Have you ever found yourself saying, “I know I should delegate more, but…”? You’re not alone. If you manage other people, it’s a common trap to find yourself simultaneously burning out and unable to let go of work. Let’s break down why this happens and what you can actually do about it.
Identity
One of the stickiest challenges in delegation is identity. Our sense of self-worth is often connected to personally getting things done.
If this sounds familiar, try reframing what success looks like. Instead of “I need to write this proposal,” shift to “This proposal needs to be excellent.” Your job isn’t to do everything—it’s to ensure everything gets done well.
We coached one PR leader who’d been promoted for being a stellar individual contributor. She was responsive, creative, and fast. When leaders in other departments needed a slide deck for a presentation or an infographic for social media, they knew who to ask.
Being the reliable go-to resource had become part of her identity. Now, though, she’d become a bottleneck not just for her department’s productivity, but also for her employees’ growth. They weren’t getting opportunities to stretch their skills and get feedback like she did when she was an individual contributor.
She had to reframe her definition of success from “I’m successful because I get things done quickly and well” to “I’m successful when my team members can get things done…”
To make that shift, she picked a particular kind of work that she knew certain team members could do well and set a goal to not own any of those work items for the next month. She could give feedback and advice but not do the work. By the end of the experiment, that work was no longer tied to her identity, and she found she had more time to focus on her leadership role.
The risk of failure.
Another common blocker is trust—or rather, the fear that delegating means risking failure when the stakes feel sky-high. The solution? Think of delegation as a dial rather than an on-off switch. Start by having someone shadow you, then let them draft with your advice and feedback, then gradually dial up their autonomy as confidence (theirs and yours) grows.
In episode 67 of the Humanizing Work Show, we shared how to use our 3 Jobs of Management and Jurgen Appelo’s 7 Levels of Delegation to incrementally increase the empowerment of a team or individual.
It’s faster to do it myself.
The third reason leaders struggle to delegate sounds like, “I simply don’t have time to delegate! It’s faster just to do it myself.” We hear this one a lot, and here’s the uncomfortable truth: if you’re too busy executing to create clarity for someone else, you’re overcommitted.
Take a hard look at your priority list. What’s at the bottom? That’s what needs to pause while you invest in delegation. Yes, it feels counterintuitive to stop doing something when you’re already overwhelmed, but it’s the only way to break free.
If you’re overcommitted, something is necessarily going to fall off. Why not choose it? Ask, “If one of these things on my list had to get pushed out to next week/month/quarter, which one would I choose?” Keep asking until you’ve paused enough items to buy yourself some capacity to delegate.
Then ask, which of the things still on my list could I hand off the fastest? It might not be the most important thing—or even the most important thing to delegate—but you’re going for a snowball effect where delegating something easy to hand off buys you more capacity to hand off something more challenging.
There’s no one to delegate to.
Finally, there’s the “I have no one to delegate this to” challenge. If you don’t have anyone you can delegate an area of work to, you’re an individual contributor for that work, not a leader. That may be fine. But if not, you need to hire someone, get someone added to your team, outsource, or coach someone up.
Of course, all those things require an upfront investment of time and energy. Again, something has to give. The math is simple but uncomfortable: if you’re at 100% capacity doing the work, you’ll never find the space to build the team that could help you do more.
Breaking free from the delegation trap isn’t easy, but it is necessary. Start small: pick one task this week that you’ll begin to hand off. Begin with something easy to hand off and just turn up the delegation dial a little bit. If even that feels like too much work, take a look at what needs to pause at the bottom of your priority list to buy some space.
Remember, great leaders don’t gauge success by how much they personally get done, but by what their team accomplishes together.
Your turn
We’d love to hear from you: What’s your biggest delegation challenge? What makes it hard? Email and let us know!
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