📍  Welcome back to No Silver Spoons. In this episode, I wanna share with you a story. My name is Sarah Beth Herman and your host. Years ago, I was in that stage of business that many entrepreneurs know all too well, I'm juggling everything and answering emails while microwaving lunch phase. I had just hired someone new to help us streamline processes.

And we were starting a massive update on our SOPs, the standard operating procedures of my largest organization. We were growing fast, and if I'm being honest, the first five to seven years of running your own business, it's a wild ride. You're leading while still learning what needs leadership. It's a weird paradigm.

I'm gonna introduce you to the team member I hired.

Let's call her for the sake of this story, Amanda. She was sharp, eager, and working virtually just like the rest of us. I messaged her on Microsoft Teams one morning and I said, Hey, can you take care of this SOP update for me? No deadline, no checklist, no real context. Just a teams message and a head full of assumptions.

I had so much going on that day. I mentally check that task off of my list the moment I hit send. And if you're anything like me, that's exactly how you operate as a high functioning CEO. If I've delegated it, I let it go. I don't have space for it anymore. I don't have room in my brain. My desk is completely full.

Days passed. I noticed it wasn't done and I asked her about it. I remember very distinctively I was on a teams call with a group of clients, and it just happened to pop in my head because what we were talking about on that call had to do with this SOP that needed to be updated. And so I just sent her a little side message.

Hey Amanda, do you have that SOP ready for me? And if you're anything like me, you start to learn how your staff responds when they're in a great mood, when they're in a bad mood, when they're triggered, when things aren't going as great. It's like some of your team members are super high energy, super excited, and they're commenting and there's emojis and gif and all the different things.

And then when things aren't so great, they're short. I. And then you can also almost tell what's coming by how long you see the typing bubbles in the messages as they're coming through. I could tell she wasn't responding. I could tell that something was off. And so before I could see her message pop in, I said, Hey Amanda, how about we meet in 20 minutes when I'm off this call and we'll review the SOP at that point.

She messaged and said, I started the SOP, but I wasn't sure exactly what you wanted, and I didn't wanna make the wrong changes, so I held off. But yeah, let's meet in 20 minutes. That moment right there, that was my lesson. I had handed her the baton, but I never told her where the finish line was.

That weekend, my husband and I decided to put together a grill we had ordered from Sam's Club. You guys ever done that before? We were in the garage and pieces were everywhere. I remember being in Sam's Club and thinking, oh, this grill looks so easy. Let's just put this together.

So we saved it for the weekend. We got it home and I had unboxed everything and my husband had unboxed everything and he was kind of. Organizing things, and I'm just sitting here holding a shiny piece of metal, wondering why we didn't just pay the extra a hundred bucks to have it preassembled. And he looks at me and he says, okay, I got the manual.

I just need you to hold this section upright while I bolt these pieces in. And I thought, wow. That was the clearest instruction I'd gotten all week. He had the plan, he had the steps. He told me what to do, when to do it, and why it mattered. The grill got built and it worked. And honestly that moment helped me understand delegation in a way that business books never did and a way that an experience never did.

You see, my husband and I have a lot of different interactions and truth be told, in a past life he was a leader of mine, I was a direct report of his, and so he has taught me so much in leadership, just in the way he communicates with things, even when people are having bad days, even when people aren't living up to your expectations.

And so today's episode is gonna be about that, how to learn to hand things off well, how to receive them fully, and how to create the kind of culture where green flags wave in both directions. So let's talk about closing the loop in your business, in your leadership, and in yourself.

Delegation isn't just a task, it's a transfer of trust. And I want you to remember that as you get ready to delegate something to someone, it's not just sending something to someone's inbox. It's a trust-based transfer of expectation and clarity. And when it's done right, it builds growth, autonomy, momentum.

But then on the other side, when it's done wrong, it builds confusion. It builds resentment, it builds dropped balls. And it builds people scrambling trying to say, I got it. I'll do it. Hold on. Let me just take care of it. According to a 2025 Gallup Workplace study teams led by managers who delegate well are 33% more productive and 40% more engaged.

Delegation done well isn't just helpful. It actually transforms the entire organization. I think back to Amanda and the team's message. I didn't give her an SOP. I gave her a puzzle with no picture on the box. What she needed was what my husband gave me. Context timing tools, a very specific role in a shared mission, and that's what good delegation looks like.

You see, they don't just assign things. They explain things. They paint a picture. They say, Hey, here's what success looks like, and then they equip the person with the tools to do it. Now in our world right now we're using the term green flag and red flag with everything. Oh, that's a red flag.

Oh, that's a green flag. What does green flag behavior look like as a delegator and, and I'm gonna challenge you to see that because as much as you may be the delegator and you might be saying, Hey, if I say to do it, they should just do it. You can be as much. Of a problem as you could be as much of a solution, and I'm gonna challenge you to always be the solution.

So green flag behavior as a delegator looks like setting a clear deadline, explaining the why behind the task, offering access to resources or a standard format of some sort, checking in with encouragement, not micromanagement. Now on the flip side, red flags, that's vague requests. Shifting expectations in the middle of a project, emotional blowups, when the result doesn't match an unspoken vision you might have had.

I had to own the fact that I expected Amanda to read my mind, and that's just not leadership. That's miscommunication. And remember the grill, my husband didn't tell me, just go figure it out. He handed me one job, one tool, one instruction, and I knew exactly what success looked like. Now the grill might be a kind of crazy story or a lame story, but it puts it into perspective, right?

Maybe you aren't the delegator, maybe you're the receiver and maybe you found this podcast episode because you're trying to figure things out. You just want to figure out how to make things work. You know, I've heard employees complain about their bosses time and time again.

I. I've heard people complain about me as their boss. I've heard bosses complain about their employees. The reality is, is we all have it within our power to be green flags or red flags. And so I wanna flip our perspective for a moment and talk about you as the receiver. I want you to own things like it's yours.

I wanna flip the perspective being a great task receiver. It's not passive. It comes from a place of strength and power.  A green flag receiver doesn't say, okay, and log off. What they say is, let me repeat what I think you're asking. Does that sound right? Do you want this in the format we used last month?

Can I get this back to you on Friday? These are three simple things. And oftentimes when I am talking with someone who has just given me instruction, I say, do you mind if I repeat that just so I make sure I understood what you said correctly? I'm closing the loop. You close the loop.

Red flag receivers, they avoid clarity. They take silence as approval. They finish something without ever checking that it matched the vision. And so sometimes that looks like, Hey, let me design an email for my boss. Designing the email takes it to the boss, and all these revisions come out, and then they're mad that there were revisions, but a green flag receiver is gonna check for clarity.

When I was holding up that grill section for my husband, I wasn't just doing my part.

I was asking, is this where it goes? Does this height work? Do you want me to hand you that? Do you need this? Because when I knew I could commit, whether you're a team of two or 200. Creating a culture of green flag delegation means building habits around recaps that you send in a direct message or a Microsoft teams chat.

Task tracking systems like monday.com, utilizing checklists, utilizing recap reporting, utilizing kanon boards expectations being written down. Yes, actually written. They close the loop using your calendar on purpose. Some people think that's all micromanagement. No, it's closing the loop. It's knowing that I have made a commitment to own this as mine, and I'm closing the loop in your company.

Every time someone says, I didn't know that's what you meant. It's an invitation not to blame, but to build better systems. Amanda and I didn't fail. We found a gap and every grill or every SOP, every task. We're either training people to succeed or we're setting them up to stumble, and culture is what fills that gap.

So here's a few things you can implement this week. One, I want you to start however you virtually connect or however you send messages or write notes. I want you to start all of that with, here's the outcome I'm hoping for. Just start by saying that. Here's the outcome I'm hoping for, and then lead into whatever it is that you wanna talk about.

And every time you have a task handoff, I want you to end it with, when can you have this back to me? It's not rude to say that it's actually setting good expectations. And then I want you to end with asking for a one sentence confirmation, just to be sure this is what I'm doing. Is that correct? And for the receiver, confirm receipt.

Confirm the scope, confirm the deadline. See that grill my husband and I were working on, it didn't build itself and your business won't either. But if you want something to last, to hold weight to function the way it should, then every single bolt matters. Every loop matters.

I want you to look inside yourself. As we close out this episode today, I want you to remember that leadership isn't about being right. It's about being clear, and this part might feel a little bit uncomfortable, but I wanna say it anyways. Sometimes the reason things don't get done in your company is you, and not because you're lazy, and not because you're unqualified, but because you're so busy being the CEO, the visionary, the everything that you skip, the part where you equip people to actually run with it.

And I've done this, I still default to bad habits. I still do it. And honestly, if I said anything other than I'm still doing it, I would just be lying. Green flag leadership isn't about perfection. It's about progress, and it's about clarity With compassion, it's giving people everything they need to win and checking in before you assume failure.

Just like that grill in my garage. It wasn't built in one singular step. It was built with instructions, alignment, and collaboration in every episode here at No Silver Spoons. I love to have a, that's good moment. The time of the episode where we recap. I wanna take a breath and wrap this all together in a beautiful little bow.

We learned that green flags show up when leaders slow down enough to communicate clearly, and when receivers speak up early instead of spiraling late. We learned that delegation isn't dumping, it's delivering something with intention. We talked about Amanda, about the grill and about how every step of the task, just like every bolt in that frame, count towards the outcome.

If you're a leader, which I know you are because you're listening to this very episode, here's your green flag. Move, speak clearly. Set expectations, ask for confirmation. Give people something they can build on. And if you're the receiver, which you will be at any given time, ask boldly, clarify quickly, own your task like it's your legacy.

And if you're both, which you probably are, like most of us, look in both mirrors, you are not just part of the solution. You're probably part of the gap. But the good news is that you're the bridge too. There's always a way forward, whether you're building a grill in your garage with your spouse or you're building systems in your company.

It all starts the same way with communication, with clarity, with collaboration, if you will. Green flag leadership isn't perfection, it's partnership. It's saying, Hey, I'm here and I want us both to win. So whether you are the one assigning the task or the one receiving it, I want you to ask yourself, did I close the loop?

If not, today is a great day to start. I'm Sarah Beth Herman, and that is a good moment. I'll  📍 catch you on the next episode.