Control freaks and chaos merchants

Where delegation goes wrong and what it takes to do it well

Feb 21, 2025

Delegation. It’s an essential skill for most leaders, yet many aren’t particularly good at it. Whether you’ve been on the receiving end of poor (or non-existent) delegation, or whether you’re (unintentionally) the perpetrator of delegation-related crimes, it’s a skill worth working on for your own and everyone else’s sake. Let’s dive in.

When delegation goes wrong…

Poor delegation usually goes one of two ways.

First, the leader who dumps. Work is dropped onto their team with little or no two-way communication. There’s an absence of explanation or support, with team members expected to figure it out for themselves. There’s also no meaningful discussion of workload and priorities, simply an expectation to get it done.

These leaders leave chaos in their wake, with their teams feeling overwhelmed, unsupported and disempowered. Learning is slow and inefficient, the quality of the work suffers, and resentment builds that the leader simply doesn’t know or care what is going on – they’re only interested in themselves.

At the other end of the spectrum are the control freaks. They don’t trust their teams to do more complex work so do all the interesting stuff themselves (while complaining about being overwhelmed and overworked). They’re unwilling to invest time in their team to develop skills, and think it’s just faster and easier to do it themselves. They’re often controlling, with strong opinions on the only “right” way to do things, and have low tolerance for any mistakes or deviation from their way. So, the only thing that gets delegated are the menial, simple tasks that they’ve decided their teams can manage.

These leaders create teams that feel frustrated, bored, and lacking a sense of purpose or challenge. The teams abdicate all responsibility to the leader, and become mere passengers in the process. They will be uninterested in the outcome, and feel resentful that they are apparently not considered capable of doing their jobs.

Let’s be honest, neither is great. And while these might be the extreme examples, milder examples of these behaviours are still very common.

Why delegate?

In case you need a reminder, here are five reasons why delegation is such a core skill:

Efficiency: When you delegate effectively, you free up your time to focus on higher-level priorities that require your expertise and specific input.
Empowerment: Delegation fosters a sense of ownership and accountability among team members, meaning things get done better and often in the end, faster.
Capability building: Delegation is learning by doing. It allows your team to develop their skills and build confidence, increasing capacity and capability.
Motivation: When given meaningful tasks and the authority to complete them, team members feel more engaged and motivated. It increases their commitment through being trusted to take on bigger or more challenging things.
Discovering talent: We only discover what people are capable of when we challenge them and encourage them to try things that they aren’t already good at. Delegation can stretch people and help you discover new skills and talent.

Delegating well

Delegating well has both a practical and emotional side. If we don’t address the latter, the former rarely succeeds, so we need to start there.

But delegation isn’t emotional, is it? It’s just tasks, surely?

Yes and no. The tasks might not elicit much emotion, but what gets tied up with them does; a fear of losing control, a fear of not being needed, or a fear of our team getting things wrong and causing us embarrassment can all get in the way of delegating. If we’ve been let down in the past, we might find it hard to trust our team now. Or maybe we feel dumped on by our own boss and decide the only way to survive is to pass some of that on. Above all, if we aren’t committed to supporting and developing our team (even when we ourselves are busy), we’re unlikely to delegate well.

These feelings are all normal, human and understandable. And if we really want to get good at delegating – and leading – we need to work on shifting our mindset.

Building a delegation mindset

A delegation mindset has several key components:

Learning to let go…with intention
Delegation does ultimately mean letting go, but it’s not a binary state (let go, or don’t). We can let go while putting in place structures to support, supervise and safeguard, which are appropriate to both the task itself and the competency of the person we’re delegating to.
Allowing things not to be perfect, or not done exactly as you would do it
Delegating to someone on your team who is less skilled or experienced may mean the odd mistake is made, and it’s important to allow and embrace that as part of the learning process. Very few things have to be perfect first time. And just because someone approaches something differently, doesn’t mean that’s wrong. Where you can, be flexible, allow your team to discover things by themselves rather than force one particular method.
Giving the gift of trust
In the end, you have to choose to trust your team. Yes, they might let you down, but that’s unlikely, and if you never give them the chance, you’ll never know. Put the safeguards you need in place for anything that’s business critical or potentially reputation damaging, but within those guiderails, give your team the trust and freedom to learn.
Embracing a win-win mindset
Even when things get messy, even when it would have been faster to do something yourself, embrace the win-win of delegation. It might not feel like it in the moment, but the costs of not delegating are very real, for you, your team and your organisation. You have to be willing to invest the time now to create the longer term benefits for everyone.

A framework for delegation

If you’re at the point where you’re willing, you acknowledge the benefits of delegation and you’re looking to improve (whatever your bad habits might be) the next question is the “how”.

One helpful way to think about delegation that it is about finding the balance between competency and autonomy. This starts with thinking about the task itself that you’re considering delegating, then taking into account the competency of who you might delegate to.

Don’t use a lack of competency as an excuse not to delegate, or as a reason to always delegate to the person who is already competent! Lower competency simply means more oversight and support will be required. The good news is it also means the opportunity to learn and develop skills in that person is that much greater.

When we recognise the level of competency we can adjust the support and oversight we offer, and avoid either micro-managing someone who doesn’t need it, or abandoning someone who does. Which means the person on the receiving end feels appropriately supported for their needs.

Above all, remember that the process of delegating always needs to be a two-way conversation. and that as a leader you need to create space for that not only at the outset but throughout. Ask for what support your team member needs. Listen to what they tell you. Be open to adapt from your expectations and offer a bit more or less oversight. Agree when and how you’ll check in with each other to update on progress.

Reducing the level of oversight and management when delegating doesn’t mean you stop holding that person accountable to deliver. Instead, done well, delegation creates commitment and trust between the leader and their team, creating the space and structure to have support and accountability in a way that works for everyone.

How do you get on with delegating? What do you struggle with? What might you take from this post to start practicing? Drop a comment and let me know.