How to Delegate Without Feeling so Bad about it

Leadership

Jun 20

Written By Emilie Aries

Episode 407 | Author: Emilie Aries

How to delegate without feeling guilty — Learn to delegate like a boss...without feeling bossy

Do you hesitate to delegate?

Do you feel bad about delegating?

Do you feeling guilty about handing work off to others?

This "anticipatory anxiety" and guilt around delegation can seriously hold women leaders back, and prevent you from developing leadership in those around you. And that’s underlying the goal, isn’t it? Great leaders develop other leaders, and delegation plays a big part in that.

why does delegating feel so hard?

As it turns out, there’s been a lot of research done by the late Katherine Phillips and her colleagues at Columbia University about the gendered components of delegation.

Among her many findings, she discovered that:

Women managers are less likely to delegate than men;
Women experience more guilt and anticipatory anxiety when delegating;
And women managers are more likely to associate delegation with dominance.

Because dominance is associated with men and masculinity, it can trigger feelings of violating gendered stereotypes. In other words, this leaves women leaders in a double-bind: to be a good manager and delegate means to be a bad woman and not be caring and kind.

But this mindset can seriously inhibit our management productivity, our team’s productivity, and our ability to develop the leadership of others.

So what can women managers do to embrace delegation as the essential management skill that it is?

Reframe delegation as a communal act

If we can start by simply seeing delegation as the communal act that it is - not some kind of dumping off of work onto someone else - we’re much more likely to embrace it. We must view delegation as a form of actively empowering our team, showing them we value their contributions, and giving them opportunities to grow.

This also shows your team that you trust them and want them to take ownership. When you give your direct report a whole piece of work, something meaningful to take the lead on, you’re saying to them that you trust and value the perspective they’re bringing to the work at hand.

This is an internal revolution - a mindset shift, really - but it’s an essential first step to actively embracing delegation, because it can often be the first big hurdle standing in your way.

Don't delegate it and forget it

Now if delegation is truly a communal act, we need to have a plan to provide accountability and ongoing support. You’re not just going to delegate once and then walk away. Start by setting crystal clear expectations, and then have a plan for how you want to involve yourself in their ongoing work. How and when do you want them to come back to with updates? How do you want them to handle roadblocks they encounter along the way?

I’ve seen different managers handle this in different ways depending on their personal preferences, but the most important thing is that you have a plan going in and that you communicate it effectively to your direct reports.

You might provide support by…

Having open “office hours” daily at which time they know they can hop onto your calendar to ask questions and check in;
Setting specific project management benchmarks at which point you’ll check in and have a 1-on-1;
Or have specific checkpoints throughout the workweek to check in on.

Just make sure that when you’re offering support, you’re making yourself available to coach them through challenges, not problem-solve by doing it for them. Great managers embrace coaching, and that pays off over time, big time. Does it take an up-front investment of time, energy, and attention? Yes, absolutely. But it has a return on that investment in that you essentially have to start slow to then move fast. You’ll have increasing expediency as you continue to develop leaders around you.

Protect your team in other ways

Finally, if you’re still feeling guilty about delegation because that guilt is coming from a place of empathy and you still want to care for your team, think about other ways you can protect them!

If you want to be their champion, their advocate, and their ally, I totally respect that. We love a manager who cares for their team. But as Kim Scott, who I interviewed on Episode 400 of the Bossed Up podcast, wrote in her leadership book, Radical Candor: too much empathy as a manager can be a bad thing! She calls it “ruinous empathy” when you care so much about your direct reports that you try to protect them from any and all hardships, thus preventing them from learning and growing.

You don’t want to protect them from taking ownership and responsibility for projects where there is real pressure, but rather protect your team by…

Helping them prioritize;
Helping them problem-solve.
Protecting their time from low-priority, low-value work;
Advocating for their advancement;
Or helping them to set boundaries.

There are lots of ways to champion your team without not delegating to them. So delegate early and often, delegate a whole piece of meaningful work, and delegate without guilt. This will make you be the best, most effective manager you can be.

Remember: great leaders develop other leaders, and that means giving people room to grow - sometimes through trial and error - by helping them and coaching them through the problem-solving process.