Stop Expecting Your Team to Get Results for Things You Don't Know How to Explain

Your team can't deliver a result you can't describe. If you hand someone a job you don't understand, with no definition of what success looks like, they will guess. Then you get frustrated, and the person you blame is usually the one who was set up to miss.

Why can't your team get results on something you can't explain?

Because a result needs a definition before it needs effort. Delegating well means you can say what the finished job looks like, what inputs it takes, and how you will know it worked. If you can't say those three things, you are not delegating. You are hoping.

Owners are idea people. We see something that works in another business, get excited, and hand it to whoever is closest. I do it too. The idea is usually good. What's missing is the language of the job: the vocabulary of marketing, of leadership, of accounting. Without it, you can't give clear instructions, and you can't tell whether the answer you get back is any good.

What does it look like when you hand off a job you don't understand?

It sounds like "Can you do our social media?" That sentence is the whole instruction. It doesn't say what success is, what should happen because of the posts, or what the person is accountable for. So they pick something, usually whatever they like doing, and you find out three months later it isn't moving anything.

Then the pattern gets expensive. You get frustrated with someone who may have been a great stylist. Now you are annoyed at them about everything, and eventually you lose them. The mistake started with you, on the day you couldn't explain the job.

The same thing happens with roles. You hire a front desk person and then add a few more tasks because they seem capable. A year later you have a Frankenstein role that no one could define. When that person leaves, the next hire inherits a pile of tasks with no outcome attached. Or your assistant who is great at social media moves up to the floor, and the new assistant can't do it. The job was never the role. It was the person.

I have seen this when I work with owners. They have a Shopify store, an SEO need, or a website, and they keep putting different people on it. Those people are supposed to show up to the sessions where I teach it. Often they're not there. When they are, they aren't asking the right questions. You don't have to know everything. But you can't know so little that you can't ask the question that would show whether the person can do the job.

How do you learn enough to delegate a job you know nothing about?

Spend time learning the language before you hand it off. In a recent live I said what I would tell any owner: put a couple of hours into the topic each morning. You are not trying to become the expert. You are trying to know enough to define the outcome and ask a good question.

Take accounting. Your accountant talks to you at the end of the year and uses terms you can't follow. Run the cash flow statement and the P&L through an AI tool and ask it to explain them like you are in fifth grade. Ask it to tell you the story behind the numbers. Then watch a few accountants explain the same terms on YouTube. Now you can read what you are given, and you can ask why a line moved.

When you can't know the inputs, use the person you hired as your teacher:

1. Ask them to write a plan for the job, step by step.
2. Read it and ask how each piece will work.
3. Have them say it back to you in their own words.
4. Let them teach it to you, then go a level deeper on anything that sounds good.

That last step matters. When someone can teach you the work, you know whether they understand it. And they understand it better for having said it out loud.

This is the one thing I did differently as an owner. I learned to code a website. I learned to structure Facebook ads and Google ads. I spent hours on YouTube and I paid for the learning. Because I knew the language, I could step out of those roles and hand them to someone who was set up to win. It's how I grew The Warehouse Salon in DeLand, Florida, about 2,000 miles from where I live in New Jersey. I hired through Zoom, gave each person the tools their position needed, and taught them how to run it. People told me I couldn't do that. I could, because I knew what I was asking for.

How do you delegate outcomes instead of tasks?

Define what the finished job looks like, then let the person choose how to get there once you have trained them. A task is "post three times a week." An outcome is a number or a condition you can check. The first one needs you watching. The second one only needs you inspecting.

Here are the kinds of outcomes I mean. These are examples of how an owner might define a salon coordinator role, not targets for your salon: an 85% client retention rate, a retail-to-service sales ratio of 20%, a set number of new Google reviews each month. You decide your own numbers. Then you pay the person well enough that you no longer have to think about the inputs. If you hire someone cheap and expect them to hand you outcomes, that is the same mistake wearing a different outfit.

I do not care whether someone enters five new stylists into the software on a phone, an iPad, or a desktop. I care that the schedules, services, and pricing are right so we can take appointments. Same with inventory. I don't care how it gets counted. I care that we aren't missing five tubes of 5N because they got buried on the bottom shelf.

Outcomes still need training behind them. My rule is 10-80-10. In the first 10%, I do the job with the person, record it, and answer questions. The middle 80% is theirs, and I stay out of it. In the final 10%, I inspect what I expected. When I skip that first 10%, like handing off new software without recording one example, we both end up frustrated. That one is on me. I wrote more on this in the framework for getting your team to do what you ask without micromanaging.

What do owners get wrong about delegating?

They delegate to a person instead of to a defined role, and they delegate while their own head is full. Both are common, and both are fixable.

On the first: write out the org chart and a position agreement for each role. When the role has a clear outcome, a new person can step in without the job changing shape. You also know how to talk to that person and what questions to ask them.

On the second: if you work behind the chair, you are talking to the front desk, then the assistant lead, then your social media person because the video you sent out had no sound. Then someone tells you the salon is out of 5N. That's constant context switching, like a computer with every tab open. It runs slow, and your delegating gets sloppy. Everything falls apart and you are back behind the chair thinking owning a salon is too hard. It isn't hard when you aren't doing every job yourself.

Give each area its own time. One day you talk marketing with the person in charge of marketing. Another day it's leadership, another day it's education. If you won't work above the business, the other option is to hire someone to be the CEO of the salon and talk to that one person.

One more trap: managing your time without managing your energy. If your calendar says payroll at 9 a.m. but your brain doesn't work on numbers after a chaotic school drop-off, you will do poor work. For a week, log what you do in blocks and mark each one A if you felt sharp or S if you felt shot. Then move the tasks around. I'd rather an owner do payroll early on a Sunday while the kids sleep than force it on Monday morning.

What should you do this week?

1. Pick one job you have handed off that isn't producing. Write down what success looks like in one sentence. If you can't, that's the problem.
2. Spend two hours learning the language of that job. Use YouTube, an AI tool, or a call with someone who does it for a living.
3. Ask the person in the role to write the plan and teach it back to you.
4. Set one outcome you can check, and a date to inspect it.
5. Check that the role is still the role. Strip off anything that was added because of the person.

If you want a second set of eyes on what's broken in your team, profit, or client flow, apply here and see if your salon qualifies. For the accountability side of this, managing versus babysitting your team is the next read. And if you want to know how I got here, that page tells the story.

FAQ

What is inattention to results?

In my experience it is when no one is watching the outcome after a job is handed off. The owner assumes it's handled, the employee assumes no one cares, and weeks go by. The fix is a defined outcome and a scheduled check, which is the last 10% of 10-80-10.

What are the top 3 things an employee can improve on?

I don't have a fixed list, but I see three come up most. One is skill gaps, like a stylist who only does long layers and needs short haircuts. Another is behavior that doesn't match what they say they want to be known for. The third is owning the outcome instead of waiting to be told the next step. Ask each person what they want to be known for and start there.

What are the 7 basics of team leadership?

I don't teach a set of seven, so I won't invent one. What I would start with is a defined outcome for each role, training before expectations, a standard you correct and encourage, and a regular time to inspect. I also want a leader who can learn the language of each job they delegate.

When should I step in versus let my manager fail?

In my experience I step in when it will permanently hurt the business or hurt someone else's career. If it costs real money, hurts your culture, or could make a team member quit, step in. If it's a social media idea that might flop, I let them run it, because I could be wrong and everyone forgets a flopped post. I also teach the 1-3-1 rule: ask for the one problem that would solve about 80% of the rest, three possible solutions, and which one they would act on.