Are you a leader who is struggling to delegate?
It's one of the most common problems I see, and it doesn't announce itself as a problem. It feels like diligence. It feels like standards.
But if you can't delegate, you hold back the growth of your team and your own growth as a leader. And if you refuse to let go, you stay in doing mode. Permanently. You will be a wonderful contributor and a poor leader.
Here's what leaders who struggle with delegation tend to say:
"But I can do it better."
"But I can do it faster."
And they're right. After all, they have far more experience doing these tasks than the people they'd be handing them to. Being right about that is exactly why this is so hard to fix.
How did you get good?
When a leader tells me they can do it better, I ask them to think about their own learning.
Were you as good at your job when you started as you are today? Did you get here by being brilliant on day one, or were you developed?
Almost always, someone gave you room. A manager handed you something you weren't ready for, let you work through it, and coached you when it went sideways. You didn't earn that opportunity by already being capable. You became capable because someone gave you the opportunity.
That's the job in front of you now. Not to do the work better than your team can. To give them the same thing you were given.
A lesson from my own kitchen
When my kids were babies, I used to spoon-feed them.
Then they learned to hold the spoon, and they wanted to feed themselves. It was a horrible mess. Food everywhere, half of it on the floor, most of it taking three times as long as it would have if I'd just done it.
I could have done it better. I could have done it faster. I absolutely could have kept feeding them.
But it was important to me that they learn to feed themselves. So we did the messy version, over and over, with encouragement. And over time they got better. Today they feed themselves just as well as I ever could.
It's a very basic example. That's why it works. The principle is the same with your team, and the mess is the price of the outcome. You don't get people who can do the work without also getting the period where they can't.
My own two hours
I'll give you my own business version of this. For years, I spent two hours every week building a single report.
As my responsibilities increased, that report kept showing up on my calendar. Every week I'd think I should delegate it, and every week I'd do it myself instead. It was easier to just do it than to feel like I was falling behind. So I kept the two hours and kept telling myself I'd deal with it later.
Eventually I took a hard look at how I was spending my time and decided I needed to be more relentless about freeing up the things I should not have been doing anymore. So I trained someone else to run the report. They made mistakes for the first few weeks, and I coached them through it.
Now the report lands in my inbox every week, ready to go. I still read it closely, because I care about what it says. I just don't build it anymore.
Two hours a week, back in my calendar. And the report is better than it was when I was the only person who could produce it.
What it costs you to hold on
Here's what's actually happening when a leader won't let go:
Your team stays dependent on you. Nobody develops past their current level, because the work that would stretch them is still sitting on your desk. Your strategy work waits for the next free slot in your week, which means it competes with everything urgent and usually loses. And you become the ceiling on your own business, because nothing grows past your personal capacity.
None of that shows up in this quarter's numbers. That's what makes it so easy to keep doing.
But it does show up over time. Gallup studied 143 CEOs from the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. Only 1 in 4 were strong delegators. The ones who were ran companies with 33% more revenue on average.
If delegation is hard for you, you're in the majority. But the majority isn't where the growth is.
Delegation is slow at first. Things take longer, and they get done worse than you would have done them. That isn't failure. That's the tuition. It's the only way you get to stop being the bottleneck.
The short version
Your role isn't to be the best person for every piece of work.
The leaders who built you gave you room to become good at things you weren't good at yet. That's now your job, and it's what turns a capable contributor into a leader with a team that can carry the work.
You'll only ever get to work on the strategic side of the business if you're willing to tolerate the messy middle.
Your first delegation
So let's start it now.
What is the one thing in your calendar this week that you keep doing, and know you should delegate?
Write it down, and then go do something about it. Pick the person, set the conversation, get it off your plate. That's the whole point of this piece.
And hit reply to tell me what it was. I read every one, and I'd like to know what you're holding onto.
Graham Acreman
Business Coach & Strategic Advisor
grahamacreman.com