Welcome to Friday 411, issue #135. In 4 minutes, with 1 insight and 1 action, you’ll discover the three signs that it’s time to delegate something.
1 Insight
I (Garland) am a Thanksgiving Scrooge.
There, I said it. I love the food. I love the family time. I even love the slow pace of the day. But I do not love the cleanup. Making the meal is fun. Cleaning up the aftermath feels like punishment.
The Problem with Thanksgiving
If there is one thing we Vances excel at, it is making messes. Thanksgiving day is our Grand Showcase of Mayhem. Pots bubble on every burner. Bowls stack up like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Every dish needs another spatula, another mixing bowl, another pan. The chaos builds faster than a forming cyclone. By noon, it looks like a food storm hit our kitchen.
After all of that work comes the payoff. The turkey, dressing, sweet potato casserole, and, my personal favorite, corn pudding.
Then comes the food coma. The Dallas Cowboys start playing. I’m a big Cowboys fan, which means that, ever since the 90’s, watching puts me in a foul mood. At least the potatoes didn’t fumble.
But after the game, while the tryptophan still lingers, reality hits: every pan, platter, and spoon we used earlier is still dirty. I’d rather watch the Cowboys lose again than to clean up the kitchen.
That’s the moment when I turn into a full-blown Thanksgiving curmudgeon.
The Breaking Point
A few years ago, Dorothy and I finally asked, “How do we make Thanksgiving more… enjoyable?” We brainstormed all kinds of ideas. Paper plates. Smaller menu. Cook everything the day before. But none of that fixed the real problem. The dread of cleaning always buried the joy of cooking. It stole the day.
So we did something different. We delegated Thanksgiving.
We found a restaurant where we could pick up the whole prepared meal—turkey, green beans, dressing, sweet potatoes, pecan pie. All of it. We kept two dishes we enjoy making, and everything else went to someone else.
It was the best Thanksgiving we ever had. We set the table and ate until we couldn’t see straight. We loaded the dishwasher once. We laughed instead of scrubbing pans. It was magic—because we delegated Thanksgiving.
That’s the lesson for you as a leader. There are moments when the smartest move is to hand something off. There is a lot you need to get off your plate.
How You Know It’s Time to Hand Something Off
There are three signs it’s time to delegate:
1. You feel overwhelmed.
Your shoulders tighten. Your mind drags. You dread starting. That sense of overwhelm indicates that you might not be the right person for this responsibility.
2. You procrastinate.
As the book, Who, Not How, states, “Procrastination is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when you really want something more for yourself, but you lack the knowledge and the capability to do it.”
3. You recognize that someone else can do it better, faster, cheaper, or easier.
Or some mix of all four.
When a task creates those types of feelings, you’re no longer the best person for it. Someone on your team—or someone on Upwork, Fiverr, or even AI—can often do it better than you and in a fraction of the time.
As a leader, your job is not always to do the task. Your job is to make sure the task gets done with excellence. Your responsibility is to define the outcome, find the right person, and let them own the work.
Why Delegation Matters
We’ve found that leaders often don’t delegate because they feel guilty about giving someone else work to do. We get it. But your refusal to delegate robs your team of the highest impact you can have on them.
At the root of delegation is a Capacity issue. In Unleashed Leadership, we share seven issues that hold you back from your greatest impact: Character, Competence, Capacity, Clarity, Community, Culture, and Consistency.
Capacity is all about your time, energy, and attention. Leadership takes a lot of all three. When you stay stuck doing work that overwhelms you—or work you avoid—you lose the time you need to lead your people well.
The fastest way to free up Capacity is simple: delegate something today.
If you want a quick guide that shows you how, take a look at this short post:
How to Delegate Effectively in Less Than 15 Minutes
By the way, this year we discovered a spot that makes a fried turkey. We didn’t even blink. We delegated it faster than the Cowboys can fumble.
1 Action
Choose one task you’ve been putting off and give it to someone who can eventually do it better than you.