You know what it means to delegate; you've read all the books, got all the tools and could probably run a decent workshop on delegation (complete with a two-by-two matrix). And yet it's 9pm, there's a slide deck open in front of you that someone on your team was perfectly capable of building, and you're adjusting the font sizes.
If that sounds familiar, you're in good company. Most leaders I've worked with know exactly what they should hand over, but knowing it is not the same as actually doing it.
I don't think this is a skill problem, so another tool or another book won't help you make the change you're looking for. I think delegation is more often a safety problem. Handing something over puts something you care about at risk, your brain reads that as a threat, and doing it yourself is the quickest way to feel safe again.
Here's what that tends to sound like in your head.
It's quicker if I just do it
When it comes to delegation, "It's quicker if I just do it" is something I hear a lot. Our brains tend to look for the most energy-efficient way to operate (which is great, because you've got enough going on without needing to over-process every single little thing – thanks Brain!). So when you think "I'll just do it", your brain says "yes please, I love efficiency" and you get a little wave of relief and a sense of progress, until you're kicking yourself and wondering why you're adjusting font sizes again. For me this was rewording content after a designer had finished, because it felt easier than giving feedback and hoping it would be applied the way I'd pictured.
How often do you notice yourself doing something someone else could do because you think it's quicker? For the next few days just count how often you think "it's quicker if I just do it". Don't change anything yet, just build your awareness.
It's important so I should do it
Maybe there's something about a task that feels important to you, the stakes are high or you're under pressure, and you find yourself hanging onto the work. Under pressure your brain wants you to do whatever feels safest. It wants to protect you (thanks again, Brain!). David Rock's SCARF model (2008) suggests our brains scan social situations for threat and reward in five areas: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness. Handing over something that matters to you may threaten one (or more) of these areas.
So which is most at play for you? Is it status ("If someone else can do this, what value do I add?"), certainty ("What if they do it differently?"), autonomy ("Will I still get a say in how this is done?"), relatedness ("Will I still feel part of what the team is doing?") or fairness ("Is it fair to add this to their plate when they're already stretched?")? For me it was mostly certainty and a bit of status: I wanted to know the content design would be done well, because my name was on it.
But nobody does it quite like I do
There's also research suggesting that how powerful a manager feels shapes their willingness to share decisions (Haselhuhn, Wong & Ormiston, 2017). If you're a newly promoted leader, this might partly explain why you're holding onto work that should be handed over. The old identity of being the one who makes things happen is what your brain is most familiar with and has been rewarded for. So it makes sense that holding onto work can feel good, even when you know you should delegate.
Your job has moved from doing the work to leading the people who do it, which means the way you add value now looks different, and in my experience it takes some time for your brain to catch up. I knew I was meant to have stepped away from the design work, and I still found myself in there. If this resonates, spend some time thinking about the value you add at your level that no one else on the team can. Make it very clear to yourself what that is and the impact it has (your brain loves certainty, so it will thank you for this, I promise).
So why don't you delegate? Because it feels quicker, it feels safer and it helps you feel competent.
The fix comes down to trust
I think delegation is an act of trust and it runs in three directions.
Trust in them: will they do it well enough? Trust in yourself without the work: who am I, or what's my value? And your team's trust in you: will you really let go, or step back, especially when things start to wobble? This third direction is the one I think leaders miss most. Stepping in after the work is finished quietly tells your team that delegation is on loan, and it can quickly damage their trust in you as their leader. I know, because I've been the one doing the stepping in.
I believe building trust is what makes the perceived risk of delegation feel bearable. You can do this by replacing the certainty you used to get from doing the work yourself with a different kind of certainty through small, visible steps like the ones listed below.
Trust in them: Agree what good looks like before you hand the work over, and agree when you'll check in. Then the question, "will they do it well enough?" gets answered by something you can see instead of something you hope for.
Your team's trust in you: Stay out of it until the agreed check-in and give feedback there instead of quietly fixing it afterwards. This is how your team learns the handover is real.
Trust in yourself: Notice and label which threat has been triggered when you feel the pull to keep work or take it back. Be clear about what you're there to do at your level, so the "what value do I add?" question has a better answer than font sizes.
What it costs your team when you don’t delegate
When a leader holds onto the work, the team feels it. Decisions queue up waiting for you. The interesting problems never reach the people who'd learn most from them, so capable people stop bringing ideas, because the answer will come from you anyway.
Self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) helps explain why. It suggests people do their best work when they have a say in how they do it and a chance to build their own competence.
If you want to know where this is happening in your own team, ask them: What decisions are you waiting on me for that you could actually make yourselves? Then be ready for an honest answer. It might sting a little, and it will probably be useful.
Why this matters more as the organisation grows
In a small team you can be the hub where work flows through and it works.
Now zoom out to the whole organisation as it grows: more people, more layers and more teams mean more decisions, and they stop arriving one at a time at your desk. At director level it compounds, because your managers end up waiting on you too, and a manager who waits on you will find it hard to build a team that doesn't wait on them.
In the global teams I worked with, the clearest sign was decisions waiting on one person's calendar. The cost shows up as slower execution, capable people waiting around for permission and capacity issues at director level with the managers underneath feeling underdeveloped.
One small experiment to make a change
This week, pick one thing you'd normally keep and do yourself that you can delegate. Before you hand it over, agree two things with the person: what good looks like, and a quick check-in partway through. Then stay out of it until the check-in.
What helps a change stick is deciding your response in advance, because deciding in the moment is harder under pressure (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). Try this one: If I catch myself thinking "I'll just fix this myself", then I'll book a ten-minute check-in instead.
If it holds, the person gets more ownership, you get fewer people waiting on you and more of your time goes on the work that's actually yours and of more value.
If you'd like to work through your own version of this, the Leadership Self-Reflection Guide on my website takes you through it one stage at a time. And if it's a pattern you'd like some support with, I'm always happy to have a chat. Happy delegating!
