The Forgotten Art of Delegation
Colonel Shawn Stroud
Colonel Shawn Stroud (Ret.) is the Executive Pastor and Chief of Staff at Shoreline Church in Monterey, California.
Over the last eighteen months, leaders across the globe have faced unending changes and challenges due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Many have faced layoffs as businesses and organizations lost valuable income sources while others are having to face staff shortages due to a reduced employee workforce. What this means to leaders at every level is more work and more time spent covering multiple shortages within the organization to achieve the mission and goals. How can a leader cover all the bases, while avoiding the inevitable burnout and breakdown that eventually comes when a leader tries to do it all?
The solution to this dilemma is often found in one of the oldest and most basic skills of leadership; the art of delegation and the ability to effectively delegate.
Author and speaker John Maxwell stated “If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.” For any leader, doing great things and making a significant impact would certainly fit in defining career success. To achieve this, leaders must master the art of delegation.
Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines delegation as “the act of empowering one to act for another.” A working definition of delegation that I have developed throughout my military and pastoral careers is “the process of equipping, entrusting, and empowering others with increasing responsibilities to accomplish the mission and preserve the leader’s time, energy, and resources.”
Some keys to note in this definition are first, it is a process, which implies it takes time to learn, develop, and put into practice. As a leader matures and grows in self-confidence and competency, the ability to delegate effectively also matures.
Second, delegation is about equipping junior leaders and team members with the proper education, experience, training, skills development, and other essentials to ensure they can effectively accomplish what has been delegated to them.
Third, leaders must entrust their team members with the responsibility(ies) to accomplish the assigned tasks with clearly defined parameters, specific objectives, key benchmarks, and deadlines/suspense.
Fourth, along with entrusting responsibility, leaders must empower their subordinates with specific authority to act within the scope of their duties and accomplish the objectives.
The last portion of the definition conveys the benefits and blessings of delegating within this framework: mission accomplishment and preservation of the leader’s time, energy, and resources. Not to mention, effective delegation builds greater trust within the organization, broadens the workload, and better postulates the organization for leadership succession in the future.
"If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate."
For most leaders, the importance of delegation is easy to understand, but the application or the “art” of delegation can be foreign or easily forgotten. To effectively delegate and accomplish the myriad tasks, achieve organizational goals, and fulfill the mission here are three best practices for leaders:
- Do what only you can do and delegate as much as possible of what remains—Every leader must determine what tasks are essential to the success of the organization. Of those essential tasks, some can only be accomplished by the senior leader, while the multitude of other tasks can be and should be delegated to other leaders in the organization to allow the senior leader more time to accomplish what only they can do and focus on what matters most to the organization. A simple first step in developing and refining this process is to conduct an essential task analysis within the organization. By identifying and clarifying what tasks are essential to success for the organization, leaders get a fuller picture of the complexity of the organization and also the necessity of ensuring all the essential tasks are covered and accomplished in priority. As part of this process, the senior leader can assign responsibilities both to himself/herself and their subordinate leaders. This also helps ensure the leader isn’t carrying too much responsibility in the event of the leader’s absence or eventual transition from the organization.
- Know what success looks like and communicate it with clarity—One of the biggest mistakes leaders often make is they assign a task but forget to communicate their expectations for success. A wise U.S. Army general officer once quipped, “If you don’t know where you are going, any path will get you there.” His point is that success must be clarified upfront. As part of effective delegation, leaders must have a vision for the desired outcome and a clear timeline for accomplishing the specific tasks, duties, and responsibilities. This is one part of the equation, the second part is to clearly communicate the vision and timeline to the delegated leaders. I often used the phrase “paint me a picture of what success looks like” when receiving tasks from my senior leaders as a junior U.S. Army officer. During those formative years of leadership, I found this to be extremely beneficial for better understanding the expectations of my senior leaders, while also making me more effective as a leader in accomplishing the tasks I was assigned within the senior leader’s intent and timeframe.
- Follow up to ensure the follow-through—The familiar adage “Action passed is not always action taken” could never be more appropriate than in the function of delegation. As busy as senior leaders and managers are in a global pandemic and countless daily challenges that compete for their time, the mid-level leaders are perhaps even busier and stretched even thinner. Therefore, it is paramount for leaders to build systems and processes to follow up on any tasks, duties, or responsibilities that have been delegated to ensure the assigned team member is following through and fulfilling the requirements within the standards and expectations of the senior leader. Depending on the magnitude, urgency, and importance of a particular delegated task or responsibility, senior leaders should consider using one of the many different task management systems (i.e. Asana, ClickUp, etc.) to help track, schedule, and remind the leaders of updates and deadlines. I have also found regular check-ins with leaders to help assess progress, address potential challenges, or answer questions about a delegated task.
My final thought concerning the art of delegation is a strong exhortation I learned as a U.S. Army sergeant and carry with me to this day; “you can delegate authority, but cannot abdicate responsibility.” A leader’s responsibility to accomplish the mission or perform the task doesn’t stop once delegated. This means underwriting the mistakes of junior leaders and ultimately holding oneself accountable for those duties, tasks, and responsibilities that were not accomplished to standard. This reinforces the importance of developing thorough checks and balances, establishing clear milestones and deadlines, and a willingness to train, coach, and mentor leaders in this generation and for generations to come in the art of delegation. It also reminds us of our own fallibility and the need of every leader to remain humble and open to the Lord’s leading and learn from our own mistakes as we lead both today and tomorrow.
