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Business works because of people.
People have ideas, form decisions, build products, make deals, and count money. Some people specialize in finding, hiring, and growing other people. Lining those people up against a strategy is the path to revenue, scale, and relevance.
All to sell stuff.
Over centuries, humans have figured out how to bring this together—to lead people and manage work. Pharoes handed administrative duties to Viziers. Roman rulers gave authority to Governors in far-flung corners of the empire. They had a word for it; in Latin, delegare: to appoint authority. Feudal monarchs delegated land and authority to Lords, who in turn delegated to vassals in exchange for military service and loyalty.
When Adam Smith proposed a division of labor, breaking down large jobs into smaller tasks, he saw that delegation fueled the Industrial Revolution. Delegation—giving someone the choice, agency, and autonomy to complete tasks or make decisions on your behalf—makes the world go round.
But what if it doesn’t?
Without delegation to grease the gears of business, work gums up. Without delegation, you have frazzled leaders, team members twiddling thumbs, bottlenecks, slow progress, increased errors—in short, increased bureaucracy, and a lack of speed.
In his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Dan Pink argues that traditional rewards—money, and bonuses—are table stakes in the motivation game. What ups the ante is autonomy—the desire to direct our own lives, mastery—the urge to get better at something, and purpose—the need to find meaning in our work.
Drive and delegation go hand in hand.
Delegation inherently gives aligned autonomy—team members have the intrinsic motivation of control over their own tasks; leaders have alignment against the greater goals.
Delegation allows team members to take on new tests of skill and strive for mastery. Work without challenge is dull; challenge allows growth. Challenging work continuously improves the capability of your team.
Delegation helps people connect to purpose. They feel trusted. Shared context and meaningful tasks allow people to see the impact of their work and know their contributions matter.
For first-time leaders and even experienced executives, delegation can be difficult. There are many reasons, some based on personal factors, some systemic, and some practical.
Personal factors: Individually, we fear loss of control or may have a streak of perfectionism. We may resist delegation—as ‘doing’ is wrapped up in our identity; we’re emotionally invested in specific tasks, or we believe ourselves to be the ‘go-to’ for that type of work and don’t want to give it up.
Systemic barriers: These may be more perceived than real. Functionally, we may lack trust in the team’s abilities or want to maintain control of key relationships in the organization. Strategically, we may worry that delegation will further misalignment or that a delegate’s lack of context will hamper execution. Operational factors may hinder delegation. Cultural norms around hierarchy and bureaucracy, or misaligned incentives.
Practical issues: These largely stem from poor prioritization, poor communication, and large backlogs of work. Time shrinks. Work becomes urgent and overwhelming. Everyone, eventually, prioritizes, but without clear goals (OKRs), inefficiencies build up. Team members pick and choose their own work, work in a fire-fighting mode, or a last-in, first-out system.
Personal factors
Systemic barriers
Practical issues
If you don’t delegate effectively, one or more of these reasons is in play, masquerading with the thought, “It’s easier to do it myself.” The non-delegators may recognize themselves once they recognize their other lament, “I have no time to do anything.”
The result: a team optimized around you rather than an optimized team.
What can you—practically—do to achieve delegation mastery? to move from frazzled to focused, twiddling thumbs to taking action, bottlenecks to breakthroughs, slow to swift, and from increased errors to increased execution?
Here are six practices to try on for size.
The goal with all of these is to drive scale and speed in what you do and remove yourself as a bottleneck.
Here, you're likely tackling a fear of losing control and a streak of perfectionism. This is something I struggle with. It’s not uncommon to think others can’t or won’t meet your standards or that only you can do the job right.
Start small with low-risk tasks. Delegate a specific, non-critical, low stakes, task to a team member, something routine or administrative. Make this a weekly practice. Every week, choose a different small task to delegate, with the reminder that the goal is progress, not perfection.
Set clear standards and step back. If you choose a task that is slightly more significant, get clear on the outcome and any critical standards that must be met. Take the time to communicate those standards and outcomes, and schedule a midway check-in to ensure alignment. Remember that’s an opportunity for you to teach and offer guidance, not micromanage.
It’s a hard message to hear, but you’re training yourself as much as you’re training the team.
If you’re not sure of your team’s abilities, or you worry that delegation will lead to poor outcomes, you need to let go.
Assign a low-risk project. It might be managing a recurring process or an upcoming event. Make it a habit to make sure you’re delegating a couple of these low-risk projects every month. As above, you’re clear on outcomes and standards, and stepping back. Learn from the project as well. Conduct retrospectives, where team members are encouraged to share their perspectives, what they learned, and what they want to work on for next time.
It could be the relationship you’re afraid to let go of, not the work.
Invite a team member to a key meeting. In the beginning, this could be just to observe the dynamics between different stakeholders and a deeper context around their work. You might want to add your team member’s involvement—ask for their point of view or contribution. Most importantly, debrief with them after to provide the subtext and political nuances.
The goal is to build your comfort with your team’s comfort level—making sure they can step in on your behalf.
In any organization, the higher you climb, the broader your view becomes. A CEO will naturally see things differently from a customer service rep. It’s this divergence in perspective that stymies delegation. On one hand, you have the “bigger picture” and “strategic context;” on the other, you have the “technical expertise” and “day-to-day realities."
It’s not that one perspective is more important or valid than the other; both are essential to success. However, the CEO’s viewpoint is perceived as more critical, leading to concerns that subordinates lack the necessary strategic context to make critical decisions.
This perspective gap can make leaders hesitant to delegate, fearing that team members lack the necessary political insight or strategic understanding, all adding to the bottleneck and bureaucracy.
Share the strategic context. This could be a briefing document or briefing session. Either way, it includes the strategic objectives around the work, context, social dynamics, and political nuances. Share the interests and agendas of different stakeholders, the optics around the situation, as well as any potential landmines to avoid.
Make sure that the briefing is not a one-time deal but an ongoing conversation with your team.
Leading is not parenting. It’s not a leader's job to shield team members from the political realities of a job but to educate them on it.
If you’re emotionally invested in specific jobs, it’s hard to let go. For me, that’s creative and strategic processes. Whatever it is that you are attached to—even if you see it as integral to who you are—delegation means letting go.
Identify what you typically hold onto. List them. They probably align with your strengths and interests, or you see them as critical to your role. Find a trusted team member, and delegate one of those jobs to them.
At the beginning, you may collaborate on the work. Later, you may allow them to run with it. Work with them one-on-one to talk about “why it's good”—a ritual that looks at the work and how to improve—build a shared understanding of standards and what good looks like.
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it’s faster to do something yourself rather than taking the time to teach someone else. That’s short-term, tactical thinking. When everything is on fire, work is overwhelming; it can feel impossible to find the time to delegate.
Use OKRs to align and prioritize. Clear goals define what success looks like. The team is aligned; everyone understands the most important priorities and how their work ladders up to those goals. Discuss them frequently. Align all work to your OKRs.
Every year, set your OKRs. Every quarter, adjust them. Every week, prioritize and delegate tasks that move you toward those goals.
Create patterns of work. Every job has recurring tasks, routines, and standard operating procedures. Look out for them. Make it your job to build patterns for the team, or better yet, delegate that to a trusted team member. Build guidelines, templates, and checklists to support the work and increase the flow and quality of work through the team.
Your job is to build systems, not bottlenecks, and create scale.
Hubs and spokes are great for wheels but terrible for teams. In teams, hubs—leaders—become natural bottlenecks for centralized decision-making and a hurdle slowing execution. Everything must pass through the leader, reducing the capacity of the team to act.
For the leader, naturally in the center of the action and privy to flows of information, it feels like they are running at max capacity. But in reality, the team’s performance is sub-optimal.
Decentralizing authority—delegating—allows team members to take action without seeking prior approval. It frees you from the daily grind of decision-making, soothing the feeling of “herding cats.” This leads to faster execution, increased innovation, and a more engaged team.
Autonomy and the ability to operate without constant oversight are a characteristic of a high-performing team.
Invest time in coaching. Set aside a specific time each week to coach team members on tasks. Teach. This is an investment in efficiency. It’s an investment in the next generation of leaders. While it might take more time upfront, it pays dividends in the long run.
Align to and run to OKRs. Clear goals, and constant communication around those goals, allow the team to operate more independently. In staff meetings, make sure what you’re working on is clearly aligned against those goals, and use OKRs as tie-breakers in prioritization decisions. When everyone understands how their work aligns with OKRs, daily tasks become more meaningful, driving motivation and accountability across the team.
Constantly raise standards. A leader’s job is to set the tone, connect the dots, and push. The easiest way to push is to raise standards. Set challenging but realistic deadlines. Communicate new expectations clearly, and regularly check in when you are stretching the team to higher standards.
Move from being a bottleneck to a springboard for scale.
Gavin McMahon is a founder and Chief Content Officer for fassforward consulting group. He leads Learning Design and Product development across fassforward’s range of services. This crosses diverse topics, including Leadership, Culture, Decision-making, Information design, Storytelling, and Customer Experience. He is also a contributor to Forbes Business Council.
Eugene Yoon is a graphic designer and illustrator at fassforward. She is a crafter of Visual Logic. Eugene is multifaceted and works on various types of projects, including but not limited to product design, UX and web design, data visualization, print design, advertising, and presentation design.
