When delegation feels hard

How do you feel about delegating? It’s something that comes up a lot with the leaders I coach, particularly when they’re new in role.

Paul*, a recently promoted Finance Director I worked with, is a good example. Stepping into the FD role, he felt overwhelmed by the volume of work. His tendency to people-please didn’t help. He found it hard to say no to requests, especially from senior stakeholders, but he also didn’t want to burden his team – they already seemed really busy.

When Paul did delegate, his team seldom delivered to the standard and timing he needed. So he ended up stressed out and finishing the work himself.

Though he confessed to me that, “It takes so much time to delegate, I may as well do it myself. And honestly? I enjoy doing things that are familiar, that I know I can do. Plus I’m afraid that my team will make mistakes and it will reflect badly on me.”

You can’t do everything yourself anymore

Paul’s experience is so common. Like so many leaders, he’d been promoted because he knows his stuff, he solves problems and he gets stuff done.

But the exposure and demands that come with leadership mean he can no longer do everything himself. Even though he’s terrified of something going wrong and losing his reputation.

For leaders like Paul who’ve provided themselves on being a “good” manager – protecting their team and taking stuff on their own shoulders – delegation feels like a minefield.

It feels a fine line between holding people accountable and micromanaging. Between managing performance and keeping people motivated. Between empowering people and avoiding things going wrong.

Think of yourself as a conductor

I think stepping up to leadership is a bit like a musician becoming the conductor of an orchestra :

When you’re a musician, you’re playing the music you’ve been given. When you’re the conductor, you’re in charge of the music.

Let’s say you’re conducting a symphony. You decide how you want it to be played, the pace, the mood, the shape of the whole piece. Just like, as a leader, you have a vision and a strategy – or, at the very least, performance objectives.

You need all the musicians to be playing from the same music. Each instrumentalist – just like a team member – has their own part to play to deliver the performance whether they’re a violinist or a trombonist.

Maybe you have discussions with musicians in rehearsals about how to interpret the music, how to perform it. But, ultimately, the decision is yours – you’re the one who leads the musicians through the performance. Just like you lead your team to deliver business objectives.

If someone wasn’t playing the right music, you’d have a conversation with them, because you don’t want their behaviour to sabotage the end result. You wouldn’t leave them to it because you didn’t want to bother them, or pick up their instrument and try to play as well as conduct.

It’s the same when you don’t want to disturb team members because they seem busy, or they’re not performing to expectations.

Face the music

I realise leadership isn’t this cut and dried – sometimes you have to step in and get your hands dirty. But it can be easy to try to do too much yourself and let your team be busy being busy.

Unfortunately, that’s not going to allow you to make a real difference to your organisation, to shape and grow it, not just keep it going.

Here are some questions that might help you get clarity and make delegation work for you :

• What’s your purpose as a leader? What are you here to do? What do you need your team to be focussing on and how does that compare with reality?
• What are your rights as a leader? You’re accountable for delivering results through your team so what should you expect from them?
• What conversations do you want to have with your team? Time and again, I see that, when leaders involve and empower their team, they rise to the challenge.

Finally, I’d like to share a piece of inspiration from conductor and leadership expert, Benjamin Zander :

“It’s one of the characteristics of a leader that he not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he’s leading to realise whatever he’s dreaming. Imagine if Martin Luther King had said, ‘I have a dream. Of course, I’m not sure they’ll be up to it.’”

*Paul isn’t this leader’s real name, and the details of his situation have been altered slightly for confidentiality.