Delegate don’t relegate

What proportion of leaders who you work with would you rate as good delegators? If it’s more than 50%, count yourself lucky. Here’s why:

A staggering 70% of leaders say they struggle with delegation, which would explain why 49% of employees say they have too little to do. Delegation is an exceptionally effective way to drive productivity, but one which is evidently being under-utilised to the point of negligence.

Defined as the act of empowering others, the key to delegation is to push responsibility down to the lowest level it can be done competently, and to pull people up to meet that challenge. This perpetually dynamic balancing act will ensure you are maximising the skills and experience of your people. And let’s face it, you’re already paying them, so you might as well get your money's worth, and in return give them more stimulating work. Everyone wins.

What’s the issue?

1. There’s a whole shopping list of reasons leaders don’t delegate, and nearly all of them are irrational. They include a loss of control, loss of influence, loss of relevance, and guilt.
2. There are 2 main reasons for giving work away:
   
   a) To empower staff, building their skills and experience, stretching their capabilities, developing them through the gift of higher tasks. In other words, making them more productive. This is delegation.
   
   b) To get rid of the boring adminny-type thankless time-sucking unglamorous tasks that exist in every job. As a consequence, the delegatee may then be taking on lower tasks than they’re already doing, so it’s sending them backwards. It’s anti-development, it’s contracting not stretching them, and it’s demoralising. What it’s certainly not doing is making the most of their abilities, and it’s not stretching them to develop.
   
   It’s not empowering, and by definition therefore, it’s not delegation. So let’s call it Relegation, because it feels like a demotion. You do it to make yourself more productive, but there’s a lot more of your team than there are you, and however important you are, the sum of your team’s productivity losses are always going to outweigh your personal gain.
   
   And having created this ‘boss & minion’ micro-culture in your team, you’ve just locked up a whole bunch of discretionary effort and sent the productivity dial in the wrong direction.

Activities to consider

1. Delegation frees you up to take on higher tasks, which will start to demonstrate your suitably for a higher role.
2. As your team achieves more with less oversight and becomes more self-managing, it’s a good reflection on you as their leader.
3. As your team and your remit grows, there comes a point at which there really aren’t any more hours in the day and night to keep holding on to everything, and you have to let go before you burn out.
4. Whatever your approach to sharing the work – understand that it is having a material effect on your team everyday, even though no-one's talking about it because everyone knows it’s just how you roll.
   
   – Delegation delivers discretionary effort.
   – Relegation results in resentment.
   – No-delegation means no development.
   – Delegation without care or control is abdication.
5. If you’re truly driven to raise productivity, then getting people to do more of what they’re already doing is a legitimate demand if they’re in cruise-control. However, they are limited by the level of work they’re doing and the hours you can reasonably expect of them. The only way to break through that ceiling is to give them higher tasks.
6. People who feel under-valued will leave. Or worse, they’ll stay and go toxic. Either way, you have to decide whether their poor performance is their fault or yours.
7. It all comes down to this: if you’re not a good delegator, you’re not a good leader.

Try this

Identify the one thing that’s most blocking you from delegating more and then put yourself out there beyond your comfort zone to unblock it. Delegate something reasonably safe – baby steps – that you haven’t yet.

At HPC, we developed Adaptability Based Leadership with the express purpose of raising productivity through more engaged, better led staff. If that approach resonates, contact me and let’s get you started on the next phase of your journey towards mastering leadership.