain point and we know a lot. There is actually a really big piece that is quite tricky because oftentimes we have educated ourselves and we are so capable of doing so many parts and we know a lot about digital marketing, business growth, offer development, copywriting, because we've developed a lot of our own skills in those areas.

And so when we bring on a team member, oftentimes we need to do training to get them to the level that we would like or the way we would like it done. Absolutely

But we also need to be willing to let go of our ownership. We need to be willing for somebody [00:07:00] else to do it in their way and do it well. It might not be exactly how we would do it, but is it good? Is it aligned with the business? Is it on brand? Is it good enough? We have to be willing to let go of ownership if we want our business to be as successful as it can be, if we want to actually have more space and time, both for our lives and for the parts of the business that only we can do, and for our team members to really be able to shine.

So it's a matter of us letting go of ownership as well as being able to support our team in taking on ownership for what we're passing over. So if you think about this, I really want you to look at shifting your lens when you're looking to pass over pieces of work to a team member or multiple team members.

Are you just delegating a task? Or are you helping them to take ownership [00:08:00] over that task at the very least? Or could you bring them in to take more ownership over a whole area and support them to really grow into that area to create the true growth and space that you're looking for? 

Because that is where you're going to be able to grow with more ease, with more spaciousness, with more success We also need to let our team members really shine and step up. We need to look at where will they bring the most value to our business? How can we support them to really step up and take that ownership?

I'll never forget, brene Brown talks to this a little bit in her book, "Dare to Lead." She speaks about the importance of taking the time to set the scene, to paint the picture, to bring your team on board and get them on the same page. Because when we take the time to do that, the [00:09:00] results are so much better.

Yes, in the moment, it may take longer than just passing over a task or just telling everyone what you want them to do in a meeting, but the end result is much higher, and over time, it creates more efficiency, it creates higher quality, it creates way less frustration for you and your team, and it creates the level of autonomy that I think you probably really do want from your team.

And too many times, I see founders just getting really frustrated with their team, but when we look at it and we look at what's going on, there's a leadership issue. It's a leadership issue in how things are being passed over to the team, how the team is being trained, it is a leadership piece. So this ownership versus delegation is a part of shifting your leadership in how you lead your team, how you bring them on board, how you pass over pieces of [00:10:00] work to them, and really how you go about growing your business in a more easeful and more successful way

Just having a big team around you is not going to solve all your problems. If that team isn't the right team, that's a story for another day, that's a whole other episode. But also, even if they are the right team, even if you have hired the exact perfect roles to help you in this particular stage or going into your next stage of business, and even if those people are good, if you have just delegated parts to one person, parts to another person, parts to another, and you have not cohesively brought your team together so that they all understand who owns what, if you have not been clear about the level of ownership that you want each team member to take on, you are setting yourself up for so much frustration.

You are setting yourself up [00:11:00] for you staying the person who actually shoulders all of the mental load for a project or for your entire business. I have seen founders who have built a great team around them, but still had the sense that a whole entire launch was sitting on their shoulders, and if they didn't check things, they weren't sure if it was being done.

I've also seen founders where they are delegating and they do have a big team, but they've still got their finger on every piece of the pie, keeping a pulse on everything, so they still feel like they don't have time. They're still feeling stressed. They're still feeling overwhelmed. They're still feeling like that mental load is too much, and they're still feeling like they can't do the pieces in the business that are actually the ones that they love and are best at and are going to move the business forward.

And then at the same time, when I have a look, I can see there would be frustrations within the team members. I've totally been there, and I always strive to improve. I know [00:12:00] I've got more I can continue to improve in this area.

But what I do know is when I bring a team member in and I'm looking to remove some of my workload, I don't want to just delegate them tasks. I want them to come in and take ownership around particular areas within the business.

And yes, there will be training time. Yes, there will be correction. And yes, it can be done a different way than how I would do it

And I also know that if we bring in team members, but we still try to keep control over every area, we're not going to get the best results. We're gonna be frustrated, our team is gonna be frustrated, and you're not going to be happy with paying all this money out to only still be stressed and overloaded.

That is not what we want. [00:13:00] So, there's a very big difference between delegation and ownership. I really encourage you to have a look at how you're doing that if you have a team already, and if a team is coming up on the horizon for you, then bring this into the hiring process, the onboarding process, and as you grow and continue to pass off pieces of your business, look at the difference between it being a delegation of tasks versus creating ownership of areas

Happy building, my friends. We do not wanna do this alone. We absolutely want teams. Teams do not need to be scary. They do require us stepping up in our leadership. They do require us growing. They do require us letting go of some pieces of our business, and they do require a shift in our focus. Our job becomes very different when we are leading a team versus doing all the things ourselves.

The more your business [00:14:00] grows, the more you step into CEO, leader, visionary, strategist, and the more we have to let go and give ownership to all of the other moving operational parts of our business. That is what is required if you want that million-dollar business

And it is something that you can learn along the way. As always, if you have found something helpful in this episode or it sparked a thought or you're gonna take action, I would love to hear about it over via DM on Instagram. You can find me at jada.businessmentor, or you can leave a comment and a review on this podcast.

I would absolutely love that. But otherwise, thank you so much for tuning in, and I look forward to sharing more with you on the next episode

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