#486 Why you don't delegate (and what to do differently)

Squiggly Careers

The Squiggly Career

Management, Careers, Business

5 • 809 Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Are you always doing too much yourself? Do you struggle to let go, even when you know you should? In this episode of the Squiggly Careers Podcast, Helen and Sarah explore why so many of us don’t delegate—and what we can do differently to delegate with clarity, confidence, and collaboration. Learn how to avoid the 4 common delegation mistakes and how to give people space without leaving them stuck.

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 Welcome to The Squiggly Careers Podcast

00:48 Why You Don’t Delegate (Even When You Should)

12:55 4 Don'ts Of Delegation (And What To Do Instead)

13:15 Don’t Delegate the How

16:52 Don’t Delegate and Disappear

22:41 Don’t Do It for Them

25:06 Hybrid Approaches to Teaching & Delegating

26:25 Don’t Expect It Done Your Way

28:00 Letting Go of “Your Way” and Embracing Other Styles

🎯 What You’ll Learn

- Why delegation feels uncomfortable for even experienced leaders

- 4 delegation mistakes to avoid & what to do instead

- How to give people freedom without micromanaging

- The power of clear outcomes, expectations, and trust

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Sarah. And I'm Helen. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast. Every week we talk about a
0:08.7	different topic to do with work and share some ideas and actions to help all of us navigate
0:13.3	these squiggly careers without a bit more confidence and control. And every episode that we
0:18.4	record on the Squiggly Careers podcast comes with a pod sheet.
0:20.9	That's a one-page summary of all the tips and tools and resources that we refer to.
0:26.0	And that is designed to help you take action, really, which is what we really care about.
0:30.1	Also, one of the things that might be useful to you is to sign up to the Squiggly Careers in Action weekly newsletter. It's where we put all the links to the podcast, the podsheet, other things we might have been reading, watching and listening to that we think
0:40.4	might be useful for you. The links of those things are in the show notes or you can just go to our
0:44.6	website, amazing if.com and you'll find everything you need right there. So today we are talking about
0:49.7	what I am going to guess will be quite a popular topic, which is why you don't delegate and what to do
0:55.8	differently. And I think even if you think you're good at delegating, and I started this process
1:00.9	thinking, oh, I'm good at this. So I'll be able to share my words of wisdom and what I do
1:05.9	really well. And actually, the more I thought about it, the more I thought, I am good at parts of
1:10.6	this and not all of this.
1:13.0	So to get started, we've written some sort of I statements about why we don't delegate.
1:19.5	So perhaps listen to these and think about which ones feel relevant for you.
1:24.3	And some of them you might think, oh, no, that's kind of not me.
1:27.3	And then Helen and I have reflected on which ones kind of perhaps get in our way of delegating
1:31.7	in a useful way at the moment. So kind of statement one, I can do it better. And none of us kind of
1:38.1	like to say that out loud, but I think we think in our minds. Yeah, so like, I can do that better or it might sound like I can do that faster.
1:46.5	I think that's probably even more common than I can do that better. I don't want to overload
1:50.5	the other person. So we know how busy everyone is and you just think, oh, well, I don't want to add
	...

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