The Responsive Leader and the Delegation-Dependency Continuum

Leaders strive to be responsive. Their teams hope their attentive leadership style will help them solve problems in a timely manner so they can win in the marketplace. It seems like a straightforward proposition for the leader. But leaders receive conflicting signals about how to navigate the sliding scale between delegation and dependency.

Message 1: To be a great leader you need to be a master delegator. Stay anchored to your strategy, guide your team along the path of tactics to deliver the objectives you’ve signed up for. Stay above the fray. Don’t get caught in the weeds. Maintain your elevation so you can see the landscape above the day to day work.

Message 2: Great leaders lead by example. They walk with their teams, shoulder to shoulder. They garner intense loyalty from their teams because they solve problems together. They enjoy the same successes and wear the same bruises. If you want to find the great leader, look for the person who is truly hands-on in her approach to management.

So, which is it? How can leaders strike the proper balance between delegating and diving right in? How do you create enough executional space to build an empowered, self-confident team? Does your hands-on style create an unhealthy dependency on you while you live in the weeds with your team? Most importantly, how do your decisions about how closely you manage affect your personal leadership brand and career trajectory?

As with most situations in life, the choices here are not binary. And the choice you make today about how deeply to become involved in your team’s work isn’t permanent. It doesn’t mean you must always delegate or that you must get your hands dirty with each problem, or something in between. It is situational. You must be flexible enough as a manager to understand how to apply the proper touch to reach your objective while strengthening the capabilities of your team to solve problems.

The messages you communicate to your team in these situations are critical. They must be grounded in today’s reality and tomorrow’s promise.

Where is the balance and how do you strike it?

First, make agreements with your team members about when you’ll delegate and when you’ll participate in solving problems with them. Communicate that your dual priorities are to achieve the goals and objectives you have agreed upon while building the team into a sustainable, capable unit. Neither priority is fundamentally more important than the other, although situations may call for you to emphasize one over the other. That’s when you’ll lean more toward one end of the delegation scale or the other.

Second, read situations effectively and avoid self-deception. Leaders must be “of” the team and “above” the team. You are part of the team in the sense that you are accountable for the same things. Together. Your deliverables are your team’s deliverables. You can’t turn your back on those and expect to achieve them. But you are also above your team. Because of your perch, you can see further over the horizon. You have the pulse of senior leadership and understand how that affects your agreed upon objectives. You sit at the crossroads of authority and accountability. It is up to you to call for a change of tactics if your visibility informs you of factors that only you can see.

Third, be flexible. Ask yourself continuously if you are too involved or too detached. Step in periodically by working with your salespeople. Ride with them. Ask them what is keeping them up at night. What problems are they struggling to solve? Don’t do the work for them, but keep the pulse of the business through your one to one contacts. Offer suggestions and new questions to think about. If you are feeling too involved, do the reverse with your senior manager and your functional colleagues. What are they seeing when they look at you and your interaction with your team? Can they share details about their interactions with your team members so you can understand whether your salespeople are feeling supported, or smothered, or abandoned? Understand the signals you receive from above, below and all around and work those into your daily decisions to strike the proper balance in your approach to leading your team.

Finally, keep a close eye on your performance. Are you delivering your metrics? Are you consistently meeting deadlines? What shortfalls to your objectives are occurring and with what frequency? As sales leaders, it is easy for us to experience these negative outcomes and start looking outward for the causes. Was there a product shortage, a shift in a critical deadline by senior leadership, or an overly optimistic forecast? Surely there was an external factor that caused you and your team to miss the mark, right?

The answer is yes, and no. Of course, one or more external factors didn’t behave exactly as predicted or designed. That’s the nature of our dynamic world. But the reality is that it is more likely that the biggest factor was your recognition of that change and your response. Did you inform your team and shift their focus, their direction? Did you get more involved or less involved in the areas of your strategy that were impacted. What new tactics did you develop with them to solve the new problem? Unforeseen changes in external factors are a fact of life. It’s your own behavior and reaction to those changes that has the greatest impact on your success or failure. Look at yourself first.

Remember, when it comes to delegating or participating as a manager, there is no universal truth. But if you delegate all the time you’ll lose the pulse of your team. And if you participate all the time you’ll create a dependent team.

Be present with your team, your senior leaders, and your functional peers. Pay attention to all the signals you receive. Keep your immediate and long-term outcomes in mind each day. Be honest with yourself and use fresh judgment in each situation about how you’ll lead.

That’s what effective, rising leaders do.

Lead well.

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