For more than 20 years in leadership, I have heard, repeatedly, “great leaders delegate.”
It’s often presented as a universal truth, a core competency, almost a necessary imperative.
But after two decades leading teams of different sizes, indifferent sectors, here’s my honest reflection, delegation in leadership is overrated.
In my perspective the real work of leadership starts long before delegating anything.
It begins with recruitment and clarity.
In recruiting, start with roles, responsibilities, and clear expectations.
When people know exactly what they are responsible for, what they own, what success looks like, and how decisions get made, they don’t need tasks assigned to them on a daily basis.
A hire that is resourceful and proactive does not need to wait for explicit direction.
They don’t waste time, they simply start learning, practicing and working.
Clear roles indicating who does what creates a form of natural work assignments.
It should not feel like a leader passing off work they don’twant to do, it should reflect what a person was hired to do and what they want to do.
A hire that chooses the work, job, position, title and yes, pay, may naturally take ownership and not need to be assigned.
In this sense, autonomy gives room for people to thrive, they have purpose and interest and the tools, training and support to get things done and most importantly, have success.
When staff truly own their work, they have autonomy and delegation becomes less important if not obsolete.
Building a work environment around autonomy is much moresustainable rather than an environment around delegation which in my view is a short-term, short-sighted tactic.
That said, every work environment will face new work and for that, a framework is needed rather than a top-down assignment.
I will even go as far to say that a work environment whereby new work needs to be assigned by a specific person at the top to a specific person at a different level might indicate an environment where trust is lacking.
Strong teams handle new work in an objective and constructive manner, even if they don’t all agree.
First, there needs to be agreement that the nature of the work objectively falls on the team.
Next, that the work is important to the operations, clients and even people inside and outside of the organization. It might even be urgent and at minimum important.
Then, is there a more natural position place for the work based on its nature and the various roles on the team, not looking at names of people.
Is the capacity there for the given person in the role that links with the nature of the work.
Who will also learn the work and be cross-trained, and the leader can also be 2nd at being cross-trained.
What does success look like, what does failure look like?
If those pieces are in place, new work finds the right home more readily and without substantial derailing conflict.
Moreover, there is a subtle risk in over-celebrating delegation, leaders can drift into a pattern of assigning work they don’t want to do.
That’s where micromanagement creeps in.
It can also be a factor of the leaders not knowing how to do the work and not want to admit it to anyone.
To me, you can’t support, coach, or mentor effectively if you’ve never done the job yourself.
Leaders don’t have to do the work every day. But they do need to understand it at minimum.
So, the question is, do al leaders really need to delegateon a regular and consistent bases to be effective?
Sometimes, maybe, all the time, no.
Delegating isn’t the hallmark of leadership many make it out to be.
What matters more is hiring for skills, abilities, qualification and interest in the role.
Setting and clarifying expectations early and clarifying more if and when necessary.
Building trust and respect from the start.
Having agreed upon frameworks or systems.
Leaders need to understand the work even if they don’t do the work everyday.
Effective leadership isn’t about how many tasks you passoff. It’s about how you build, support, train the team so that they don’t need constant delegation to operate.
Would you be surprised to hear I have not delegated a lot in my two decades in leadership, mainly because I did not need to.
Yes, I was one of the lucky ones, I did not need to delegate this, that, and the other thing.