ISSUE #016
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Delegation sounds fantastic in theory. Do less. Let other people own things. Free yourself up for the work that actually requires you.
Then someone does the thing differently than you would have done it and suddenly every cell in your body is whispering:
I’ll just fix it.
I know this struggle extremely well.
Being the go-to person worked... until leadership required something else
I spent years being the person who just got things done. That built credibility. It helped me move quickly in my career. If something was messy, important, or falling apart, there was a very good chance I was already halfway into fixing it.
Then leadership happened.
Suddenly my value could not come from personally doing everything anymore. My job was increasingly about creating clarity, making good decisions, setting direction, and helping other people succeed.
An executive coach once told me: “Kris, you have to stop measuring your value by how much you personally accomplish.”
I nodded like, Wow. Very insightful.
Then I basically ignored her. Because being useful had worked really damn well for me up until that point. Eventually, though, the math stopped working.
There were too many things. Too many people. Too much work that needed to move without me touching every piece of it.
Delegating the task is not the same as giving away ownership
This was where I made delegation harder than it needed to be. I would assign something, but still carry the entire thing in my head. I knew how I wanted it done. I knew when I thought it should happen. I knew the details I would pay attention to. And because I was still mentally owning it, I kept checking.
Then tweaking.
Then jumping in.
Sometimes I would quietly redo part of the work because it seemed faster than explaining what I wanted changed. Which meant I technically delegated the task... while teaching everyone that Kris was still the actual owner.
Not ideal.
Start by defining the outcome
The biggest shift for me was getting much clearer about what actually needs to be true when the work is finished. That sounds obvious, but a surprising amount of delegation starts with instructions instead of outcomes.
Send this.
Update that.
Create this document.
Handle the event.
Okay. But what does good look like? Before handing something off, I want to be able to answer:
What are we trying to accomplish?
What absolutely has to be true when this is done?
When does it need to be finished?
What constraints matter?
What decisions can this person make without coming back to me?
That last question is a big one. If every tiny decision still has to route through you, you did not really delegate much. You created a longer workflow.
Be clearer upfront so you can be less involved later
One of my old delegation problems was assuming people could somehow see the picture in my head. They cannot.
Rude, honestly.
If you care about a specific outcome, say it. If there is a hard deadline, name it. If there are two things the person absolutely should not change, make those clear too. Then give them room around everything else.
Good delegation usually needs more clarity at the beginning and less interference in the middle. That trade is worth it.
Decide where you actually need to check in
Giving someone ownership does not mean tossing the work over the wall and hoping for the best. There may be places where a check-in makes sense. The trick is deciding those points before your anxiety starts driving.
Maybe you review the outline before someone builds the whole presentation. Maybe a major project has a midpoint check. Maybe the person comes back when a decision crosses a budget threshold.
Those are useful guardrails.
Checking every twelve minutes because the work is not unfolding exactly the way you imagined is something else entirely.
Different is not automatically wrong
This one was annoying for me to learn. Someone can get to a good outcome differently than I would.
They may organize it differently. Write it differently. Solve one part in an order I would never have chosen.
And sometimes... their way is better. If I jump in every time the approach looks unfamiliar, I never actually find out. So now I try to separate:
This is different from how I would do it
from
This will not produce the outcome we agreed on
Those are not the same problem. The first usually requires me to leave it alone. The second may require feedback.
Do not rescue the work the second it gets uncomfortable
This may be the hardest part. Someone hits a snag. A deadline gets close. You can already see exactly how you would solve it. And you think: It would be faster if I just did this.
It probably would be. This time.
But every time you take the work back, you reinforce the same system: hard things eventually return to you. Then everyone wonders why you are carrying everything.
If the person genuinely needs help, help them think through it. Ask what they have tried. Clarify the outcome. Remove a blocker if you are the blocker.
Just be careful not to turn “support” into quietly reclaiming ownership.
Delegation should change who carries the work
That is the test I use now. If I handed something off but I am still remembering every detail, chasing every next step, answering every question, making every decision, and worrying about whether it will get done...
I did not really delegate it. The work is still living with me.
Good delegation should move more than the task. It should move the ownership too. Define what success looks like. Make the decision space clear. Agree on where you will check in.
Then give the person a real chance to own it. Even if they don’t do it exactly like you would. Especially then.
Cheers to getting unscattered,
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