Micromanaging employees destroys trust, and delegating work effectively builds it. But delegate the wrong type of work (the wrong aspects of your portfolio) and you could end up diminishing your leadership credibility while simultaneously increasing the risk and liability parameters for yourself and your organization.
You already know this. Delegating work to employees is a leadership imperative. But what about not delegating work—not in the context of micromanaging instead of delegating, but in the context of not delegating because the tasks and projects are simply not appropriate assignments to delegate?
10 things too risky and too important to delegate.
Not everything can or should be delegated. Some of the tasks and responsibilities within your portfolio and area of authority are simply too risky and too important to hand over to another person to do.
The following kinds of duties tend to be included within the portfolio scope of managers, directors and executives because these are the responsibilities that often come down to judgement calls or setting examples and have potential for wide-ranging consequences and implications where the risk is deemed to outweigh the benefit.
In the regular course of operations—and due to the strategic, legal, financial or far-reaching implications of the work—executives and supervisors should avoid delegating these ten (10) sets of work responsibilities because the risks of doing so far outweigh the benefits.
- strategic thinking and planning (monthly, quarterly, annually)
- forming and outlining the company-wide vision, mission and direction
- defining strategic outcomes and imperatives
- high-level operational and financial decision making
- heavily weighted judgement calls and matters of strict confidential context
- building strategic alliances and collaborating with high-priority stakeholders, boards, commissions and key investors
- expanded scope and accountability for enterprise or system-wide parameters to include organizational structure, corporate investments, succession management, and standards for values and organizational culture
- high-level decision-making regarding worst-case scenarios and consequences
- protocols for handling and elevating matters of crisis, urgency and strategic priority
- engaging in moments of organizational celebration and team member accomplishments.
With these types of responsibilities, the consequences to strategy, finances or people, etc. will outweigh the benefits of using delegation as an employee and leadership development tool or as a way to lighten your load. Going beyond the list of ten, the key here is to resist the temptation to delegate when the task at hand requires
- your visible or intellectual involvement for public relations or to minimize legal, financial or HR risk.
- a level of decision making that only you can make
- your unqualified and visible support and planning
- corporate or organization-wide strategic alignment or structuring
- long-term planning or large financial commitments
- board-level or investor considerations and decision making
- you to champion an issue or create a company-wide sense of urgency on a matter
- you to be held personally accountable for the outcome(s)
If your absence or lack of engagement would send a negative message to stakeholders that could have a ripple effect on sales, policy or other enterprise-wide organizational matters, you want to collaborate rather than delegate.
Sometimes it’s better to collaborate instead of delegate.
When the work is such that you can foresee potential negative consequences would outweigh the benefits of delegation, you should instead take a collaborative, rather than a delegative, approach.
A collaborative approach means that you will establish an alliance or partnership to draft, produce or distribute high-quality outcomes. You can benefit from the insights, expertise and advice from others, but you won’t delegate the project.
Collaboration is a useful method for developing your high-performing employees for advanced roles. However, when the above (list of 10) responsibilities fall directly within the scope of your responsibilities, don’t simply delegate them away.
When you delegate effectively, you build strong bonds with your team.
Among other things, trust, confidence, commitment and engagement vastly improve. Not only does it become clear to your employees that you trust their skills and thinking abilities, your employees start to trust you more as well. The most important aspect of a high-performing team is trust.
Micromanagement diminishes it, and delegation increases it. You learn to let go more, and you learn to harness—and increasingly rely on—the brilliance of those with whom you regularly work.
Delegation is about assigning meaningful work to others whereby their own thinking, ideas and brilliance can shine through. When you delegate tasks, do so with the acceptance that you will grant the individual you delegate to a reasonable level of autonomy to think, create, decide and deliver on the projects and tasks that you delegate.
With this understanding, effective delegation means that after you discuss your desired or required outcomes and outline budget and deadline boundaries, you will indeed take a step back and let the other person design the path or action plan to achieve the defined outcomes that you’ve communicated.
Don’t delegate menial grunt work simply because you can.
Tedious and menial grunt work comes with every job at every organizational level. Yes, there tends to be less of it the higher you are within the organization, but every role has some, and it’s not appropriate to call it “delegating” when you’re just shoving your grunt work off on someone else because you can.
That’s not how to properly delegate work; that’s just dumping, and employees come to resent this method of delegation as it adds no value to their development and doesn’t expand their learning or enhance the skills they need to advance professionally.
Delegating is about giving your employees a time to learn, to grow, to shine and to expand while also helping to lighten your load and achieve organizational goals. It’s a mutually beneficial way to get important work done. When you assign your employees value-added tasks and assignments (beyond their normal/typical work demands) you are delegating.
Signs that you are delegating effectively.
When you delegate appropriate tasks and assignments, you improve trust, confidence, commitment and engagement among your employees and teams.
Still, delegating is an action that challenges many supervisors and managers. Many share that they struggle to know whom to delegate the work, when to delegate the work and exactly what kind of work to delegate in order to increase productivity, strengthen and develop their teams and achieve and sustain organizational effectiveness.
Delegating meaningful tasks and responsibilities to your team members is a leadership imperative. By virtue of having a supervisor who effectively delegates assignments, employee development occurs; leadership development occurs.
- You know you are delegating effectively when you observe your employees become better leaders, better thinkers and better project managers.
- You know you are delegating effectively when you assign employees meaningful work that adds value to the strategy, operations, sales, marketing, R&D, etc.
- You are delegating properly when you give your team or a team member a task that’s important for the project to be completed; important for the deliverables to be produced; important for the board and other stakeholders to review, etc.
When you delegate to employees, you should be giving them work that would ordinarily be on your plate—meaningful work that is in your portfolio.
Recommended reading:
How To Delegate Work To Employees: A Leadership Imperative
If You Do These 5 Things, It’s Obvious You Are A Micromanager
This Is The Phrase That Instantly Damages Your Leadership Integrity
This Is How To Be An Effective Decision Maker: A Leadership Imperative