I love delegation so much it’s second nature to me. I’d like to delegate everything in my life except playing and cuddling with my cat, going to brunch with my friends, and shopping. That may be a slight exaggeration but basically a true representation of the level of inertia I often feel.
In business, hard work is admired. You want people who enjoy doing a lot. But what happens when a person who enjoys doing a lot becomes the manager of a larger scope of business than they have ever before overseen? Their nature is to do a lot, but when you have many different business units to run, doing a lot isn’t the value it was when that employee was an individual contributor. It can be hard to take yourself out of the hands-on weeds and step back and become a champion delegator.
Maybe a person who has a multitude of ideas and the capacity for innovation and good schmoozing is more what you want for a manager, while it’s the individual contributors who should be the most valued for doing a lot.
When thinking about who should become manager, a question that should arise is: Will this person be capable of happily delegating? Or will they seek to have a hands-on role at every business unit they oversee?
Before promoting an employee to manager or hiring a new manager, you might want to train hiring managers to gauge the person’s skills at delegation—not just whether they can do it, but how much they like doing it.
Will They Empower Others?
Be wary of the prospective manager who wants all employees in a department to report directly to them. “They’ll all report to me, and then I’ll decide how and where we most need them at any given time,” the manager might declare.
The skilled hiring manager then might ask: “Do you see a value to letting each mid-level or lower-senior level employee have a junior employee of their own to manage? In addition to giving them the chance to have the focused assistance each needs for their business unit, you would be developing their skills as managers.”
The manager responds, “That’s nice, but I think that with our limited resources, it would be better for me to stay in control of all employees in the department.”
That attitude of needing to be the central force, managing everything oneself instead of delegating, should be a red flag that this is not a person who should be put in a position to manage anyone other than maybe one junior employee of their own.
Partnering Instead of Managing
Just as the ideal manager seeks to delegate, including empowering employees to manage their own employees, a worthy manager is secure enough to have other high-level employees under them—including ones they didn’t hire and train themselves.
When you assume leadership of a department, the job often comes with management of both employees you hired and developed yourself and some who were hired and developed by the previous department leader or another manager.
When delegation is not a core competency, there can be a tendency to first try to manage the senior-level employees as if they were entry-level, asking to review and approve minutia and then to try teaching them skills the manager must know they already have. And when all else fails, the manager may become hypercritical and remove them.
Being able and excited to delegate goes hand in hand with the art of partnering rather than managing. To partner with, rather than manage, an employee, you must be willing to acknowledge that other person’s abilities, along with their weaknesses, rather than assuming everything they do on their own in their own way is wrong and needs to be fixed via hands-on remediation.
A person with a touch of laziness can be a great asset here because they would be all too happy to acknowledge everything another employee does well enough to do on their own. They would be glad to have senior-level employees in the department who can carry a significant load on their own.
Relaxation Can Be Leveraged
Years ago, a manager said only half joking that the best “meetings” happen when “bellying up to the bar” with business contacts. We laughed about this, but, as I have seen for myself, there’s truth in it.
You can’t fake it. If you genuinely love to spend an hour (at least) nursing a beverage while chatting on topics far and wide, the connections you’ll make will be powerful.
Beware of the overly task-oriented manager who keeps one eye on their watch while sipping their drink. If they can’t bear to be away from their work, maybe your organization should do them a favor and let the small window they look out of, comprising their own work and one or two direct reports, be enough. Expanding their scope will take them away from the hands-on, task-oriented world they most enjoy.
What mentality is best for a manager? Is there a virtue in a manager who doesn’t seek to do it all?