If you’ve ever told a boss, a mentor or a well-meaning colleague that you’re overloaded, there’s a fair chance someone has suggested you delegate more. It’s reasonable advice, and you may well have done it already, at least on paper.
The work has been handed over, someone else’s name is against it, but somehow you’re still reviewing each draft and still the one people come to with the difficult questions. The moment there’s an issue, it ends up back on your desk, perhaps because it felt quicker, or because you could see exactly how to fix it.
Delegation is often offered as the answer to overload – if only it were that simple.
More than a time problem
The capacity side is probably the obvious one. If you want more time for strategic thinking, for networking, for thinking about your own career, or simply for a working week that’s a bit more sustainable, something has to come off your plate, and handing work over only helps if it stays handed over.
Then there’s what it means for your progression. Being dependable, knowing the detail, holding high standards and being the person who can sort things out have probably served you very well, and they’re still valuable. At a more senior level, though, the job increasingly becomes about building capability through other people rather than demonstrating how much you can personally deliver, and those same strengths can make letting go harder than it needs to be.
My own delegation skills grew most during the periods when I had very little choice in the matter. A senior role and three young children meant that if I was going to make a success of it, I couldn’t hold onto everything myself, and learning to let go properly really wasn’t optional. I definitely didn’t always get it right, and there were certainly times I created bottlenecks of my own. Looking back, though, some of what I’m proudest of from those years is watching people in that team grow into much bigger things, and seeing how far several of them have gone since.
Why we hold on
When people tell me why they’re holding on to something, the reasons tend to fall into a handful of patterns, and these are the ones I see most often in my coaching and mentoring. To find useful ways forward, it can help to work out which are most yours – many of us have multiple answers here:
◆ Control or perfectionism – a desire for certainty, or for things done to your own standards
◆ Trust and confidence – real or perceived gaps in someone else’s capability
◆ Time and effort – it feels quicker to do it yourself
◆ Power and accountability – you can hand over the responsibility, and still be the one answerable for the outcome
◆ Processes and expectations – it feels risky when the system around the work isn’t clear
◆ Identity and enjoyment – you like the work, you’re good at it, and it’s what you’ve been known for
With the first two especially, it can help to push a little further. Are you worried about the quality of the outcome, or about someone getting there differently from how you would? Is there a real gap that needs more support, or have you not yet given them the chance to show what they can do? Are you expecting someone to do it to your standards, or to the standard the task actually requires – what is ‘good enough’ here?
It isn’t a yes or no
We can be a bit binary about delegation – something is either delegated or it isn’t. In practice it can help to think through the various stages. One model I find helpful is Delegation Poker, created by Jurgen Appelo as part of Management 3.0, which sets out seven levels running from Tell, where you decide, through Sell, Consult, Agree, Advise and Inquire, to Delegate, where the other person fully owns it.
There may be as much to gain from delegating more deeply as from delegating more widely. Rather than looking for something new to hand over, the biggest benefit may be giving someone more autonomy over work they already own, perhaps moving from consulting them before you decide to advising them while they decide.
Going down the stairs, and back up again
I tend to picture those seven levels of delegation as a staircase with telling at the bottom and full delegation at the top. What often gets less attention is how well we move down the levels and then back up again.
Stepping down a level when an issue comes up is often exactly the right call. Where we tend to create limitations, for the people we’ve delegated to and for ourselves, is in not stepping back up a level again, or not doing so quickly or intentionally enough.
I was working with a leader recently who was letting their team run with proposal responses. They’d done well at getting to the point of advising or inquiring rather than directing, but when they saw something they didn’t like they’d step straight back to telling, and then stay there, telling all the way to the deadline. Sometimes, if someone really isn’t coping or isn’t getting it, that’s necessary. Other times we simply haven’t recognised that we’ve held onto control for longer than necessary, and the team loses the room to grow while we lose the time we were trying to free up. It can be a useful habit to notice when you’ve stepped down, and then to set intent and criteria about when to step back up.
Moving through the levels gets a lot easier when the support around the delegation is working. Does the person have real ownership and clarity about who decides what? Are you staying close enough to support their thinking without taking back control? Are you giving feedback that turns the experience into learning? When that’s in place, capability grows and your involvement hopefully reduces over time.
Where technique runs out
I’m not implying here that every workload problem can be delegated away. Some delegation barriers are about technique, but some of course are structural. If handing work over would simply overload a team that’s already stretched, that’s a team design or capacity issue, and it needs a different conversation about workload, goals or budget. Getting better at the technique can make those conversations easier, because you’re clearer about what’s genuinely structural.
If there’s something you’ve delegated that’s still taking more of your time than it should, it might be worth asking where you are on the staircase with it right now, and whether you’re over-holding or under-supporting.
If you’re finding delegation difficult, whether you’re stepping into a bigger role or trying to make your current one more sustainable, I’m always happy to talk it through and see if I might be able to help. You’re welcome to email me or book a call.
For more on setting delegation up well, you might find The Art of Letting Go useful. If perfectionism or a need for control feels familiar, Getting in Your Own Way looks more broadly at patterns that can limit career progress. If the bigger issue is a workload that never seems to ease, Beyond Balance considers what happens when being too busy becomes the norm.