146. Delegation and Outsourcing: Collaborate, Don't Abdicate (CEO Summer School)
Building a strong team goes beyond simply hiring the right people. It requires a fundamental shift in how you engage with those who support your business. Many creative CEOs hire for relief, hoping to finally hand off tasks they don't enjoy or feel overwhelmed by. But this relief can quickly turn into frustration when team members aren't delivering the results you expected, or worse, when mistakes go unnoticed until they become costly problems.
In this episode, I'm sharing truth number five from the CEO Summer School series: true CEOs collaborate, they don't abdicate. This means recognizing that while you're bringing on team members to handle specific tasks and responsibilities, you remain a key ingredient in creating your business's success. Collaboration allows you to be the driver of your business while having others who understand where you're going and help you get there.
Through examples from my own business—from social media mishaps to accounting errors —I'll show you how to maintain the right level of engagement with your team. You'll discover how to free yourself up for what you do best while staying actively invested in the people you hire and what they're accomplishing for your business. This approach creates clarity and impact for everyone involved, including you.
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What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
Why hiring for relief without staying engaged leads to inefficient use of team resources.
How to honor your team's expertise while remaining the expert in your own business.
The difference between micromanaging and maintaining collaborative oversight.
What happens when you hand over responsibilities without clear systems or accountability.
Why the right team members actually want you to hold them accountable.
How to define what "doing a good job" means for each role in your business.
The role of company values in hiring decisions and performance feedback.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you're listening to episode 146. In today's episode, I'm sharing truth number five in the CEO Summer School series. I'm diving into what I know for sure about building and leading a supportive, effective team that's going to help you reach your financial and creative goals. This episode goes way beyond who to hire and instead focuses on how you engage with your team as a creative CEO to create the most clarity and impact for everyone. You included.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place.
I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. I'm really excited for today's episode. I'm sharing another truth in the CEO Summer School series, and this one is all about building a strong team that really supports you as a CEO and the internal shift that is going to help you step into a new level of self concept as a leader. And honestly, it's one of my favorite things to do with my clients because we hire people to help us achieve our goals and our dreams and our business. And often, we're not using them as effectively as we possibly could. Not that these people that we bring onto our team are cogs in the machine, but they're absolutely resources that we invest in.
And what I'm going to share today is a really important shift in how you think about your leadership and how you engage with your team members, whether that is full-time employees, part-time employees, or outsourced contractors.
This is another episode in the CEO Summer School series, and of course, if you haven't signed up yet, feel free to go over to desicreswell.com/resources. You'll find the link to opt in to get the bonus content, along with lots of other free resources that you can use as you grow your business.
What I want to talk about today in this truth is a really important piece of scaling your team and scaling the business. And I think a lot of us, we can, you know, agree that you are going to need to bring on team members and or outsource in some capacity in order to scale the business. I do believe it's possible to increase your revenue and take on larger projects and more profitable projects without increasing your team. But I do think there is a limit to that type of growth.
What I mean by that is you can create efficiencies in your workflows, you can become better at scheduling and managing yourself with your time, increase fees, improve your marketing and client experience to align with higher fees. Maybe it's adjusting how you sell product. There are ways that you can grow without adding team, but I do think that there is eventually a point where you do need to bring on support.
I think it's absolutely wonderful if you want to run your business as a solopreneur. That is great. Again, no right way. And also, I know so many of you want to have a team or want to increase the size of your team. And that's certainly the case for the types of clients that I work with because, it can be lonely, and it can be nice to have some people in your business to bounce ideas off of and bring in their expertise and have them do things that maybe are your weak points. And what's also cool is just you can start to really accelerate the results you're already getting. The things that you're doing right in the business that are already working for you, you can take that and lean into it in a variety of ways once you have more hands on deck and more brains working on solving problems.
And let's not forget, there are just simply some things that we don't like to do or feel like really drain us in our business. And so we can start to get those non-preferred tasks off our plate and give them to somebody who it is a preferred task. So, I think there is so much value in the idea of the team and having adequate support, or maybe even abundant support. Think about what that could even look like for you in your business. You know, not just even in growing your business, but in terms of the fulfillment you can gain from being a leader. That can be really powerful as well.
If we go back to what CEO Summer School is focused on and and frankly, like this whole podcast, right? It's all about creating that thriving, profitable, and sustainable business, and being supported through building a team really is a big part of going to make that happen. And so we had to have a truth that pertains to this. And whether you want your team to be part-time, whether your team is part-time, full-time, contractors, I always want to be making sure that it is supporting you in a way that you need to be supported and helps you create the results and goals that align with your business vision.
It's so much more though than just simply having a team or thinking about what is the first person I need to hire is or who I need to bring on next. Yes, those are valid considerations and things to think through. And we also want to be really mindful, mindful of, once this person is brought on to support you, how are you engaging with them to create the most impact for you and the business, and also support them in doing their best job? Which brings me to truth number five. And what I know for sure is that true CEOs collaborate. They don't abdicate.
Collaboration with those who support you is leadership. Because what this says to me when you are in a collaboration role, and I'll go into more about what I mean by that, you're recognizing that you are a key ingredient in creating the business's success and the results that you desire. Collaboration allows you to be the driver of the business and also have others who get where you're going and help you drive there.
When I say collaborate, I want to make sure we're clear on this, I don't mean that your staff necessarily needs to get equal say in every single decision or that you have to take their opinion into consideration for every last little thing. Rather, this is about a dance of continuing to free yourself up for what you do best and what's going to be most impactful for the business, while staying actively invested in the people you hire and staying invested in what you have hired them to do for the business.
What I see commonly is that when it's time to hire, whether it's for the first time or adding more team members, we as the CEOs can be approaching it looking for relief. Maybe there's some overwhelm, some confusion, or some stuckness present, and maybe we're thinking, oh, finally, I don't have to do that. Right? Finally. Or someone else can deal with this. I don't want to look at it again. I hear that so often with like things like accounting, bookkeeping, social media, marketing, management, that kind of thing. Or just like a, you know, throw your hands in the air. Thank goodness they're here to help.
That relief is real. Yes, hiring means you have more hands and more expertise that you can leverage. So, yes, you can totally be ecstatic that you don't have to enter those purchase orders anymore. Or maybe for you, it's that it feels incredible to have someone else managing your inbox, doing the initial filter on inquiries, or sending out invoices to your clients, whatever it is. That's amazing. And we want to make sure once we put it in the hands of another person that we've brought on to help us, we aren't thinking that we can just drop it on them and then run. Okay? Or just even turn a blind eye, or just, you know, kind of pretend that it doesn't exist anymore.
Because we really do have to be careful in leadership as a designer CEO to avoid abdicating responsibility for those outcomes. And that sometimes could be consciously of like, we know we're having that thought of like, thank goodness, that's done. I don't ever want to look at it. Or it could be unconsciously too. Let me give you some areas of contrast for you to start to wrap your head around what I mean by this.
A big thing here is that, you know, we can hire for expertise and, you know, we can honor that expertise that the other person has, see them as an expert in their field. And we can still ask questions when we don't understand. We can still poke holes around things that seem like they aren't making sense to us. We can get a better understanding. We can ask for clarity around their recommendation and why it's best for us. And we need to filter that through our own years of building expertise in our own business. So you can definitely hire experts and look to them for guidance and advice, and also be the expert in your own business.
Another thing you could look at is just someone maybe takes a task or a project off your plate. That's a huge part of hiring is there's something that you no longer have to do. And that also doesn't mean that you're still not responsible for that outcomes and making sure those are met and making sure that those are done in a timely manner and that they are aligned with your goals. This is not micromanaging or being on top of them every last day. But you do need to have a process or a system in place to help them reach those outcomes in the way that you want them done.
This could also mean you take into consideration alternative perspectives, whether that is from a team member or one of those experts you hire. And you also can give yourself permission, and I suggest you do, to be the final decision maker. Another example might be that you delegate to a more experienced team member who really can lead in the business, and you can also remember that you need to still show up to give them mentorship, feedback, and accountability.
What I hope that you're seeing through some of these contrasts that I'm sharing is that it's both. You're handing off, and you're still holding. Let me give you some examples too from my own business, because sometimes it's not so black and white, and it can be a little bit more subtle.
So, in my business, I've had some instances where it hasn't been like, I'm not going to look at this at all, but rather little parts that maybe I wasn't interested in or as interested in thinking about, or I just hadn't created the time to show up fully to my responsibility in that collaborative relationship through the support I'd hired.
The first example I want to give you is along the lines of social media. So, I don't know, this has been quite a while ago. I was posting very regularly on Instagram, and I had hired a company to help me build engagement and grow my audience so that more people would see the things that I was writing. And this was definitely a period of high levels of content creation, and I was relieved to have some help in terms of being on there in a way that I wasn't as interested in, things like liking and commenting on posts to help the algorithm know, hey, other people should check this out. And I really kind of didn't check in after I gave them their initial intake form.
In some ways it was going fine. They were doing what they said they were going to do. My account was really growing. And then I started to realize like, oh, I should probably check in on this a little bit more. And, you know, I had seen in one instance, they had used a fire emoji to comment on someone's post, and I mean, come on, I do not use the fire emoji. I don't know, maybe that's super obvious to you, maybe it's not. That's just like not one that I would use. So that just felt really off-brand for me.
And then there were things like, okay, well, the accounts growing, but I don't think that these are the exact people that I want to have following me. They wouldn't be my ideal client. And taking their growth numbers kind of as a blanket, yes, we're succeeding versus diving into, yes, but are you succeeding in the way that I want you to succeed with this role that I've hired you for? So then seeing that, I was able to take back what actually is my responsibility in that collaborative relationship and make some decisions about how I wanted to move forward.
There was another time where I told my assistant, I need to get this Google Drive organized. And I thought, well, she, this is her job. She's supposed to organize things for me. And I didn't give her the format I wanted. But what ended up happening is she set it up with her standard organization, which this was someone who worked for multiple clients. And the way that she organized it was just like not intuitive to my process at all. And on paper, yes, it worked, but it was not what I needed as the business owner.
So, in kind of, I think unconsciously trying to save myself some time by not thinking through what that organization would be, I ended up creating more work for myself and her on the back end of that because I went into abdication, not collaboration to begin with.
I'll give you one more example around accounting. I feel like this is a big one where we can start to abdicate. And in this instance, you know, it was I think a really busy period of time in the business, and I unconsciously started to look at reviewing the monthly PNL as just this thing I had to check off my list. And it became like a, okay, monthly to do, yep, okay, I looked at it, get it done as fast as possible. Really forgetting that I needed to yes, trust this bookkeeper as an expert and also look at those numbers through what makes sense for me, what I know is going on in the business.
And I was able to catch this really big misassignment of an expense where she had assigned it as an income. So I would have ended up paying taxes on a bunch of money that I hadn't even made instead of being able to take it as a deduction. So it's like these sort of subtle things too, I think, where it's not like we're blatantly saying I'm not going to pay attention, although I think that comes up, but where we kind of just lose our grip on what's going on, and it makes things a lot harder than they need to be, especially when we think about how hiring is going to help things be easier for us.
When you don't remain engaged in a collaborative way, when you abdicate responsibility or hand over your role as the CEO, let me just talk about kind of what happens. I think you can see a little bit through my examples. But really, you don't effectively utilize the resource of your team member and what they have to contribute, how they're using their time, what they're able to do in terms of results that contribute to the overall results of the business. It's not effective or efficient for anyone.
It can also really lead to inconsistent experiences of your company. That fire emoji I gave you was a really tiny, kind of silly example, but it certainly can show up in bigger, broader ways. And we want to have our marketing and our messaging and the things that we're putting out into the world be really consistent for our clients, for our contractors, and for our audience that's going to create future leads.
The other thing here is you just don't spot the mistakes or trends quickly. Sometimes things are happening where if you are not looking at metrics or checkpoints consistently and along the way, and you're just relying fully on other people to spot those, they don't always have the full context that you do. And so you do need to be able to have some sort of pulse where you can notice trends so that you aren't ending up spending more time, more effort, and possibly more money to course correct in the long run.
And then I think the other thing here is, when we abdicate responsibility, we get a less engaged and accountable team. The way I think about this is, if I'm not being collaborative and engaged and showing up in my own responsibility as a CEO, as an example of what that looks like, why would they? You're just not going to be happy with the type of support that you have when you're setting that type of example. And honestly, your employees or contractors are not going to be as fulfilled working with you or in their roles because they're not having the conditions to really create the most success for themselves in the position.
And I think this is a good time to say that if there is somebody on your team or that you're outsourcing to who likes when you abdicate responsibility, and this, let me be clear, this is not you giving them some space to do what they need to do. Right? But if you're not holding them accountable, if you are kind of lackadaisical about how you guide them, if somebody likes that, they're probably not the right person for your team, because the right people who are going to help you get where you want to go are wanting to grow with you. They want to create their own internal upgrade, which is going to help create success for the firm as a whole.
As much as I think sometimes we like to believe maybe we could set it and forget it when it comes to hiring, we really do need to have some levels of oversight. This is not micromanaging, and it's certainly not doing work you're paying someone else to do. It's not saying, well, I'll just do it myself. Please do not take that away from this episode. What it is is being clear on your role as the CEO and really showing up for and stepping up to the plate for the responsibilities that you have to the company vision and goals, because no one is going to do it like you. It is being clear on your role as the CEO and upholding your responsibility to the vision that you have for yourself and those goals.
Let me give you some ideas now of what it can look like day to day or bigger picture for you as the CEO being in that collaborator role. The number one piece here is the vision for the company. You do not want to hand this over to anyone else. I've had several clients where they've gone to their team members and asked for feedback and insights into what they're seeing and where they would like to see themselves go, and where the company will grow in various meetings and retreats. And that's been so valuable. And you also are the one who gets to synthesize that, take what's meant for you and your priorities, and then create that north star and hold it up for everybody else to look to.
A big part of collaboration here, too, is giving your team clear, direct instructions. There is directness in collaboration with you as the boss. When you delegate opportunities, when you give them consistent feedback, everyone's clear on what the metrics are that are being measured, what milestones are being met, and why that's either happening or not happening, so that way you can figure out your next steps.
Another piece here is understanding for yourself and then communicating to others what a good job is. This is how you know if the team member is performing to standards and achieving the results you hired them for. Remember, we don't hire people just to do things in our business. We hire them to help us create results. And a big part of this is understanding the role they're fulfilling. This does not mean you need to become an expert in every single area, but you want to know enough to know if they're doing a good job and then be clear about what a good job means to you. So, so important for you as the business owner to have a point of evaluation and understanding of if this person that you've brought in is a good investment. And it's so generous to your team member, too, because they need to know how they're measuring up as well. Otherwise, there can just be so much miscommunication, resentment, frustration, and crossed wires.
Collaboration also can look like a continuous exploration and deepening of who your ideal client is in and out. What it is that they want and what it is they value out of a design firm and working with you specifically. This one is especially applicable for when you bring someone on for marketing, so that way you aren't making them guess. They probably have a process for helping to draw all of this out of you and help you even flesh it out more. That is amazing. And you want to have your own internal filter to make sure that what they're bringing you matches what you want and how you see things.
I want to give you two more ideas before we wrap up. Another big one here is collaboration means having values that you share with your team members. You can use these as a way to filter hiring decisions and then also in accountability conversations and feedback sessions, whether that's a quarterly review or a monthly check-in. Know what these are and share them, and use them in your collaboration as you're thinking about what improvements you might be making to the business. What is next for your next level of growth? Look at your values, see if those align, and collaborate not even just with your team, but what's most important to you as the business owner to help guide you.
The last one I'll say here is making sure that you have systems in place or have given direction to put them into the business so that it works for how you operate. This can be a great place to get feedback and input from the team and help understand how they work as well. And also aligning it with what is the client experience we want? How do we want our workflow to go? What works best for you as the CEO in terms of reviewing the teamwork and having them continue to move forward with whatever they've been delegated.
This truth is definitely going to require you to step into greater levels of leadership. It's also going to ask you to become more of a CEO in terms of your self-concept and who you see yourself to be as the decision maker, the person who is direct and clear and asks for what they want and asks questions when they aren't getting what they want and holding others accountable. That's all of that internal work that we were talking about in a previous truth.
So in some ways, yes, it is more responsibility. But it is really different from overfunctioning and overresponsibility, which is something I talked about in episode 134, and it's titled Burnout Prevention. So if you think, oh, I'm needing a little bit more clarity on that, I want to have some more contrast over what this looks like, that could be a good companion episode for you.
So that is truth number five. CEOs collaborate, they don't abdicate. For those of you who are following along with CEO Summer School, make sure you check your inbox for reflection prompts to turn the ideas I shared here into actions. And if you haven't joined CEO Summer School, make sure you do that now at desicreswell.com/resources.
I also have to say summer is just simply flying by, and fall is going to be here before we know it. If you're interested or have been thinking about working together one-on-one, make sure you add your name to the one-on-one coaching wait list. You can go to desicreswell.com and find all of the information there. It's also just a really good idea to get on my newsletter list in general.
Every Monday, I send out a quick note called Monday Mindset. If you love the podcast, you will love that Monday note for me. It's the best way to make sure that you are aware of the latest and greatest. And I've got some ideas about what I might want to do in the fall in terms of maybe some pop-up coaching, some strategy sessions, we'll see. But that's the best way to get the latest from me.
You can find that sign up for Monday Mindset on desicreswell.com/resources. That really is the place to find anything and everything that I mentioned here. I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. I have an interview for you and I'm pretty excited. It is Allison Hay, and she is a PR expert for interior designers. Allison and I had the pleasure of meeting at the Midwest Design Retreat, and I was just blown away with what she had to share. So I'm excited to bring her on the podcast and share all of her wisdom with you. Until next Wednesday, I'm wishing you a beautiful week.
Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit DesiCreswell.com, where you’ll get immediate access to a variety of free resources to help you take what you learn on the podcast and put it into action. And if you love what you’re hearing, be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I’ll talk to you next week.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place.
I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. I'm really excited for today's episode. I'm sharing another truth in the CEO Summer School series, and this one is all about building a strong team that really supports you as a CEO and the internal shift that is going to help you step into a new level of self concept as a leader. And honestly, it's one of my favorite things to do with my clients because we hire people to help us achieve our goals and our dreams and our business. And often, we're not using them as effectively as we possibly could. Not that these people that we bring onto our team are cogs in the machine, but they're absolutely resources that we invest in.
And what I'm going to share today is a really important shift in how you think about your leadership and how you engage with your team members, whether that is full-time employees, part-time employees, or outsourced contractors.
This is another episode in the CEO Summer School series, and of course, if you haven't signed up yet, feel free to go over to desicreswell.com/resources. You'll find the link to opt in to get the bonus content, along with lots of other free resources that you can use as you grow your business.
What I want to talk about today in this truth is a really important piece of scaling your team and scaling the business. And I think a lot of us, we can, you know, agree that you are going to need to bring on team members and or outsource in some capacity in order to scale the business. I do believe it's possible to increase your revenue and take on larger projects and more profitable projects without increasing your team. But I do think there is a limit to that type of growth.
What I mean by that is you can create efficiencies in your workflows, you can become better at scheduling and managing yourself with your time, increase fees, improve your marketing and client experience to align with higher fees. Maybe it's adjusting how you sell product. There are ways that you can grow without adding team, but I do think that there is eventually a point where you do need to bring on support.
I think it's absolutely wonderful if you want to run your business as a solopreneur. That is great. Again, no right way. And also, I know so many of you want to have a team or want to increase the size of your team. And that's certainly the case for the types of clients that I work with because, it can be lonely, and it can be nice to have some people in your business to bounce ideas off of and bring in their expertise and have them do things that maybe are your weak points. And what's also cool is just you can start to really accelerate the results you're already getting. The things that you're doing right in the business that are already working for you, you can take that and lean into it in a variety of ways once you have more hands on deck and more brains working on solving problems.
And let's not forget, there are just simply some things that we don't like to do or feel like really drain us in our business. And so we can start to get those non-preferred tasks off our plate and give them to somebody who it is a preferred task. So, I think there is so much value in the idea of the team and having adequate support, or maybe even abundant support. Think about what that could even look like for you in your business. You know, not just even in growing your business, but in terms of the fulfillment you can gain from being a leader. That can be really powerful as well.
If we go back to what CEO Summer School is focused on and and frankly, like this whole podcast, right? It's all about creating that thriving, profitable, and sustainable business, and being supported through building a team really is a big part of going to make that happen. And so we had to have a truth that pertains to this. And whether you want your team to be part-time, whether your team is part-time, full-time, contractors, I always want to be making sure that it is supporting you in a way that you need to be supported and helps you create the results and goals that align with your business vision.
It's so much more though than just simply having a team or thinking about what is the first person I need to hire is or who I need to bring on next. Yes, those are valid considerations and things to think through. And we also want to be really mindful, mindful of, once this person is brought on to support you, how are you engaging with them to create the most impact for you and the business, and also support them in doing their best job? Which brings me to truth number five. And what I know for sure is that true CEOs collaborate. They don't abdicate.
Collaboration with those who support you is leadership. Because what this says to me when you are in a collaboration role, and I'll go into more about what I mean by that, you're recognizing that you are a key ingredient in creating the business's success and the results that you desire. Collaboration allows you to be the driver of the business and also have others who get where you're going and help you drive there.
When I say collaborate, I want to make sure we're clear on this, I don't mean that your staff necessarily needs to get equal say in every single decision or that you have to take their opinion into consideration for every last little thing. Rather, this is about a dance of continuing to free yourself up for what you do best and what's going to be most impactful for the business, while staying actively invested in the people you hire and staying invested in what you have hired them to do for the business.
What I see commonly is that when it's time to hire, whether it's for the first time or adding more team members, we as the CEOs can be approaching it looking for relief. Maybe there's some overwhelm, some confusion, or some stuckness present, and maybe we're thinking, oh, finally, I don't have to do that. Right? Finally. Or someone else can deal with this. I don't want to look at it again. I hear that so often with like things like accounting, bookkeeping, social media, marketing, management, that kind of thing. Or just like a, you know, throw your hands in the air. Thank goodness they're here to help.
That relief is real. Yes, hiring means you have more hands and more expertise that you can leverage. So, yes, you can totally be ecstatic that you don't have to enter those purchase orders anymore. Or maybe for you, it's that it feels incredible to have someone else managing your inbox, doing the initial filter on inquiries, or sending out invoices to your clients, whatever it is. That's amazing. And we want to make sure once we put it in the hands of another person that we've brought on to help us, we aren't thinking that we can just drop it on them and then run. Okay? Or just even turn a blind eye, or just, you know, kind of pretend that it doesn't exist anymore.
Because we really do have to be careful in leadership as a designer CEO to avoid abdicating responsibility for those outcomes. And that sometimes could be consciously of like, we know we're having that thought of like, thank goodness, that's done. I don't ever want to look at it. Or it could be unconsciously too. Let me give you some areas of contrast for you to start to wrap your head around what I mean by this.
A big thing here is that, you know, we can hire for expertise and, you know, we can honor that expertise that the other person has, see them as an expert in their field. And we can still ask questions when we don't understand. We can still poke holes around things that seem like they aren't making sense to us. We can get a better understanding. We can ask for clarity around their recommendation and why it's best for us. And we need to filter that through our own years of building expertise in our own business. So you can definitely hire experts and look to them for guidance and advice, and also be the expert in your own business.
Another thing you could look at is just someone maybe takes a task or a project off your plate. That's a huge part of hiring is there's something that you no longer have to do. And that also doesn't mean that you're still not responsible for that outcomes and making sure those are met and making sure that those are done in a timely manner and that they are aligned with your goals. This is not micromanaging or being on top of them every last day. But you do need to have a process or a system in place to help them reach those outcomes in the way that you want them done.
This could also mean you take into consideration alternative perspectives, whether that is from a team member or one of those experts you hire. And you also can give yourself permission, and I suggest you do, to be the final decision maker. Another example might be that you delegate to a more experienced team member who really can lead in the business, and you can also remember that you need to still show up to give them mentorship, feedback, and accountability.
What I hope that you're seeing through some of these contrasts that I'm sharing is that it's both. You're handing off, and you're still holding. Let me give you some examples too from my own business, because sometimes it's not so black and white, and it can be a little bit more subtle.
So, in my business, I've had some instances where it hasn't been like, I'm not going to look at this at all, but rather little parts that maybe I wasn't interested in or as interested in thinking about, or I just hadn't created the time to show up fully to my responsibility in that collaborative relationship through the support I'd hired.
The first example I want to give you is along the lines of social media. So, I don't know, this has been quite a while ago. I was posting very regularly on Instagram, and I had hired a company to help me build engagement and grow my audience so that more people would see the things that I was writing. And this was definitely a period of high levels of content creation, and I was relieved to have some help in terms of being on there in a way that I wasn't as interested in, things like liking and commenting on posts to help the algorithm know, hey, other people should check this out. And I really kind of didn't check in after I gave them their initial intake form.
In some ways it was going fine. They were doing what they said they were going to do. My account was really growing. And then I started to realize like, oh, I should probably check in on this a little bit more. And, you know, I had seen in one instance, they had used a fire emoji to comment on someone's post, and I mean, come on, I do not use the fire emoji. I don't know, maybe that's super obvious to you, maybe it's not. That's just like not one that I would use. So that just felt really off-brand for me.
And then there were things like, okay, well, the accounts growing, but I don't think that these are the exact people that I want to have following me. They wouldn't be my ideal client. And taking their growth numbers kind of as a blanket, yes, we're succeeding versus diving into, yes, but are you succeeding in the way that I want you to succeed with this role that I've hired you for? So then seeing that, I was able to take back what actually is my responsibility in that collaborative relationship and make some decisions about how I wanted to move forward.
There was another time where I told my assistant, I need to get this Google Drive organized. And I thought, well, she, this is her job. She's supposed to organize things for me. And I didn't give her the format I wanted. But what ended up happening is she set it up with her standard organization, which this was someone who worked for multiple clients. And the way that she organized it was just like not intuitive to my process at all. And on paper, yes, it worked, but it was not what I needed as the business owner.
So, in kind of, I think unconsciously trying to save myself some time by not thinking through what that organization would be, I ended up creating more work for myself and her on the back end of that because I went into abdication, not collaboration to begin with.
I'll give you one more example around accounting. I feel like this is a big one where we can start to abdicate. And in this instance, you know, it was I think a really busy period of time in the business, and I unconsciously started to look at reviewing the monthly PNL as just this thing I had to check off my list. And it became like a, okay, monthly to do, yep, okay, I looked at it, get it done as fast as possible. Really forgetting that I needed to yes, trust this bookkeeper as an expert and also look at those numbers through what makes sense for me, what I know is going on in the business.
And I was able to catch this really big misassignment of an expense where she had assigned it as an income. So I would have ended up paying taxes on a bunch of money that I hadn't even made instead of being able to take it as a deduction. So it's like these sort of subtle things too, I think, where it's not like we're blatantly saying I'm not going to pay attention, although I think that comes up, but where we kind of just lose our grip on what's going on, and it makes things a lot harder than they need to be, especially when we think about how hiring is going to help things be easier for us.
When you don't remain engaged in a collaborative way, when you abdicate responsibility or hand over your role as the CEO, let me just talk about kind of what happens. I think you can see a little bit through my examples. But really, you don't effectively utilize the resource of your team member and what they have to contribute, how they're using their time, what they're able to do in terms of results that contribute to the overall results of the business. It's not effective or efficient for anyone.
It can also really lead to inconsistent experiences of your company. That fire emoji I gave you was a really tiny, kind of silly example, but it certainly can show up in bigger, broader ways. And we want to have our marketing and our messaging and the things that we're putting out into the world be really consistent for our clients, for our contractors, and for our audience that's going to create future leads.
The other thing here is you just don't spot the mistakes or trends quickly. Sometimes things are happening where if you are not looking at metrics or checkpoints consistently and along the way, and you're just relying fully on other people to spot those, they don't always have the full context that you do. And so you do need to be able to have some sort of pulse where you can notice trends so that you aren't ending up spending more time, more effort, and possibly more money to course correct in the long run.
And then I think the other thing here is, when we abdicate responsibility, we get a less engaged and accountable team. The way I think about this is, if I'm not being collaborative and engaged and showing up in my own responsibility as a CEO, as an example of what that looks like, why would they? You're just not going to be happy with the type of support that you have when you're setting that type of example. And honestly, your employees or contractors are not going to be as fulfilled working with you or in their roles because they're not having the conditions to really create the most success for themselves in the position.
And I think this is a good time to say that if there is somebody on your team or that you're outsourcing to who likes when you abdicate responsibility, and this, let me be clear, this is not you giving them some space to do what they need to do. Right? But if you're not holding them accountable, if you are kind of lackadaisical about how you guide them, if somebody likes that, they're probably not the right person for your team, because the right people who are going to help you get where you want to go are wanting to grow with you. They want to create their own internal upgrade, which is going to help create success for the firm as a whole.
As much as I think sometimes we like to believe maybe we could set it and forget it when it comes to hiring, we really do need to have some levels of oversight. This is not micromanaging, and it's certainly not doing work you're paying someone else to do. It's not saying, well, I'll just do it myself. Please do not take that away from this episode. What it is is being clear on your role as the CEO and really showing up for and stepping up to the plate for the responsibilities that you have to the company vision and goals, because no one is going to do it like you. It is being clear on your role as the CEO and upholding your responsibility to the vision that you have for yourself and those goals.
Let me give you some ideas now of what it can look like day to day or bigger picture for you as the CEO being in that collaborator role. The number one piece here is the vision for the company. You do not want to hand this over to anyone else. I've had several clients where they've gone to their team members and asked for feedback and insights into what they're seeing and where they would like to see themselves go, and where the company will grow in various meetings and retreats. And that's been so valuable. And you also are the one who gets to synthesize that, take what's meant for you and your priorities, and then create that north star and hold it up for everybody else to look to.
A big part of collaboration here, too, is giving your team clear, direct instructions. There is directness in collaboration with you as the boss. When you delegate opportunities, when you give them consistent feedback, everyone's clear on what the metrics are that are being measured, what milestones are being met, and why that's either happening or not happening, so that way you can figure out your next steps.
Another piece here is understanding for yourself and then communicating to others what a good job is. This is how you know if the team member is performing to standards and achieving the results you hired them for. Remember, we don't hire people just to do things in our business. We hire them to help us create results. And a big part of this is understanding the role they're fulfilling. This does not mean you need to become an expert in every single area, but you want to know enough to know if they're doing a good job and then be clear about what a good job means to you. So, so important for you as the business owner to have a point of evaluation and understanding of if this person that you've brought in is a good investment. And it's so generous to your team member, too, because they need to know how they're measuring up as well. Otherwise, there can just be so much miscommunication, resentment, frustration, and crossed wires.
Collaboration also can look like a continuous exploration and deepening of who your ideal client is in and out. What it is that they want and what it is they value out of a design firm and working with you specifically. This one is especially applicable for when you bring someone on for marketing, so that way you aren't making them guess. They probably have a process for helping to draw all of this out of you and help you even flesh it out more. That is amazing. And you want to have your own internal filter to make sure that what they're bringing you matches what you want and how you see things.
I want to give you two more ideas before we wrap up. Another big one here is collaboration means having values that you share with your team members. You can use these as a way to filter hiring decisions and then also in accountability conversations and feedback sessions, whether that's a quarterly review or a monthly check-in. Know what these are and share them, and use them in your collaboration as you're thinking about what improvements you might be making to the business. What is next for your next level of growth? Look at your values, see if those align, and collaborate not even just with your team, but what's most important to you as the business owner to help guide you.
The last one I'll say here is making sure that you have systems in place or have given direction to put them into the business so that it works for how you operate. This can be a great place to get feedback and input from the team and help understand how they work as well. And also aligning it with what is the client experience we want? How do we want our workflow to go? What works best for you as the CEO in terms of reviewing the teamwork and having them continue to move forward with whatever they've been delegated.
This truth is definitely going to require you to step into greater levels of leadership. It's also going to ask you to become more of a CEO in terms of your self-concept and who you see yourself to be as the decision maker, the person who is direct and clear and asks for what they want and asks questions when they aren't getting what they want and holding others accountable. That's all of that internal work that we were talking about in a previous truth.
So in some ways, yes, it is more responsibility. But it is really different from overfunctioning and overresponsibility, which is something I talked about in episode 134, and it's titled Burnout Prevention. So if you think, oh, I'm needing a little bit more clarity on that, I want to have some more contrast over what this looks like, that could be a good companion episode for you.
So that is truth number five. CEOs collaborate, they don't abdicate. For those of you who are following along with CEO Summer School, make sure you check your inbox for reflection prompts to turn the ideas I shared here into actions. And if you haven't joined CEO Summer School, make sure you do that now at desicreswell.com/resources.
I also have to say summer is just simply flying by, and fall is going to be here before we know it. If you're interested or have been thinking about working together one-on-one, make sure you add your name to the one-on-one coaching wait list. You can go to desicreswell.com and find all of the information there. It's also just a really good idea to get on my newsletter list in general.
Every Monday, I send out a quick note called Monday Mindset. If you love the podcast, you will love that Monday note for me. It's the best way to make sure that you are aware of the latest and greatest. And I've got some ideas about what I might want to do in the fall in terms of maybe some pop-up coaching, some strategy sessions, we'll see. But that's the best way to get the latest from me.
You can find that sign up for Monday Mindset on desicreswell.com/resources. That really is the place to find anything and everything that I mentioned here. I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. I have an interview for you and I'm pretty excited. It is Allison Hay, and she is a PR expert for interior designers. Allison and I had the pleasure of meeting at the Midwest Design Retreat, and I was just blown away with what she had to share. So I'm excited to bring her on the podcast and share all of her wisdom with you. Until next Wednesday, I'm wishing you a beautiful week.
Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit DesiCreswell.com, where you’ll get immediate access to a variety of free resources to help you take what you learn on the podcast and put it into action. And if you love what you’re hearing, be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I’ll talk to you next week.
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