Ep. 245: Delegation That Actually Develops People

Delegation is one of the most talked-about leadership skills, and one of the most poorly executed. In this free workshop session, Humanergy coach Lance Satterthwaite gets into the real reasons leaders avoid delegating or do it badly, and offers concrete ways to change that.

He covers four common barriers, it takes time, you love the work, you don't trust it'll get done right, and fear of losing control, along with honest questions to help leaders examine their own patterns. He also walks through Humanergy's authority matrix, a practical tool for defining decision-making levels and tracking how much ownership is actually being transferred over time.

The core argument: if you're only using delegation to manage your workload, you're leaving the most important part on the table, the development of your people. This session is for leaders who want both.

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Transcript

Hey everybody, Mimi with Humanergy here. This is another of our free workshop series. Today Lance Satterthwaite is presenting on delegation that develops people. If you're interested in joining us for any of our free workshops, you can find a link to register at humanergy.com in the free workshop section.

Welcome everybody.

Today's topic — delegation — is a frequent theme that comes up in our coaching conversations with clients. We're going to explore several components, including an overview of what delegation is and why it matters, some common barriers to delegation, and how to actually overcome those barriers.

Reading through the pre-session chats, so many of you mentioned delegation being important around developing people. That's really what I'm going to hammer home today.

So, what is delegation?

At the heart of it, delegation is the sharing or transferring of ownership. And that ownership isn't just about the goals that need to be achieved — it's really about the journey along the way. That includes the necessary tasks, the decisions along the way, and truly transferring that sense of ownership. I believe real empowerment occurs when this ownership is transferred well.

Think of it like a baton in track and field. A successful handoff requires coordination between the person handing it off and the person receiving it — so it doesn't get dropped and so you can cross the finish line in the desired timeframe.

What that means practically: you can't just chuck the baton in someone's direction, cross your fingers, and hope they catch it. And you can't assume they know what to do once they have it. Delegation needs to be a genuine partnership between the delegator, the delegatee, and the organization.

Why delegate?

Done well, delegation is a win-win-win.

The win for the delegator includes managing your own workload and capacity, working at the right level, and — eventually — actually getting to take vacations without feeling the need to check in.

The win for the delegatee is real: skill development, earning trust with the delegator and other stakeholders, building confidence, and establishing a career path. Over time, it can open doors — including promotions.

The win for the organization: things get done, goals get achieved, and you're building in cross-training and backups, which reduces risk. And often, when a fresh set of eyes is on a project or process, it actually leads to innovation and creativity.

If you're only thinking about delegation as a strategy for managing your own time and workload, I want to say directly: you're neglecting a key part of the equation — the development of your people and the organization. Keep that in mind as we talk through the barriers.

Barrier 1: It Takes Time

Yes — delegation genuinely takes time. And honestly, you might be able to do the work faster and better than the person you're delegating to. That's real.

But this really comes back to the "why." When you deeply believe in what delegation is trying to achieve, you start thinking of it as an investment — one that pays off long-term. That reframe helps.

A practical question that also helps: is this task repeatable? If it's a skill or task that comes up often enough, it's worth delegating — it frees up your time, develops someone else's skillset, and benefits the organization through cross-training. If it's a one-off that doesn't come up much, it might just be better to keep it on your plate.

At Humanergy, we do have a framework specifically around how to delegate effectively and efficiently. That's outside the scope of today's session, but it's available as a resource.

Barrier 2: You Like the Work and Don't Want to Let Go

Here's a slightly provocative question: are you addicted to the emergency room?

For many leaders — especially those who were strong individual contributors before moving into leadership — there's a real pull toward firefighting. Resolving crises. Doing the tactical work. The problem is that as you move up in an organization, the job actually requires you to be more strategic, more future-focused, spending more time on systems and processes, and yes, more time in meetings. That work is important, but the feedback loop is much slower. The tangible progress takes longer to see.

If you're someone who gets a lot of job satisfaction from the day-to-day tactical work, you're going to have to honestly reckon with what that means for your own satisfaction in your current role.

A related question: what work are you actually being paid to do?

One way to think about it — take your salary, your benefits, and boil it down to an approximate hourly rate. Now ask: can you genuinely justify that the work you're doing is earning that? I'm not assigning judgment to anyone's pay rate. But I do find that a lot of leaders are doing a lot of $15-an-hour work instead of the work they're actually there to do.

If the honest answer is "yeah, maybe not," then it's time to figure out what shouldn't be on your plate and create a real plan to get it off. That might mean delegating it, saying no to it, or — sometimes — mustering up the courage to have a difficult conversation with someone who's not doing their job so you stop enabling that gap.

Barrier 3: Not Trusting That the Work Will Get Done Right

Back to the idea that delegation is a partnership — and for that partnership to work, it needs to feel safe for everyone involved: the delegator, the delegatee, and the organization.

The key question here is: how hands-on or hands-off should this particular delegation be? And the answer depends on a few factors: the level of risk, the level of complexity, how much trust you actually have in this person, their real knowledge and experience with the task at hand, their past performance, and honestly, how well you know them.

In the best situations, the delegator and the delegatee would actually talk through this together upfront — mutually determine where to set the dial. Without that alignment, the delegator ends up either too hands-on or too hands-off, and neither one is actually effective.

Too hands-on, and you're micromanaging — which breeds resentment, signals a lack of trust, and blocks the transfer of ownership you were trying to create in the first place. The results might still happen, but the learning won't.

Too hands-off, and the person ends up lost, confused, or less confident — which prevents results from happening at all.

The goal is the stretch zone, not the danger zone. There has to be some tolerance for mistakes — that's how learning happens. But we shouldn't put people, or the organization, in situations of unnecessary harm or significant risk.

Barrier 4: Fear of Losing Control

A lot of the people I work with describe themselves as control freaks. They want to be heavily involved. They want to know everything happening under their purview. And what ends up happening is they become the bottleneck — every decision has to run through them — and suddenly they're not developing people the way they need to be.

The work here is to ask yourself: what is it that you actually need to let go of?

There's a useful distinction I find helpful: what do you want to know versus what do you actually need to know in your role? Once you start sorting that out, you can begin to clarify things like what level of autonomy you're giving people around decisions, and what needs to be communicated back to you and when.

One of the tools we use at Humanergy for this is called the authority matrix. It organizes decision-making into three levels:

• Level A: Just go do it. The delegate is fully empowered to make this type of decision and doesn't need to report back.
• Level B: Do it, then tell me you did it. They don't need to consult ahead of time, but there's a need to inform afterward — because the delegator needs the information to do their own job, or because it touches on risk worth flagging, or as a way to check for alignment and support ongoing coaching conversations.
• Level C: Let's discuss it before it happens. Together, you'll determine who owns the decision — the delegate, both of you, or the delegator. Risk, complexity, experience, and trust all factor in.

The sheet itself includes common workplace categories on the left — things like spending levels, organizational structure changes, systems and processes, people decisions (hiring, firing, promotions, progressive discipline), meeting ownership, and more. We've shared a link to it in the chat, and if you want a copy sent directly to your inbox, just let us know.

What a lot of our clients find is that it's a great way to spark meaningful conversations between delegators and delegatees about the real level of empowerment and ownership.

And here's the part I love most about it: if you're using delegation to develop people, over time you'll see items move from Level C to Level B, and eventually to Level A. It becomes a way to actually track someone's development. It means you've built more alignment around decision-making, you've gained more trust in their judgment, and they've gained more confidence in themselves — and it means you're consistently putting people in stretch zones where real growth can happen.

Closing

I hope today's talk gives you both some thinking and some tools to work through the barriers to delegation. When you're able to use delegation not just to manage your workload, but to genuinely develop your people and your organization, that's when you achieve the true win. Wishing you all the best in transferring ownership and empowering people to work at the right level and do the right work. Thank you, and take care.