Audio transcript:
How can delegation redefine leadership and team performance? We're going to dive into that specific topic in today's episode.(...) My name is Zee. And I'm Rich. Today, we're excited to bring you some insights on what's sure to be an impactful episode today around delegation secrets for leadership success. Delegation isn't just assigning tasks. It's also a strategic skill in order to be able to facilitate and empower growth and empowerment. Yeah, thank you, Rich. And again, this is an episode that we are going to specifically talk about in our theme around either new leaders into leadership or leaders who have been in leadership and maybe are going back into it once again. There is something for everybody in this episode, but I love the word empowerment because I was just looking at you right now and going, "Man, do you feel empowered with that mighty beard that you have growing there, sir?" Yeah, I took a chance. I took a chance. Now I'm empowered by the beard, I guess you could say. It's funny because we were in a meeting the other day and then everybody was looking and they're like, "Wait, is that Zee's double game?"
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They're hanging around each other so much, we're morphing into each other. There we go. That's so creepy.(...) But I love this topic, speaking of delegation, is that this is a topic in a common,
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I would say struggle for a lot of new leaders or leaders going back into it after a while because you're so focused on your work and delivering good results. A lot of stuff is maybe working on your own or doing it yourself and trying to prove yourself. But once you're at that level, it changes completely because you cannot continue that route. As we all have learned, even in leadership, it's going to backfire very quickly or you're going to learn quickly that you can't do it all yourself. And your team will not grow either, your stagnating growth. So there's a lot that happens, but there's a lot of common questions or misconceptions or things that leaders say early enough or tell themselves that avoid some from delegating or makes it feel like it's an impossible task. As we're learning in a lot of our episodes, there's really nothing is impossible. You can work on it, you can't improve on it, you have to shift that mindset,(...) but it is truly possible. But speaking of a guest today, we do have a guest and we thought about, "Hey, who would be someone here at Insight that has a lot of functions, honestly?" I think a lot of leaders do. They're dealing not only with internal teammates, but also now they're dealing with clients, external teammates, not only our clients, but also our partners.(...) And who better than our very own Jeff Fine, who is an expert when it comes to our partner and management and alliance here at Insight, specifically managing the Intel account. So with that, Jeff, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Of course. Thank you for saying yes, first of all. Hey. For those who don't know you outside of Insight, can you give us a little bit more about your role and what you do for us here? Sure. Yeah, I've been with Insight for coming up on 20 years.
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I've managed a lot of different teams within those years. A lot was on the sales side. I did that for about 12 years or so, and then it kind of took the leap over into the partner management side about five years ago, where I've managed a bunch of different partners.
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Had the beauty and the ability to kind of take on the Intel relationship, which has been absolutely fantastic for about a year and a half now.(...) Got a fantastic team. The nice part is every team that I've been a part of has been awesome. I've really had the luxury of being a part of some really, really amazing teams, which has kind of helped me in my development as a leader.
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Hopefully, looking back at it and the people that I've worked with or have worked for me have grown within that time. Yeah. We were talking about earlier about now, you're almost close to that double-decade club then, right? Double-decade club. It's coming up to it soon. That's amazing.
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Let me go back a little bit more before we go into the questions.
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The thing that I love about our leaders and our teammates here, they all have a story and a journey. You have quite a few years now with Insight.
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Tell us about your first role here at Insight and how does that transform you until today? How did that make you Jeff Fine, who is today? You want me to go all the way back? Yeah. All the way back.
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I started as an account executive, right? I was dialing for dollars, went into a sales coaching role from there, which was kind of my first foray of quote-unquote leadership. Really having to be helping others deliver development.
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Then I got an opportunity to go into an SMB manager. I think that's where it really started.
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One, the love of development, that's a big thing for me. I really enjoy watching people get bigger and stronger and continue to be successful.
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I felt like that was one of the big leadership roles for me was, "All right, what do I want to do? I want to get there and I can't do it without my team." That's big. That's kind of what I wanted to bring that up because again, your journey was not, "Hey, come on in. You're going to manage a team. You're going to go right into this." You started as, "Hey, I'm here to prove myself. I want to develop a book of business. I want to learn the ropes." You probably had to work really hard and really prove yourself, but then once you got to that next level, you're like, "Okay, this is different." It's a different type of approach and really found the value of development, right? It is a mindset shift for sure. A lot of mistakes, I imagine, learned along the way. Absolutely. If you go from an individual contributor to a leader, it's a lot different. It is a lot different. Yeah, but it's awesome. Now, another quick question is, when you joined inside, was this your first corporate job at a college or did you work for previous organizations leading up to that? I did work for a couple of previous organizations when I first got out of college, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was moving around, did some outside sales stuff,(...) but then found this organization through a friend of mine that joined the company a few years earlier. To be honest, I regret every minute not coming over when he did. Okay.(...) I had to let you finish your sentence like, "What?"(...) Going the other way with that. Yeah, I regretted every day of my life. Nope, nope, nope, the other way around. No, that's good. Awesome. Well, yeah, real quick, another common thing we're noticing is that development, right?(...) Once you get into that leadership role or position, it's that loving to develop others. I love for that. Yeah, and I think it does help though, right? Let's talk about this real quick before we go into the next few questions is that if you're joined a leader who doesn't value that and doesn't give you that, it's going to be hard for you to transition into that role and learn the hard way. But if you have a leader who really embodies that, who gives you that, who openly talks about and gives you the opportunities, you see the value and you want to pay it forward to your team. Yeah. Here's the outline, here's what we're going to discuss today. First of all, what's the foundation or the set the stone about what delegation is? Second, how do we inspire commitment? Because there's going to be some pushback. I think we all been there. I don't have time. This is too much. I'm overwhelmed. I don't, you know, whatever excuses we make or whatever we say, or even more importantly, people start to think like you're punning on the easy to work on me, right? And the last one is encourage growth. You know, how does this encourage growth in the long end? So we'll start with the first one, Jeff.
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How do you start off when you're when you're in a leadership role and you're in this new mindset now that you can't do it all yourself?(...) How do you create that clarity initially with your team when you start to delegate? Because as soon as you tell somebody to do something, they're going to be thinking, you don't want to do it. You're giving me the work. How do you set the tone and create that clarity with your team in the beginning? I mean, I think it's it's all about communication, right? It would definitely need to make sure that they understand the vision. They understand the clarity of what we've trying to get accomplished as a team.
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And then you really need to determine the why, right?(...) It's really important for them to understand why we're doing this, why I'm asking or why somebody else is asking us to go do the things that we need to do.(...) And then for me as a leader, it's important that I am determining what is the right things to delegate, right? I mean, it going back to what you said earlier in regards to kind of starting out and going from that individual contributor to a leadership role, you learn that very quickly. Like, you can't do it all by yourself, right? But you want to because it's, you know, sometimes it's quote unquote easier. Yep. Right. Let me just get it done. But but when the most successful leaders are the ones that are be able to delegate the right activities, right, so that you can go do the other stuff to make sure that we all kind of meet back at the end. And then we have a successful project or whatever it is we're working on. Right. So it's very much a why.
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Let let communication. Yep, for sure. Yeah. And to your point, how do you ensure your team, you know, understands and embraces that bigger picture of the tasks that they have, how it all incorporates itself?(...) Collaboration. Collaboration. Yeah, I mean, again, it's it always is going to come back to that communication, making sure that that you're putting the message out there in front of everybody so that you have everybody rowing in the same direction, right? It seems only as good as our weakest link. So for me, for going back to the development discussion earlier was I want to make sure that we're giving everybody the right stuff and making sure that you look at the team and say, all right, where's the where's the strengths of the team and really try to figure out how to leverage those? Because sometimes, you know, we might have to delegate something that could be easy to do. But if somebody is really good at it, would it be done more successful? Yeah. Or vice versa? It's a balance. I mean, you're already you're already adding that layer of complexity, right? The first part is doing it right is understanding I can't do it alone. I have a team. Let's let's go ahead and work together. It's a collaboration.(...) The why is it can it can vary, but it ultimately is hey, we have a goal as a team. In order for us to get there, we need to like all pitch in and do do what we need to do right and get involved and participate in the process to get us to that goal. Then the next layer that I just heard you say is now as a leader, we have to be strategic of who we delegate or what we delegate to who, right? Because here in this is true. I love I want to be real in these podcasts, right? Is that a lot of times what I'm hearing, especially in today's work environment, is that people are seeing that when we delegate something when we assign somebody for to somebody, but we keep going to that person over and over again, they're going to stop working hard and going, hey, I'm getting rewarded for all this great work that I'm doing. I feel like I'm getting punished because I keep coming to me and nobody else is getting these opportunities. So we have to be mindful as leaders to be careful with always going to our, you know, a performers or our, you know, top performers or whatever you want to call it because it could be demotivating if we keep doing that for both for everybody in the team. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Because I hear that quite a bit happening in various different aspects. Absolutely. I mean, you got to be careful with that, right? I mean, because you're going to go to the person that you trust the most, right? And that tends to be what happens.
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But you also want to make sure that you're not overloading, right? It's important that they see it as what it's a development. It's a skill. What are we trying to do? Why am I delegating this, right?
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Because I'm trying to make you better at this or I'm trying to get more of that, right?
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You definitely got to kind of walk on that fine line just to make sure that you don't overload the person because it's easy to do. It's really easy to do. So you want to make sure that you're being cautious of that for sure.(...) Yeah. Yeah. And that actually leads itself to our next topic, you know,(...) commitment and motivation, right? Like, how do you inspire that commitment within your team and how do you make sure you're assigning tasks that align with somebody's motivation? How do you do that effectively?
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I mean, it goes back to the connection meetings that we have, right? And we've got to make sure that we're talking to our team, right? I want to make sure that I have got that one-on-one bond with my group.
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It's important. I've done it all my career.(...) I've always been kind of known as that player's coach, right? I really love having fun. I think that we get the most out of people when we're enjoying what we're doing.
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But at the same time, while I'm trying to make sure that that's the environment that we have, I want to understand where the strengths and weaknesses of the team are. Because if I get the opportunity to build my own team where I get to hire, I want to make sure that I can have everybody have a different flavor, right? I don't need all of the same team of everybody that can do the same thing, right? I need the more we'll get better as a team, you know, if we have everybody kind of owning a different piece of it. Yeah. Different strengths, leveraging those strengths. Yeah. Absolutely.
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I'm glad you brought up the connection process because just for those who are listening to us and not don't know what that is. I mean, you probably have an idea about the name, but that's the term that we use for our one-on-ones. But also, it's the term that we use for our performance management, but our way that we measure performance with our team regarding instead of doing annual reviews or by yearly reviews, our connection meetings are those opportunities that we talk to our teammates and talk about how they're doing in their tasks or goals, right? But also their development, you know, are you getting development that you need? What do you want to work on? Where do you see yourself in the future? And then, of course, from there, I also just talk about what are some things that can help you overcome our challenges, right? There's so much that happens in that connection meeting, but it's not just a typical one-on-one. How are you doing? Good. Anything you need? No. I'm okay. Bye.
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And you're really connecting with a call back to a word that you said earlier is if a leader only goes to that one teammate that they trust because they can trust them doing the work, why don't you trust your other teammates? What's going on there? And how can you start building that trust with them, right? And guess what? The connection meeting is a great place to do it. And I mean, what is that? What are your thoughts on that regarding using the connection meetings or regarding building that trust? Yeah. I mean, I think that's huge, right? That's where we're going to get that one-on-one time.
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I like to have a lot of calls and a lot of meetings with my team. I mean, obviously, within reason, of course.
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But we want to make sure that they're together. You have that bigger group versus the one-on-one time, right? I think there's a lot more open dialogue you can have on a one-on-one versus a larger audience.(...) Yeah. Yeah. And you also mentioned leveraging the strengths of your team. So I would imagine in those connection meetings, you're kind of getting to know that person and what really they thrive on or what motivates them or get them energized. That's probably the biggest thing I would imagine. And I'd like to hear from your perspective of how you can keep them motivated and how you delegate those tasks.
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That's crucial for me, right? I think it's important to quickly identify what those strengths and weaknesses are and then be able to leverage it, whether it's a development plan for the weaknesses or taking advantage of the strengths.(...) I really enjoy bringing the team together and having them lead a piece of it, right? Whether it's delegating the ownership of this project or this training or whatever the case may be so that they can leverage their strength in front of the whole crew.(...) It's important for that we're all rowing in the same direction. The boat's going in the same flow.
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So we learn from each other and it also is going to help us collaborate and bring up new ideas, which is what we always are looking for. Yeah. I love that you said too that identify it's sooner than later, right? The sooner you can identify that, you know now what to target, what to consider when opportunity comes up.
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And even having those backup plans, I think we forget a lot of times as leaders that if we delegate one task to somebody and that's all we go to, what about that one time that they're sick or they move on to a new role or whatever. Now you got to train somebody from the beginning, ramp them up and it does take time. And I want to touch that as well as an excuse that we give ourselves is like, I'd rather do it myself or I'd rather have rich to it because we get it quick. If I'll take time and develop, somebody's going to take time and whatever. Well, if you don't develop that bench or develop that, it's going to make it more. Have you experienced that before? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, all that. Yeah. That runs through my mind a lot, right? I'm always looking for who's going to replace me. It sounds kind of weird, but you know, if I'm, if I'm going to move up or if I'm going to go in a different direction, whatever the case may be, whatever, wherever the world takes me is I want to make sure that my bench is being developed. I want to know who that next, the next person up is that, that, you know, we're doing a lot of cross training. We try to do that as much as we can. You know, so we can have the go to is it doesn't have to just be me or it doesn't have to be just one member of my team. It's, it's definitely, we can go to anybody and kind of get the same answer. Yeah. I love the cross train developing everybody's skills for again, done necessarily that they may end up taking a role, but they can go to a different role that they can take those skills and apply them for something else. Yeah. The analogy used about coaching, man, I see that I always picture this when it comes to delegating as well, is that the best coaches in any sport, isn't it? Don't you find it interesting when the up and coming new coach gets hired into a team the first time they coach, but they say, Hey, you're part of this school, the Lombardi school or the, you know, whatever that could school. I mean, there's lists and lists, right? It's so cool that it's like, there's this philosophy of this kind of, Hey, this, they've been, they've been effective. They know what they're doing. They've been well trained that there'll be a great addition to have us, you know, lead our next team to the next championship. It's the coaching tree, right? I mean, that we've all probably had leaders that we've enjoyed and we've learned a ton from, and there's others that, that maybe what didn't connect. Uh, I, I definitely try to be the one that I connect well with everybody. Yeah. And that's, that's my ultimate goal. Uh, it doesn't always happen, you know, over the years, there's, I'm sure there's somebody out there that says, Oh, he was terrible, but, uh, I, uh, you know, I strive to be the best, the, you know, the best person I can be for, for my team. Cause it's not about me. It's not about us as leaders. It's about the team, right? I mean, it's the better the team is everything else comes with it. And it's just like, you knew the next question was coming.
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We're not perfect as leaders, man. We're going to make mistakes. We're going to, there's going to be some situations where we didn't connect well with somebody or maybe looking back, there could have been some other stuff we could have done, right? But it's that constant learning. So I think the follow-up question is how do you yourself, I know that you're learning from imperfections or, you know, from mistakes, but how do you encourage your team to learn through those? Because when you delegate them a task, let's be honest, it's the first time doing it. There are going to be some mistakes along the way, some hiccups, like how do you navigate or encourage your team through those challenges? Yeah. I mean, I think the goal is to make sure that your instructions are well laid out. Right? I mean, if once you've, you've delegated that task, whatever it may be, and you're giving them the right path of the right instructions as to what we need to do to be successful, doesn't always mean you will be. So I try to push everybody that I've been a part of to stretch yourself. Right? You learn from those mistakes. Like that, that's crucial. If you don't make them the mistakes, you're just kind of doing the same thing over and over again, right? I think to me, it's, it's really important that, that we go and stretch out. Now we don't want to make huge, crucial mistakes, but it's all with relative, right? We want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to, to make the right the right leaps and balances to, to move forward. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like you're fostering that learning and that innovative culture, like very effectively with that, you know, allowing them the freedom and the autonomy to, you know, maybe make some mistakes here, but like kind of slowly guide them, you know, where you want to get them to be.
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Everybody learns different, right? I mean, you gotta, you gotta figure out how everybody kind of learns.
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Easiest way for me is to, all right, let's give the length of the rope as long as I can, right? And let's, let's kind of figure out where, where everybody's stop gap is. Let's, let's just talk that too, because again, some leaders are listening to this and going, okay, that sounds great and all, but how do I know? Cause you know, again, that's the reason why I'm afraid of delegate is I'm afraid of delegate something because if it goes horribly wrong, it can be a loss of a lot of money or whatever, right? The risk is pretty high. Well, there's good news, right? Don't delegate that to the new person, right? Have some, you know, like have them earn it, like build it up. Don't just be like, Hey, rich, guess what? I'm going to put you in charge of a billion dollar account. Uh, you never dealt with them before. Good luck. Right? You're just like, okay, I'm on it.
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I'm going to make it double two billion. Right. Keep in mind progress checks, right? Yeah. Hopefully that, that is the, that's the key to, to prevent the massive mistake or, or even making mistakes, right? If you're checking periodically throughout the process, so you kind of see where we're at and you get there and you kind of still have that, uh, your thumb on the pulse. Yeah. I would say that's a big one as well. And another one too, is that, you know, I mean, don't start, start having them show that build that trust with you. Right. So you want to start dealing them delegating some easier tasks or tasks that are a little more easier to accomplish, not higher risk, but they've proven that. And you know what, they've done that already. They shouldn't now. Now I'm more comfortable offering this next tier of responsibility. Right. And then to your point is those constant reports, because there could be a time where maybe you assume that they got this, they've done it, but maybe they haven't, or they're overwhelmed or they're dealing with, talk about VUCA a lot of times. So then it's really complex and big us, you know, uncertain, um, that they're, they're like studying there. Maybe they're not coming to you whenever you have to check in, you know, and be like, are you good? Like, how are we doing? I noticed that I haven't got an update yet. What was going on? Like, whoa, you know, the manager's pushing back or the teammate, the account is in responding. All right. What can we do? What can I do to help out? Right. So, um, what about for yourself? Um, Jeff, you know, at this stage, you know, you've been in your role. You've been in leadership for some time now. What are some things that you're still working on in your deli, in your development and things that, you know, are stretching you?
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Yeah. I mean, I think I'm still learning a lot. I'm far from, from, uh, where I want to be for sure. Um, I, I continue to try to push myself to be better communicator, right? I think that's still something that, you know, as much as I try really hard to do, I think it's, it's definitely one that, that I continue to get better at. Um, you know, I'm, I'm really trying to lean on my leadership to, to learn, like, where can I get mentor, um, NT type of relationships to, to better understand what I can do better. Um, you know, one of my things just from a leadership perspective is pounding my own chest sometimes it's hard. It's not something that I'm used to doing and, and some, to be honest, I'm not even comfortable doing it. Um, I just let the, the actions kind of speak for themselves, the results do. Yeah. Uh, but that's definitely one that I'm continuing and that's been a long term, uh, try to fix for me is to continue to get better at that. Cause of that, uh, episode right up, balancing, uh, competency, humility. Yeah. Yeah. You have to, you have to take the small wins. You can't, it can't just be, you know, negative, negative. It's gotta be like, Oh, Hey, I did do a good job. You know, like, yeah, go back to that. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's funny because it's like you're listening, you're like, I'm not alone, dude. You're seeing this. A lot of us kind of deal with that. And that's again, a good sign that you want others to get, you want to give the credit, you want to share it abundantly,(...) but dude, I mean, what's going to motivate you, what's going to build that fire inside of you? What's going to have you consistently seeking out new opportunities, finding a next level mentor or someone that you want to learn from it's like, it doesn't hold you back, it allows you to kind of show and plus it tells others what you're, what you're good at. Cause a lot of times people won't see it unless you share it. Um, I love that you shared that because I think that goes back to this as well is what those teammates that are struggling with the task or what have you, if you by sharing that and being open and transparent and vulnerable, it lets them know like, Hey, you know what? I need to do that too. Like I have a hard time pounding my chest sometimes. And yeah, yeah, absolutely. And as we've wrapped, we wrap up here. We want to thank Jeff finds so much for, you know, uh, you know, sharing all of your insight with us, um, you know, it's definitely been an abundance of knowledge, um, you know, any last thoughts for you? No, I mean, go to Jeff, um, Jeff, any other, you know, final thoughts or anything that we didn't cover that you would like to tools, best practices for other leaders that are up and coming or moving into a role. I mean, I think the one thing I'd probably leave everybody with is just, just reach out, don't be afraid to go and seek help from others, right? We're not, nobody's at this alone. Um, whether it's your leadership, whether it's even outside of your org, just to get another person's perspective of whatever it is that you're doing. Um, you know, the more you communicate, the more you're open with others. I think there'll be more open with you. And I think that's going to help drive better leadership. At least that's the way I look at it. That, that is like a sneak peek for one of our upcoming episodes of like finding your own board of directors, right? Your sounding boards, those, those folks that you trust, they can help you if you are stuck, right?(...) Um, if you need help or what have you, um, love that nice closing of that. And that applies to everybody, right? You don't have to be in a role of manager role to have that. You can have your own board of directors. Your colleague, you can have a peer, um, whatever that is to help you in those tough times to say, dude, I'm stuck.
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Especially if you're going into a newer leadership role. I mean, that is going to be so important for you to be successful because if you're not, you're going to learn the hard way and make a lot more mistakes.(...) And of course you'll see the results will, will, will, will kind of, you know, show themselves. Um, so for me, final thoughts is, you know, again, I think that when it comes to delegation, understanding that is difficult, but understand that you have to do it in order to be successful in order to deliver results.(...) Uh, another thing too, is that yes, if it's going to take more time for you to train somebody than you do it yourself, um, long-term that think of it like an investment, if I invest this time now, these couple hours every, every week, every other day, long-term they will then take on that task responsibility that will free you up time to do other more important things, which is your connection meetings and building and developing your team, your business. Um, so think of it as an investment long-term. So what, what, what are your highlights or your takeaway? Yeah, just that, uh, pays out the dividends, get to put it in the work. And then, you know, you reap the fruits. I think, uh, I align a lot with Jeff's philosophy, you know, developing your team, you know, you want to have a team of all stars, right? No matter if it's the A squad that's out there playing, it doesn't matter. You got everybody on the bench. You can just swap them out and still the squad still able to perform things like that. So, oh gosh, you can don't even talk with like analogies of sports, right? Cause that we can go into, I mean, um, you know, one thing I like to highlight, like Jeff, right? He has, um, he has, you know, he's proud of his kids and all that. He's got a kid playing hockey right now. I can imagine he just like constantly like seeing these things and understanding. Are you a hockey fan or before this or? Yeah, not as much as I am now.(...) To say you find a lot more. No, I think of all the sports that constantly changing lines. And it's like, when you have just one group, that's enough, but the other ones aren't so strong or not developing them. Once they get off the ice, they're going to get murdered. They're going to get destroyed on the, on there, right? On the ice. You're like, we're down by 500 points. How do we catch up now? Um, all right. Exactly. So with that, um, thank you for joining us in this episode. Hopefully you got a lot of good insights into delegation. Um, this is going to hopefully take you a step further and saying, Hey, it's going to, it's a learning progress. It's a learning curve. You're not alone. Uh, but you can definitely seek out the help. You can develop those a squad and you can actually start performing sooner than later, um, in your achieving your goals. And if you liked our content, be sure to share it with a friend, like, subscribe, and turn on your notifications for more leadership insights until next time.