Doctors Kevin Mailo and Wing Lim join forces to talk about the “d word” that isn’t talked about enough: delegation. They lead a discussion explaining why we need to move away from assuming we know everything there is to know and instead embrace the expertise of others to achieve the best results. And how delegation is the key.
Dr. Mailo and Dr. Lim break down what can and can’t be delegated out. There are crucial tasks that only we can do and must continue doing, but there are plenty of other tasks we don’t need to be spending our personal resources on tending to. They talk about the difference between delegation and abdication because very different results emerge from adhering to the wrong one. Dr. Wing Lim shares a checklist on how to do delegation the best way, with clear instructions and expectations keeping everyone informed on their part of the equation. This is an episode that’s key to freeing up our time by ensuring that we do only those tasks which require us and that we responsibly delegate the tasks that don’t need our direct involvement.
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About Dr. Kevin Mailo:
Kevin is an emergency physician based out of Edmonton, Alberta. He is known for his highly engaging teaching style that breaks down complex topics into memorable experiences.
Kevin cares deeply about the long-term wellness of the medical profession and wants to see physicians and their families succeed personally and financially.
About Dr. Wing Lim:
Apart from his clinical & teaching roles, Wing has extensive experience in Practice Management and Business Development.
He is passionate about sharing his extensive knowledge & experience (both clinical & business) with others in various settings, from his clinic mentoring younger colleagues, to churches, senior groups, ethnic functions, radio broadcasts, retreats, seminars, and national conferences.
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Transcript
Dr. Kevin Mailo: Hi, I'm Doctor Kevin Mailo, one of the co-hosts of the Physician Empowerment podcast. At Physician Empowerment we're dedicated to improving the lives of Canadian physicians personally, professionally, and financially. If you're loving what you're listening to, let us know! We always want to hear your feedback. Connect with us. If you want to go further, we've got outstanding programing both in person and online so look us up. But regardless, we hope you really enjoy this episode.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: Hi. Uh, it's Kevin again on the Physician Empowerment podcast. And, of course, we've got Wing here joining us. And today's topic is very near and dear to my heart because it has taken me a long time. To develop this skill because I was very much in the micromanaging, do it yourself space. And it's been not only, I think for myself, you know, in terms of life being less stressful, but it's also been really a lot of fun because as you expand your network, you begin to broaden your horizons, see things through other people's eyes, and grow as a person. And what I'm getting at here, and I didn't use the D word yet, is delegation. And that's what's so powerful in improving our lives. So in an earlier episode on the podcast, we talked about time management. And one of the keys to time management is being able to either automate a task and streamline its process, or hand off to somebody that you trust, who maybe you've even invested some time in training up, let's say if it's a medical office assistant. So today, Wing is going to be exploring the power of delegation in our lives. Because again, you know, Wing, you've achieved so much in the space of real estate practice building while maintaining a robust and happy family life. And I would venture to guess a big part of that success has been through delegation.
Dr. Wing Lim: Yeah. Delegation doesn't come easy. So let's go deeper. And this one is not going to be a talk, Kevin and I, we're just going to chat on this. The delegation, I think we all talk about the D word, right, but deep down we don't want to. We really don't want to because we trust ourselves. Right? And this is a recurring theme at Physician Empowerment. The biggest enemy of freedom may be the guy in the mirror. Because we have so many years of education and processes and because lives are at stake. Mistakes are costly to other people and to yourself. So we tend to just do it, right, and they say, if you want to do it right, do it yourself. And so years after years, post-graduate training, residency, one fellowship and all that, teaching you that you are it, you're the expert. And so you have to do it right. And because of that, we have this intrinsic trust in ourselves. And some of us become very egotistical, giant ego, and even the God-like syndrome. Right? And we don't trust anyone. So as a result, it's very difficult for medical professionals to actually delegate. I'll give you an example. There are people who would rather take the, I have colleagues that would take the blood pressure themselves, like on a patient, rather than trusting a medical staff to do it. Why do you have to do that? Right? Because even blood pressure, you know, there's a good way and bad way to do it. Okay, I understand there's some procedures you cannot delegate out, but more and more we're team based. So I think the first thing to fight is this intrinsic bend towards just trusting yourself and not trusting others because I'm smart, therefore everybody else is dumb. So therefore I don't want to water down my quality. So I don't want to delegate to you.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: And let me just interrupt there and say like, this is not about delegating the crucial tasks, right? You know, like if you're a surgeon, you know, and you're elbow deep in somebody's abdomen, you really want to make sure that it's done right. That's where you want to focus your energy is on those crucial, crucial tasks, right? I mean, I do the same thing in the ER in the trauma bay, right? Like sitting at the airway, making sure it's done properly. Because that's the crucial task. But realize that delegation, and I'm just going to go on a little bit of a rant here, delegation is a resource saving measure for us, right? Because we only have so much concentration and intensity and focus. So do you want to dissipate that by like measuring every single one of your patients blood pressure, because you don't trust that somebody will put the automatic blood pressure cuff on properly on the arm?
Dr. Wing Lim: Exactly.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: Right? Like there has to be some limits here because if you're so focused on that, are you really hearing the history? Do you know what I mean? Or if you are doing your own taxes because you don't want to pay an accountant, or you're doing your own bookkeeping, are you missing the big picture on high level tax planning that could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars to you. Right? So there is a limit to how much attention and focus we can bring in, right? Like I can't sit there and, you know, make sure every IV that, you know, my nursing staff in the department are doing it, doing it perfectly right. Like, no, I have to sit there and be able to focus on the things that no one else can do but me and then, and be comfortable delegating and trusting my team. So that's a personal growth thing, but don't feel bad about the parts that you need to micromanage in your life. By all means do it. You can't outsource personal relationships and friendships, but you want to be present for those.
Dr. Wing Lim: Exactly. So you hit it right on the nose there, Kevin. So the paradigm here is this: only do what only you can do. That's the whole thing about delegation. Only do what only you can do. You're the only one that could be your significant other's significant other, spouse, or whatever you want to call it. You're the only dad or mom your kids have, right? You cannot delegate that out, right? When you have the chief surgeon, you have to do stuff that you have to do. But then everything else you should not do, right? It's like a flashlight versus a laser pen. Right? We all understand that, right? The point of focus is to just put everything out and just do only what you can, only you can do. And then, you know what? If you're a team lead in the department and your practice and your division, you know, what's the most scarce resource is a thing called thinking. Thinking--.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: -- but it's true--
Dr. Wing Lim: -- is a hard thing. Otherwise everybody will be doing it.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: It's very easy to do. And I think this segues nicely backwards to our earlier talk about time. I think it's very easy. Our minds like to get into that rut of, well, I want to focus on this one detail or task because it requires less mental energy.
Dr. Wing Lim: Mhm.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: When really, thinking, as Henry Ford said it, is the hardest job of all. And that requires some mental space. And to get that mental space, we need to delegate.
Dr. Wing Lim: Exactly. So you cannot rely on your allied professional that you delegate down to do that for you. Right? Otherwise they should be sitting in your chair. Then you need to be delegated the task and they need to do the thinking. So if you're a clinic owner, you need to absolutely do the thinking. If a department head, the list goes on and on, right? And so, yeah, so do only what you can do. And if we can chew on that and then just plan your life accordingly, your life would absolutely change and everybody around you would absolutely change. But for that to happen, to only do what you want to do, only you can do, that means you have to have the intrinsic trust in other people. And I tell people that I love to work with people smarter than me. I love to be the dumbest person in the room. I love to because then I gain a lot, right? So I have no background in architecture construction. When we built this 156 unit senior home, state of the art building that won an award, second in the world, I didn't even know that until we got the award. And who won the award? What we did collectively. But the designers did, and I found myself and my partners, this was my dream, right? And I sat in a room downtown Edmonton, top architect, or biggest architect firm in the nation, in the Edmonton branch and in there is like 15 engineers. And I look around. These guys are all very, very smart. I didn't even know there could be 15 engineers, different disciplines. They kept looking at me and my partners. What do you want? Right? So if the why is big enough, the how comes. And so once you delegate the people who are smart and I said I'm the dumbest person in this room. And time and time again and once you do the delegation, things get done despite of you. I love that, not because of me, but things got done in spite of me, right? And then big things could happen. So that's delegation. Okay. Let's talk about what delegation is not. Delegation is not abdication. Okay, let me repeat. Delegation is not abdication. And why would you say that? Because that's the common mistake we have. And the top, top, top example is in finance. Okay, I just had a chat with one of our Physician Empowerment Masterclass attendees and this professional, we're talking about this application that we give our money to these transaction based, commission based people that set their financial advisors. And meanwhile, he's selling us products, right? Sorry. They are selling us products and they're going to help you be financially free. Maybe, maybe, maybe maybe not.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: I don't know, I don't know.
Dr. Wing Lim: What's assured is their commission, not your future. Right? And so this abdication just because oh, because you said you're good. I just give it to you. Give my whole life hard earned money to you. That's your abdication, right?
Dr. Kevin Mailo: I mean, but I mean, you can also go the other way. I mean, you can blindly buy the market on a broad spread ETF and not pay attention to what, not that you want to time the market, but you want to time your life around the market like, you know, and ask yourself, am I ready to fall off the cliff 12 months before retirement if the market crashes, you know? And again, you can't just blindly trust a person or a process and say, well, that's good enough. You do have to, you have to manage your managers. I think that's what we teach at the course.
Dr. Wing Lim: Another example. There's lots of horror story examples. We're just looking at a building in our city that was owned by a physician that went into receivership. Right.? And this dude trust to somebody else who is the expert who's going to run the whole thing. And I drove by that plaza, that plaza is full. It's hard to find parking. How does somebody run it down to the ground? Right? And now it's in judicial sale. And this, unfortunately, this guy's in deep trouble now. And so if you think, oh, real estate is going to, or whatever, you know, you pick a asset class, it's going to make me rich. No it doesn't. And unless you have a good management team, if you just blindly trust somebody, just abdicated your future, they're going to bite you back in the butt. Right? So that's a sobering example.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: And I think the other reflection here is like a lot of the time when we've done something ourselves for many years, we unconsciously know all the ins and outs of it. We unconsciously know all the ins and outs of it, and so there has to be some patience when we're working with somebody and teaching them and some humility. Right? And put yourself in their shoes and remember when you were learning that process and that thing. And so just pause, put the time in and and make sure that they understand and make sure you understand their position as somebody new to this task. And so check your assumptions before you begin to sit down and have that instructions conversation with the person that you're about to delegate to.
Dr. Wing Lim: Right. And then they don't perform well and you give them heck. You know what? You should give yourself heck, right? I'm just training a new staff, a highly reliable staff just left for a higher-paid position in the hospital. Right. We do that, lose staff all the time, right? We start with new and there's a lot of assumptions. So I got angry that why is this not done? Because they're new. I didn't teach them. Right? Next thing is you need to give a clear time frame. The song I love you tomorrow, you're just a day away. It keeps postponing tomorrow. If there's no clear time frame, don't expect to get it done. And relationships get tarnished, work relationships, even personal relationships get tarnished because you always say that I'm going to do it when. Right? So if you don't have a time frame, don't expect it to be done in a hurried manner. And then there has to be measurable outcomes. If there are no measurable outcomes, it's just a bunch of warm fuzzies. Sorry. It has to be measured. If you cannot measure it, it cannot be done. There has to be accountability. So you give the task to somebody. Is that accountable? Okay, let's jump from clinical practice to finance again. I have a colleague that was told by his wealth manager, doctor in the last 20 years, in the stock portfolio, you earn 20% a year for the last ten years. Is that even possible? Right. And the only reason, if you take that up...
Dr. Kevin Mailo: Of course, I know where this is going.
Dr. Wing Lim: It's the annual contribution. Then you had this was making money every year. Right?
Dr. Kevin Mailo: Yeah.
Dr. Wing Lim: Right. And there's no accountability because you just believe them, right? Whatever they say. And same, we delegate a task to the accountant. Like I do, I trust my accountant, but I don't run business decisions with my accountant. My accountant is not the guy who makes that business decision. He makes accounting decision. Right? So the accountability structure has to be well defined, and they have to be accountable to you or somebody else on something that is measurable. That's true.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Dr. Wing Lim: Final thing is consequence. If you let people do something where whether they do or not, there's no consequence, you have endorsed the non-performance. So somebody says if you, if your staff or whoever you trust in your team, they can get away with XYZ. And they keep getting, they will continue to get away, because you blessed it. You condone it. There has to be consequences. Yay or nay, right? Good or bad. So these are some of the guardrails that is supposed to be intrinsic. But you know what, I don't think it's really common knowledge. And while talking about it, I reminded myself 3 or 4 things that, oh shoot, I didn't follow what I preached. Right? This is just reminder for all of us that to be effective, you need team. And to have effective team, you need to have this delegation process.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: I love it. I love it.
Dr. Wing Lim: Right. And then to have a systematic thing. If you do this together as a systematic process that's at different level, right. Delegation was just talking about this act of delegating. But then you still, somebody still need to create the architecture, the whole conveyor belt, the whole, what do you call that, assembly line. Right? And A on B fold on C glue on D and you achieve E. Like so this has to be processed, and that's called systemization which is a different talk altogether. But this is really important for us to understand that to achieve more than what you can achieve by yourself, you got to let go of this ego thing, trust somebody. But with criteria.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: And again this is people skills. This is absolutely people skills and I think that's so important. Right? Not only the words you choose, the time frames you give the person you're delegating to, how you provide feedback, how you discuss consequences or outcomes, all of this is people skills, right. And again this is the barrier to delegating because you go oh I'm not looking forward to this conversation. Maybe I'll just do it myself. But again, that's not how we grow as individuals. When we grow as individuals personally, professionally, financially, it's because we're able to have those tough conversations, but just have it with yourself in the mirror before you go in there. And again, emphasize to yourself that this is a people skill. This isn't about the given task or your process or anything more than, it is a people skill.
Dr. Wing Lim: Right. And it's to empower your team up to their capacity. So we have, I've joined a practice management course a long time ago and that's a different talk as well. But basically what we learned is a doctor should never do a nurse's job, RN should not do LPNs job, LPNs should not do MAs job, MAs should not do a receptionist job, receptionist shouldn't do a janitorial job. But you can see all this in every clinic, every department, right? It's all screwed up. I was a patient once a few years ago, and I found a Sunday morning there's a RN changing bed sheets. I thought, why do you need to do that? Right? That's an absolute waste of public resource. And so if we understand that process we would be a lot more effective.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: I'll just chime in with a few high level practical points about delegation. And this applies, because delegation can be done in our personal life and professional life. You know, do you change the oil on your vehicle or you take it into the shop to get it done? Do you mow your own lawn or do you hire it out? And so the first sort of matrix that I get people to look through, the first lens actually, is probably a better description, the first lens I get when I teach this topic at our conference or in the Masterclasses, is the first thing you want to look through is your hourly rate. Know how much per hour you make gross. And then net after overhead. And remember, when you're calculating your hourly rate, it is not just time in front of patients. It is administrative work, CME, emails, charting, whatever have you. It could even include your commute. Right? So understand what your hourly rate is. And I think unfortunately when you add up all of the unpaid things you do as a doctor, your hourly rate plummets and it's pretty depressing. Nonetheless, go through the exercise. I encourage everybody to do it. I know my hourly rate. And so number one is know your hourly rate because it allows you to make decisions on how much you're going to pay somebody to do something, right? And remember there are tax consequences. So if it's a corporate expense then it's a corporate expense. And you're more tolerant of, you know, that higher hourly rate to bring in a great professional, for instance, a great accountant or a great bookkeeper.
Dr. Wing Lim: Exactly.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: These people that help you build wealth. And then in your personal life, remember, it's after tax dollars, so you probably don't want to hold, you don't want to delegate to Skip the Dishes every night. Put it that way. You really don't. And or, you know, Uber Eats or whoever else is out there, right? Like you actually have to be very mindful of the after tax cost to yourself before you delegate. The other lens that I get people to look through, you know, we talk about this in an earlier episode, is what is crucial and cannot be delegated. That list is actually very short in our personal and professional lives. But don't delegate away the things that are actually going to matter in your life, whether it's driving your kids to soccer, spending time with your spouse or partner, even if it means taking him or her to the airport, right? Yeah, could you delegate a cab? But what about that moment that you could have shared together? Be mindful in delegation. This is, I hate the word efficiency in our lives, especially in our personal lives. I remember coming across, I remember I met an ophthalmologist once who was outstanding, said be efficient with things, not with people.
Dr. Wing Lim: Mhm. Wow.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: Like ideally if you have done time management and delegation properly, you should have lots of like free moments where you don't have to be anywhere else but enjoying that moment, right? Whether it's reading a book, spending time with family or friends, going for a walk, whatever, like or even just be free to like have like a day that just goes all over the place. But you didn't have to do anything else in your life because it was all properly delegated and you created that space. That's a gift to you. That is so powerful. And so that again is the next criteria that I ask people to use as a lens is, is this making my life happier? Like for instance I changed the oil on my truck with my kids because I like that time with my son and at times it's been three generations of us doing it just to teach and bond. I would never delegate that out. Right? That's just an example from my personal life. So try to be mindful and reflective of where you are delegating and delegate the things but don't delegate people. Don't be efficient with the people that matter in your life. And don't even be efficient with yourself. Like, you know, create downtime for yourself.
Dr. Wing Lim: Mhm.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: So that you can invest in yourself. So those are, those are again my reflections, you know having maybe learned the hard way about either under delegating or over delegating, frankly. There is a balance.
Dr. Wing Lim: Exactly.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: Okay. Maybe we'll wrap it up. Again that was another great one. I love, I love these topics because these are the things again that we all struggle with but don't even have a framework to talk about it or think about it. But if you can effectively delegate in your personal and professional life, you can go anywhere and build anything you want. That's a key.
Dr. Wing Lim: And to earn back the freedom.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: Oh goodness. The freedom's everything, honestly.
Dr. Wing Lim: Mhm. Yeah.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: Honestly I look at my, I look at my own teenagers living that free life and I'm deeply envious of their time richness.
Dr. Wing Lim: Exactly.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: You know?
Dr. Wing Lim: No kidding.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: Not all the drama of being a teenager. Not all the drama of being a teenager, but certainly envious of that, the wealth of time that they have compared to the rest of us who are so busy and overscheduled.
Dr. Wing Lim: Mhm. Yeah.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: All right. All right. Let's wrap this one up. Thank you.
Dr. Wing Lim: Yeah okay. Thank you everyone.
Dr. Kevin Mailo: Thank you so much for listening to the Physician Empowerment podcast. If you're ready to take those next steps in transforming your practice, finances, or personal well-being, then come and join us at PhysEmpowerment.ca - P H Y S Empowerment dot ca - to learn more about how we can help. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd really appreciate it if you would share our podcast with a colleague or friend and head over to Apple Podcasts to give us a five star rating and review. If you've got feedback, questions or suggestions for future episode topics, we'd love to hear from you. If you want to join us and be interviewed and share some of your story, we'd absolutely love that as well. Please send me an email at KMailo@PhysEmpowerment.ca. Thank you again for listening. Bye.
