15 How Do I Delegate Leadership?

Benny had just had another exhausting day leading his growing nonprofit organization. Benny hadn’t expected to find the swift success that his organization had enjoyed. Its growth had begun with an unexpected gift of substantial size, followed by the awarding of a significant agency grant. Together, that new funding had enabled Benny to retain paid staff members to guide the volunteers who were already serving the organization under Benny’s own supervision. The organization’s growth excited and pleased Benny. But he was also realizing that he could no longer lead the organization on his own. Benny knew that he needed to delegate matters to others. He just didn’t know how to do so.

Delegation

Delegation is generally necessary in leadership of organizations of any significant size. To delegate means to give to another the authority and responsibility to carry out a function or task at your direction and on your behalf. If you started your own organization, you may have to and be able to run it on your own for a time. Yet if your organization grows to require a handful of employees or volunteers, you’ll soon find it necessary to delegate to others certain tasks, with the authority to carry them out. A leader simply cannot direct all functions and make all decisions within an organization that requires several or many staff members or volunteers to carry out its mission and functions, with the support of donors and suppliers, to serve many customers, clients, or patrons. You’ll notice your need to delegate when you find your email inbox and cellphone messages inundated with requests with which you cannot keep up and a line at your office door waiting for you to have a moment to respond. The moment that you perceive that your limited time and attention is creating bottlenecks in your organization’s processes is the moment that you need to delegate.

Process

Leaders have various ways in which to delegate. A typical way in which to address delegation is to choose specific tasks or functions, assign them to an individual to carry out alone or with a supervised team, and require the responsible individual to report back the results so that the leader can ensure the satisfaction of the task or function. Delegation thus generally first involves your wise choice of which tasks and functions to delegate. You then need to make a wise choice of who should carry out the task. You then need to provide that individual with the resources and authority to carry out the task, while ensuring that the individual remains accountable to your delegation through regular reports on the progress of the task. Delegation is thus a circular process. You don’t simply tell someone to go do something, while assuming that the one whom you appoint will promptly complete the task. Instead, as the leader, you remain ultimately responsible for ensuring the task’s completion. You thus need the designated person to return with a report on the task, closing the loop so that you’re satisfied that your organization has properly completed all tasks and functions.

Designees

The success of your delegation of tasks and functions has a lot to do with the individuals whom you choose to carry them out. Some of us are more responsible than others. When delegating organizational tasks, your first consideration should be how responsible the candidate is to be an appropriate agent, deputy, or designee. Your judgment on whether to choose a certain person to complete a task or lead a function should depend in part on the person’s character for diligence and in part on the person’s knowledge and skill as to the function. Just because someone has knowledge and skills doesn’t mean that they’ll use them responsibly. Generally, choose deputies who know what they’re doing, having the skill and knowledge. But don’t choose deputies who lack integrity, commitment, and the character for diligence, even if they happen to have superior knowledge and skills. Look closely at effective teams, and you’ll often find that their supervisor isn’t the most skilled team member but is the most responsible. Choose skilled and responsible deputies, but if you must choose between the two, then favor responsibility over skills. You need deputies not necessarily who can do what you assign but more so who can ensure that it gets done.

Functions

Delegating responsibility and authority by function can make sense, especially in organizations of significant size. Common organizational functions include finances, facilities, operations, personnel, technology, and marketing or communications. Different fields and sectors can add specialized functions like fund development and alumni or donor relations, accreditation or other regulatory compliance, research or exploration, transportation and logistics, or lobbying and government relations. Each of these and other functions may require the full-time attention of a director to whom you delegate responsibility and authority, or you may find that a single director can guide two or three functions. Delegating by function enables you to recruit leadership team candidates who have knowledge, skill, and experience in specific functions, increasing your organization’s expertise. A team of excellent function leaders can innovate, adapt, and effectively lead your organization forward for you, leaving as your main concern the organization’s overall direction.

Tasks

Delegating responsibility and authority by one-time or recurring tasks may also be necessary and appropriate. Ceding broad authority over major organizational functions can relieve you of significant day-to-day duties. But whether you need to do so or not, you may also assign responsibility for specific tasks. Assigning responsibility by task may work especially well when you have discrete tasks, like monitoring, compiling, posting, and reporting on isolated subjects, that an organization member can accomplish without significant coordination with others. The individual to whom you assign such a task may not need leadership or team skills and judgment. They may just need the character to attend diligently to the task and to have some knowledge about and skill in that discrete task. You may also not need that individual to be a part of your formal leadership team. They may instead serve as your adjutant or an adjunct to your leadership team. Ceding task responsibility can be a good way to build out your leadership team with responsible individuals who may be future leaders.

Issues

Delegating responsibility for tasks and functions may relieve you of significant leadership demands, allowing you to focus on the organization’s overall performance and to investigate and address special issues. You may, though, find it necessary to keep a close watch on your organization’s operations or on certain functions, either because of their critical nature to the organization’s success, special challenges in those areas, or a lack of a skilled individual to whom you can delegate those functions. If your organizational duties prevent you from devoting sufficient time to organizational opportunities and issues above and beyond day-to-day functions and tasks, you may be able to delegate to others responsibility for those opportunities and issues. You need not, in other words, delegate responsibility over functions and systems while retaining responsibility for issues and innovation. You may instead retain operational leadership while delegating responsibility for innovation and issues. Designate a task force or choose an individual with special passion for and insight into the special issues your organization faces. Let others explore those issues and opportunities, and propose new initiatives to you.

Authority

Those to whom you delegate responsibility will also need the authority to carry out their responsibility. Directors and managers with responsibility but inadequate authority to carry it out are trapped, destined to fail. When your designee to carry out a responsibility lacks your delegated authority to do so, others cannot rely on your designee but must instead go around your designee for your authority to act. They may not even respect your designee’s instruction and direction for the same reason that they cannot rely on your designee who has inadequate authority to assign, approve, instruct, and direct. If you find that you’ve delegated responsibility but others are still coming to you for approval to act on what you delegated, then you may not have adequately delegated authority along with responsibility. Make clear to your designees the authority that they now hold to proceed in carrying out your delegated responsibility, whether that authority involves hiring personnel, recruiting volunteers, purchasing goods and services, engaging consultants, entering into contracts, assigning work, directing work, or other measures. If you don’t delegate authority, expect to continue to be responsible for the work.

Resources

Those to whom you delegate responsibility will also need the resources to carry out those responsibilities. When you delegate responsibility but leave your deputy or designee without the resources to fulfill the responsibility, you set up your deputy or designee for failure. You also fail to unburden yourself of the delegated responsibility. Your designee won’t be able to proceed without returning to you for the resources needed to meet the responsibility. Having controls on the resources that your deputies expend to carry out their responsibilities is appropriate. See, for instance, the next paragraph on budgets. But if you don’t estimate and appropriate the necessary resources, and make them available to your designees, then you won’t accomplish the delegation you seek. You will instead frustrate yourself and your deputies, while setting up your deputies and organization to fail rather than to succeed.

Budgets

A primary way of both effectively delegating authority and supplying the resources to carry out the delegated responsibility is to approve a budget for the function or task and assign budget authority and responsibility to the individual whom you charged with the responsibility. Your development of a budget, typically with the help of the individual whom you assigned function or task responsibility, shows that you are aware of the necessary resources. Your funding of the budget shows that you are capable of a leader’s priority responsibility, to provide the means for accomplishing the organization’s goals. Your assignment of authority to your deputy to make expenditures out of the budget proves the deputy’s authority. Your assignment of budget responsibility to the deputy ensures the deputy’s accountability to you and to the organization. You may still retain veto authority on expenditures over a certain amount or for certain goods or services. Or you may have an operations or finance director retain that secondary review and approval authority to ensure the integrity of expenditures and monitor their impact on the organization’s finances and resources. But develop and assign budgets along with your delegation of responsibility and authority.

Reporting

When you delegate authority, communicate to your deputies your expectations for their reporting back to you on their execution of their delegated responsibilities. As the prior chapter addressed, you may require regular reports from your leadership team on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or other periodic schedule. Adopt a similar practice for any delegation you make of significant functions, tasks, or issues. If, for instance, you assign responsibility to investigate a current organizational issue to an individual with authority to assemble a task force or investigation team, then tell that individual when you would like the team’s report, and in what form and with what content. A reporting requirement ensures that you timely learn of your deputies’ progress on your assigned responsibility and delegated authority. A reporting requirement also lets your deputies know what you expect and when you expect it. Periodic interim reporting also allows you to monitor and guide the progress of the delegated work. Delegation doesn’t have to be a one-time thing. As the organization’s leader, you retain the authority to remove, reassign, or direct the delegated work. Don’t interfere, but use reporting to monitor, evaluate, and guide the delegation.

Accountability

As just suggested, you remain accountable to the organization, even for delegated functions, tasks, and issues. Don’t think that your delegation of work passes the buck to someone else to blame, in the event that the work doesn’t get done or gets done improperly. You thus need to hold your deputies accountable for the functions, tasks, and issues you delegate to them. Reporting, along with the financial function of monitoring budgets, are two ways to hold your deputies accountable to the delegated task, function, or issue. Reporting allows you to monitor the work’s progress, while budgets allow you to control and hold deputies accountable for their expenditure of your organization’s resources. Regular meetings with your deputies, spontaneous interactions as you walk around your organization’s facility, and word of mouth from others in the organization give you other tools for monitoring progress and holding deputies accountable. Don’t defer completely to others to lead your organization. Remain accountable for everything by holding accountable those to whom you delegate your authority and responsibility.

Reward

As in the case of rewarding your leadership team members, discussed in the prior chapter, you should also recognize and reward those to whom you delegate responsibility and authority. As you delegate tasks and issues, you may not need to promote your deputies to new positions and give them new titles and additional compensation. Everyone in your organization bears some responsibility to carry out your directions, no matter whether they are part of your leadership or management team, or are simply line workers or volunteers. You need not give extra compensation and status to your organization’s members, simply for carrying out tasks and addressing issues at your request. But when you do find it necessary to assign extra duties to various personnel, who then go above and beyond their regular duties shared with others to complete your additional tasks, acknowledge their extra contributions appropriately. Giving credit where credit is due may be sufficient. Regular pats on the back may help. Extending a special privilege to your most-trustworthy lieutenants may also be appropriate. Give due reward for efficient and effective completion of delegated functions and tasks.

Reflection

How good, on a scale from one to ten, are you at delegating tasks? Do you tend to hold authority too tightly, worrying that only you can get the job done right? Or conversely, do you delegate responsibility too freely, leaving critical work in irresponsible hands? Do you have sound and knowledgeable individuals to whom you could delegate additional functions or tasks, to free you up for higher-value leadership work? Are you missing the opportunity and urgency to pursue higher-value leadership work because operational issues weigh you down? Do you need to identify additional deputies who could carry out specific tasks? Or do you have some highly qualified individuals available to you, who could investigate special issues and opportunities, and report to you on them, while you tend to daily operational functions and tasks? When you delegate authority, are you also providing adequate resources to fulfill your delegation? Do you provide a budget when assigning others a task or function? Do you regularly require reports from those to whom you assign functions and tasks? Do you adequately recognize and reward your deputies?

Key Points

Your leadership may depend on delegating to others effectively.
Delegation requires choosing wisely what and to whom to delegate.
Choose skilled, knowledgeable, responsible, committed deputies.
Consider delegating responsibility by organization functions.
You may also need to delegate specific one-time or recurring tasks.
You can also delegate responsibility for issues and new initiatives.
When you delegate responsibility, delegate sufficient authority, too.
When you delegate responsibility, provide sufficient resources, too.
Assign budget authority and responsibility to your designees.
Communicate clearly your reporting requirements.
Use budgets and reporting to hold your designees accountable.
Recognize and reward those to whom you delegate responsibility.

Read Chapter 16.