Episode 725: Can Delegation Become a Form of Procrastination?

 Part two of Kiera’s delegation episodes (listen to part one here).

The art of delegation is complex enough that Kiera’s flipping the coin for those who already excel at delegation … enough for it to become a hindrance. Kiera ponders this question and urges listeners to engage in answering this question. Want to make your argument for either side? Email Kiera at [email protected]. 

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Transcript:

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0:00:07.5 Kiera Dent: Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast. I'm your host Kiera Dent, and I had this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep. We don't just understand you, we are you. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental. And I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast.

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0:00:50.1 Kiera Dent: Hello Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and alrighty, I'm excited for part two of delegation and I always hate when podcasters split their episodes, but I did this one intentionally for two reasons. One, because I wanted the people who don't delegate to have an entire episode dedicated to them. And then the people who maybe delegate as a form of procrastination, secondary delegators, I wanted them to have a podcast dedicated to them. So when you guys are searching for this, there's two sides to this coin. And also as you grow to be an exceptional delegator, to have part two of delegation to then check yourself to see, is delegation a form of procrastination? So I'm excited. If you did not hear part one where I actually have you guys go through an exercise with me of why don't you delegate? What are those limiting beliefs? I really help you just hone in on that. Be sure to go check out that episode 'cause this is part two to part one.

0:01:44.3 Kiera Dent: I'll be referring back to that one. But I really just wanted you guys to know that's why I did it. I wanted both parties, both sides of the camp to be equally represented and equally given their opportunities to be able to grow and to evolve because I had never thought about delegation as procrastination. Before we get started, as always, I just wanted to thank you guys for being Dental A Team listeners and if this podcast has blessed your life, if it has served you, if you have had fun with me on this journey, go leave us those five stars and share this with someone today. My goal is to get this into the hands of millions of people to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. And I finally put a number on it so I can start tracking and measuring and I can't do that alone.

0:02:26.0 Kiera Dent: I can provide the content, I can make sure I'm delivering for you guys. I can give you opportunities to give me podcast topics you want me to podcast about, but I can't share this with all your friends, with your family, with your colleagues, with your dental buddies. And so I'm asking you today to share this with 1, 2, 3, 4 or five people that you know that could benefit, if you know they're building a practice, if you know they've been in practice ownership for a while, if you know they're a new office manager, if they're a team member wanting to become a more advanced team member. Those are the people to share this podcast with because they're the hungry podcast junkies with me that genuinely want to expand and evolve themselves. So please do me a favor. Leave those Google reviews, leave those five star reviews on whatever platform you're listening to and share it with 1, 2, 3, 4 or five people.

0:03:12.3 Kiera Dent: And for any of you who share it with five people, you better email me [email protected] and who knows, good things come to those who serve, to those who provide value in this world. And I just wanna say thank you truly. So with that, let's go into the other side of delegation. The side of, is delegation a form of procrastination? Now, I just did a whole podcast episode of explaining why we need to delegate, why we need to be, I say working at the top of our degree. My husband had that [laughter], his boss was really wise and he told him one day, he said, "Jason, you need to be working at the top of your license. Don't be doing these things that someone else who doesn't have as high of a license as you do could be doing." And I thought that was such a beautiful thing that I thought about is, are people working at the top of their licenses? Are dentists working at the top of their licenses or are they doing tasks that a personal assistant or an office manager could be doing?

0:04:03.0 Kiera Dent: Are hygienists working at the top of their license while still being great team members? Are dental assistants working at the top of their licenses, are [0:04:10.5] ____ EDAs and EFDAs working at the top of their licenses? Dentists, if you've got EDAs and EFDAs, let them be free. Let them work at the top of their degree, their license because they're super equipped. And if we let people work at the top of their licenses and hire other people, you get more productivity. You get maximized efforts and making sure the tasks are equipped to the person who's there. So something to think about. Always, always. We do not ever delegate or say we are above those, but just making sure that we're optimizing and maximizing every person at the top of their license. So on that note though, I was cleaning my house the other day. Really, I was putting things away, because I hadn't put away stuff.

0:04:52.1 Kiera Dent: And I thought about it and I was thinking, oh you know, I'll just email Shelby to do this, this and this. And I've become a pretty good delegator. I realize I need to be free, I need to do these things. I realize as a CEO, one of the number one things I can do is actually have quiet time, to have space to think and create ideas. Honest to goodness, these great ideas don't come usually while I'm doing coaching calls and I'm booked eight to five. I need to build blocks of quiet time. I call it my white noise time. I just need time where my brain can think. That is me working at the top of my position. I am a CEO, I'm a business leader, I'm a visionary and I need time to have those ideas come. I'm not a task doer, I'm not a task creator. I can do those things. But for me to be working at the top of my position, I need that time. So I was thinking about it. And again, that's truth, right? That is true.

0:05:43.8 Kiera Dent: CEOs, visionaries, we need that quiet time. We need to not always be nose to the grindstone doing task like crazy. You need to have that shut off time. But with that said, I started thinking about it and how many, many times do I pass a task? So again, I don't actually have this one solved. This is more for you guys. This is you and me having a conversation and it's gonna be a back and forth. It's a healthy debate. Five dysfunctions of a team. We have hopefully great trust between the two of us. And I'm now doing a healthy debate with you. Can delegation become a form of procrastination? Can we delegate tasks that would actually be easier for us to do if we just did them rather than sending it? For example, I thought okay, I need to put this task in Clickup, which is our project management software. There's Trello, there's Asana, you name it, Clickup is a similar one to it. It's very advanced. I don't know if I'd recommend it.

0:06:38.5 Kiera Dent: If your practice is pretty elite and advanced and you've got some pretty tech savvy people, rock on, it's absolutely amazing. If you're not and you just wanna get started, Asana, I do miss it. It was so simple. Monday.com is another simple easy one. But back on track. I thought, okay, I've got this task, let me just forward it over to Shelby and have her do it. Or I was getting ready to send Shelby an email the other day to say, hey, can you email this person this, this and this? And I was writing out the email to the person for her to send it. And I thought, has delegation become a procrastination piece for me? Because I've become so good at delegating that it actually has become a form of me procrastinating. Why not just send the email, I'm crafting it to Shelby, I'm sending it to her. Why not just do it? Now the flip side of that, and again, I don't have this solely solved, you guys are going through, these are Kiera's internal thoughts, which is why this is part two of can there be too much delegation? Can there?

0:07:40.3 Kiera Dent: I don't actually know. So this is where I hope in teams, I hope I get so many emails on this. I hope I get so many DMS on social media on this. I hope this is one of my most heated conversations. I hope our Facebook group is blowing up on this one. I hope my elite practices, my platinum practices are just going back and forth 'cause these are the kind of conversations I like to have in our platinum group. We have a platinum mastermind that we put on every single month and this is like the after hour party with Kiera. And these are usually the conversations that I have with the team or the doctors on that one. That's a doctor only one. So can delegation become a form of procrastination or is it something of like, no, the reason I would send that to Shelby instead of just sending the email myself is because I know that there will be follow-up pieces associated with it that it actually would make more sense for me to delegate it to Shelby. Therefore I don't need to do all the follow-up and it is something she could do.

0:08:34.8 Kiera Dent: That way I can be doing a lot of other things that Shelby can't do. It was a question in a pondering 'cause I always think like, okay perfect, so I'm gonna put this here, I'm gonna do this at this time. I'm gonna delegate this to this person. And this is where I think we get funny on delegation. And again, like I said, I don't have a solid answer. I don't know because one side of me says, I've got like two little angels sitting on either side of me today of, yes Kiera, delegation can be a form of procrastination. You should absolutely just do these tasks, get them done. It's so much faster for you just to do them. The other side is Kiera, absolutely not. Yes, you could do all these things but if you constantly do all these tasks, you're never able to be free. You're never able to empower someone else and you're always gonna be stuck doing a million tasks and never be able to be free. Split down the middle. Two different sides. So what is it?

0:09:24.8 Kiera Dent: Is it a form of procrastination? Is it something that allows us to think we're getting a ton of things done but we're just delegating, delegating, delegating, that nothing ever actually gets done. Something to think about, something to question. And it could just come down to, no, it's not. Because if we delegate and we practice it and it's becoming a practice for us to delegate, it's actually not procrastination because at the end of the day, all those tasks that have been delegated, all those tasks that we've been able to move along actually free us up with time to give us the time to do those deep work projects that we actually don't ever spend time doing. Instead we spend it on all these different tasks that we think are so simple, so easy. I hear often, "Kiera, that task is gonna take me five seconds." Just like I went on a backpacking trip and all the people had ridiculously heavy packs.

0:10:20.3 Kiera Dent: Guys, I heard a quote once that said there are those who pack a light and there are those who wish they would have. There are those who delegate and there are those who wish they would have. Maybe that's my new quote for you guys. But with that, the people I was backpacking with, I'm like, how are your packs so high? Like, so heavy? I don't understand. And they're like, oh Kiera. So I started actually looking through their packs. This is who I am, these were good friends. And I'm like, why do you have this? Like Kiera, it weighs practically nothing. And my husband said, pounds are made up of ounces. And I thought about that. All those little ounces make up pounds, which then make this pack so heavy. All of the things in that backpack truthfully did not weigh much. We had a little bottle of [0:11:02.8] ____ Aizen, we had a blow up pillow, we had a blow up lantern. We had three different water bottles because we were going into a place where we needed to purify water.

0:11:13.8 Kiera Dent: Again, those things individually don't weigh a lot, but cumulatively weigh a ton. Same thing with tasks. These tasks truly don't take me a long time. Me sending off an email to someone, maybe like three minutes, passing it off to Shelby probably takes me at least three freaking minutes. But it's a thought of if we can pass tasks, if we can train and elevate people, is that the better method or are we just procrastinating? I'm not here with a solid answer and I wish I was, but I feel like this is a secondary side of delegation of, can it become a form of procrastination? Because we think, oh I'll just delegate to this person. I'll just delegate to that person. I'll have them do it. And then you've got so much follow up. But there are tools, there are people, there are ways. I use Boomerang all the time. That's a big follow up. We have Clickup now, a project management software.

0:12:01.9 Kiera Dent: There's a ton of things out there that I just wanted to pose the question and I really wanna leave this open. I usually come on here and I give you a tactical and I give you a practical and I send you on your merry way. And today I'm making your minds think. And I actually wanna hear from you guys, do you believe that too much delegation is a form of procrastination? Do you believe it's a skillset of, no, consistency makes perfection. And so all those little tasks, all those little things should be delegated. And we should be in that mindset of delegating as leaders, as many tasks as we possibly can to free ourselves to have the space and the time available to then think or does it actually make us lazier? Something to think about, something to ponder. And it could become like my end all because I don't wanna leave you guys unbuttoned up on your day. I do hope you think about this one 'cause I've been thinking about it for about a week. It became my podcast topic and I thought I might come to some resolution.

0:13:00.2 Kiera Dent: But I think for me internally, I think I would rather err on the side of delegating too much to give myself this space to think of ideas because I know that that's truly my secret power. And I know my guilty pleasure is being a task master because I feel fulfilled getting those tasks done, that I'd rather delegate too many things and allow myself the space, the time and the energy. But needing to require myself to be disciplined, to not waste that time. And therefore I don't think that it would be procrastination. But I think if not channeled correctly, it can be a great way for procrastination and laziness to set in, if we don't master and discipline the time we were given by delegating tasks. And that's where I think I'm gonna leave it. But again, I am open to a million ideas on this. I hope it's again, one of my most debated, listened to, controversial podcasts I brought out there because there is no right, there is your right. But what I will say is if you're not delegating, you are keeping yourself like my friends, building heavy packs with things that don't seem like they weigh anything but ended up making lots of weight.

0:14:12.9 Kiera Dent: Just like tasks that seem like their 1, 2, 3, 4, 30 seconds, minutes, that if delegated and delegated to the appropriate channel would free you up with hours of time to work on the projects that actually matter to move the company forward rather than a small task that are urgent but not important. And that's where I'm gonna leave you guys, to ponder, to let me know. Email me, [email protected]. And if you wanna have conversations like this, if you wanna be part of our platinum group that gets together once a month and we have after part with Kiera, where we have our first ever in-person event that's exclusive to only certain practices. Because I wanna have these kind of conversations with people who truly want to push the envelope to think differently because I believe that people who think differently and execute differently are the people who have different lives of more fulfillment, more success, more profitability, happier teams, happier patients. And they do it with ease.

0:15:07.8 Kiera Dent: So if that lights your fire and that's who you wanna be, we have practices like that who challenge me, who inspire me, that I love to get on coaching calls with, that I love to have these masterminds with because I love walking away from there thinking differently because if we can challenge and change the status quo, anything is possible. It always feels impossible until it's done. And that's what I want you guys to think about. So on that note, I hope you guys have an amazing day. Reach out if you wanna be a part of that. [email protected] or go to our website and book a call. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team Podcast. And that wraps it up for another episode of The Dental A Team Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.

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