Focus of the Month: The Delegation Challenge
Welcome to June. For the Esteemed Coterie, the second quarter marks our season of research, diving deep into our clients, our markets, and our industries. That intelligence becomes the foundation for the access strategies, strategic goals, and three-year plans we develop in Q3. But before we get there, I like to use June — typically the quietest month of the year — to undertake what I call the Delegation Challenge.
Why Delegation Is So Hard
Among all the disciplines of day-to-day and week-to-week people management, delegation has proven to be the most difficult for managers to execute consistently and well. It demands trust in yourself and trust in the people you lead.
The resistance is understandable. Managers fear they are delegating away their relevance. They worry the work won't be done correctly or on time and since the responsibility remains theirs, so does the risk. Many also feel genuine guilt about adding to the plates of already stretched direct reports.
These concerns are real. But they are also the very things that keep organizations stuck.
The Cost of Not Delegating
Without delegation, a company does the same things year after year. Over time, the cost of doing business outpaces productivity, and the organization plateaus. Conversely, companies that grow too quickly without deliberate delegation promote people beyond their capabilities, creating chaos born from inexperience and unclear ownership.
No delegation is a slow walk. Unchecked rapid growth is a sprint. Proper delegation is a steady jog the strategy that wins the marathon.
Think of it as a champagne tower. The host stands at the top, filling the highest glass until it overflows, and the champagne cascades down through every tier beneath it. Your org chart works the same way. The CEO takes on a new partnership, a new product line, an acquisition. That new work forces them to delegate something they have been carrying to a direct report. That direct report, now carrying something new, passes something down to theirs. The cascade continues until it reaches the floor where tasks are either absorbed, refined, or revealed to be obsolete. That TPS report no one is reading? Delegation surfaces it. And then it stops.
Delegation does not overwhelm your organization. It evolves it. It makes your team more productive, more capable, and more efficient — stripping away work that no longer serves the business and creating space for the work that does.
A Three-Step Process for Delegating Well
Step One: Define Your Roles and Audit Your Calendar
Start by getting precise about your role. Not a job description a clear articulation of the three to five things that are mission critical to your position and what A-plus performance looks like in each. These should always be measurable. If you are crushing your job on a week-to-week basis, what are the specific results and outputs that reflect that?
Once you have defined your roles and responsibilities, audit your calendar for a full month. Look at every hour of your work week and categorize it. How much time is spent on email, managing people, client conversations, project work? Group those time blocks in whatever way makes sense to you.
Then compare. How much of your time is actually spent on your core roles and responsibilities versus everything else? Do not be surprised to find that roughly 40 percent of your time is consumed by work that is not directly tied to your job. Those are your first delegation candidates.
Step Two: Identify Your Bleeds and Your Feeds
Draw a T-chart. On one side, list your feeds — the tasks you are genuinely energized by, the work that brings you joy and plays to your strengths. On the other side, list your bleeds — the tasks that drain you, slow you down, and pull you away from your highest contribution.
Your bleeds go first. And do not hesitate. Your direct reports are not burdened by this work, they are challenged and developed by it. They want to learn. They want to grow. Give them the opportunity.
Step Three: Delegate One Bleed at a Time
The most common delegation mistake is moving too fast. Delegate one task to one person at a time. Even a task that feels simple to you will take your direct report time to absorb, internalize, and make their own.
When you delegate, be clear. Tell them why they are the right person for this task, what the work standard looks like, and that you are available to support them. Then step back and let them execute. Once they have mastered that task, give them another. If you have five direct reports, you can systematically offload five tasks simultaneously and that is a powerful thing.
On the rare occasion a direct report pushes back due to bandwidth, put them through the same exercise. Audit their calendar against their actual roles and responsibilities. You will find something that can be automated, delegated further, or eliminated entirely.
Delegation is how organizations grow. It lifts burdens from leaders who have outgrown certain work and places that work in the hands of people who are hungry for it. It is not a management shortcut it is a strategic discipline. Executed with consistency and care, delegation is the steady jog that carries your organization across the finish line — stronger, leaner, and built for the long run.
Give it a spin. Be Esteemed.
