Leaders of all kinds know that they must delegate. Delegation is practically wise, organizationally healthy, and spiritually essential.
Delegation is wise because eventually everyone—even the most gifted and driven—realizes that they can’t do everything. Certainly, they can’t do all things equally well. Delegation is healthy because it invites others to participate and realize their potential. This instills a sense of ownership and responsibility that enhances morale. The Bible says this is healthy because it enables the entire body to work as God intended. In fact, it’s spiritually essential. Delegating ministry is consistent with God’s gifting and calling of every believer to serve.
Yet the constant reminders to delegate found in leadership books, articles, courses, and seminars suggest that it’s far from being a settled issue. Many leaders regularly confess their struggles with delegating as they should. And it shows. It shows in the messy transitions to the next executive leader. It shows in the apathy of those willing to let them continue doing everything. It shows in the frustration of those yearning to be given real responsibility. And it shows in the personal, familial, and professional strain that leads many leaders to seek new positions in new organizations, sometimes in entirely new industries.
Why don’t we delegate more? Here are six potential culprits. Warning: some of these culprits operate simultaneously to derail our effectiveness.
1. Guilt.
Many leaders simply feel guilty asking others to do something. They especially feel guilty asking certain people to do more. Leaders see volunteers, employees, or staff already stretched thin, and they can’t bear to stretch them further. They don’t want to send the message that their present efforts aren’t appreciated.
Another way guilt manifests itself is in the way leaders sometimes internalize a sense of duty that exceeds what they’ve actually been tasked to do. “How can I ask others to do this or that? I’m paid to do this! I don’t want to push it off on someone else.”
Galatians 6 is helpful because it says that burden-bearing is a Christian obligation—both the bearing of others’ burdens, but also in everyone doing their own part. First Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4 are also indispensable, especially for pastors. They remind us of both the purpose of pastoral ministry (to equip the body), and the nature of the body (inherently many). Sometimes then, the task is to distinguish real guilt (“I’m doing something wrong”) from guilt feelings (“I don’t like the way doing this makes me feel”). This distinction can help leaders overcome false guilt as they delegate.
2. Fear
Sometimes leaders fear the reaction they’ll get from people to whom they delegate. “What if they say ‘no’?” “What if they say ‘yes’, but privately they think, ‘Why me’?” These kinds of questions reveal that those leaders might fear man, not God.
Sometimes leaders’ fears lie elsewhere: how things might turn out. If tasks are delegated to others, then the outcome is no longer in our hands. That scares many leaders. They have a vision for how they’d like to see things done, but they must trust others to work toward that vision sufficiently enough to benefit the organization. Inevitably, they must let go.
Christian leaders must engage in careful self-evaluation: “Am I more afraid of the people I serve with than the God whom I serve?” “Do I have a problem with trying to control every aspect and outcome of my organization?” Don’t answer hastily. No one wants to admit they’re afraid, and fears are often hard to spot.
3. Laziness
Laziness seems like the last thing that would hinder delegation. After all, isn’t the driven, workaholic leader the one least likely to delegate? Often, but not always.
Sometimes lazy leaders aren’t fully apprised of all that needs to be done. They’re not only lazy in their actions; they’re lazy in their attentiveness. They’re not closely watching and evaluating, so they miss crucial needs and opportunities. And we can’t delegate when we don’t know what needs delegating! Then there’s garden-variety laziness. This laziness hinders delegation in a different way: this leader is always delegating everything. He simply doesn’t want to dig in and do the work.
Lazy leaders sabotage their organizations by missing and yielding the field of play. Renewed attention and passion help them to see the work that needs doing (and which of those needs should be delegated).
4. Jealousy
Like it or not, most leaders have a keen sense of what they are or aren’t accomplishing. They keep score. But what we count says much about us. Even so, one reason leaders don’t delegate is a good outcome might not end up on their scoreboard, or a bad outcome might.
A person who fails to fulfill their task may be deemed a failure. At least, their project failed. And when that happens, some may grade it as a mark against the one who put that person in charge. “The leader showed poor judgment,” it could be said. Because we’re jealous of our record, we can’t have that.
Conversely, what if those we delegate responsibility to succeed and we get none of the credit? How easy it is to slip in, “Yeah, I knew he’d do a good job.” Or, “That’s why I asked him to do that like that.”
Envy, jealousy’s twin, is at work, too. Jealousy seeks to protect what one has (my sterling record), envy wrongly seeks to acquire what another has (their praise). Ultimately people spot both and are turned off. They need leaders to stand by them when things go south, not distance themselves from them. They need leaders to celebrate their successes, not try to claim them as their own.
5. Impatience
Scripture regularly warns believers to be sober and steadfast. In a word, we’re called to be patient. Yet impatience shows up rather quickly in our leadership when we’re unwilling to take the time to not only entrust tasks to people, but to train them in how to perform them effectively.
Many leaders reason, “I could do this much quicker if I just did it myself.” Therefore, they do. They let speed and efficiency be a truer measure of actual success than multiplication. If we took the time to invest in people and equip them, it would accrue benefit both to them and to the organization. But impatient leaders can’t and won’t take the time to see this happen.
Impatience derails a lot of leaders because they refuse to take the long-term view, opting instead for short-term results. But wisdom beckons impatient leaders to see how such hastiness has derailed more than one leader throughout history. Taking the time to show someone else the way slows us down in the right way for the right reason.
6. Pride
All sin ultimately comes back to pride. Proud leaders have a false sense of security and reputation. They don’t realize that their true security and standing is rooted in the One who called them.
Proud leaders have a misguided sense of their higher accountability. They don’t realize Whom they should fear most.
Proud leaders think that their time is their own, that they already see “what needs to be seen,” and that they’ve earned the right to choose their jobs. They don’t realize they need someone sovereign and wiser to direct their steps.
Proud leaders think they’d better just do the work themselves, lest a second be wasted waiting on someone else to meet us at the finish line. They don’t realize that the Spirit works in and through each of us on His timetable, not ours.
Proud leaders seek to preserve their sense of self, whether that means taking credit and hogging glory when others succeed, or abandoning colleagues when things fail. They don’t see their calling to focus on a greater glory.
Pride and its related vices all bind and blind. It’s why we don’t usually see failure to delegate (or delegate enough) as a major problem. We just see it as a run-of-the-mill weakness. But if we look deeper, we may see the truth of the matter.
Fundamentally, proud leaders are selfish, blind, and small. Any success will be a mirage, or at least short-lived. Delegation, then, is a great Rorschach test for evaluating not just the skill or wisdom of leaders. It’s a great test for the kinds of people we are.