By Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC, Executive Coach, Leadership Expert, Speaker, Author
APRIL 2025
You don’t need to delegate more. You need to delegate better. Here's a story that'll explain what I mean.
I was working with a senior VP coaching client and during a discussion about her capacity, we shifted our conversation to the topic of delegation. I told her I had noticed that she was quite proud of her ability to empower her team. “I’m great at delegation,” she told me. “I trust my people. I don’t micromanage.”
Having observed her in action over several weeks during her 1:1s and team meetings, I saw something different: her calendar was jammed with back-to-back meetings; she sent out directive emails at all hours; she regularly worked weekends to fix her team's mistakes, and to catch up on her own work. I also noticed the reaction of her employees, and the impact on her team. Her employees didn’t seem to be confident or engaged and were unwilling to take initiative.
That instinct to ‘do it all’ is called over-functioning – doing the thinking, making the decisions, doing the ‘doing’, then re-doing what was done to meet an unreasonably high standard – all the while believing you’ve 'handed it off'.
My client is not alone. Delegation, and over-functioning in particular, is a common leadership coaching topic. And it doesn’t always look like martyrdom or micromanagement – most of the time, it’s a well-intentioned leader jumping in to help, filling in the blanks, or fixing things behind the scenes. And sometimes, it happens because a leader simply loves the 'doing'. But that pattern comes at a cost – to the leader’s capacity, to the team’s development, and to the overall trust within the team.
If you’re doing all the thinking and troubleshooting, you’re unintentionally teaching your team not to.
Leaders often fall into one of two over-functioning patterns:
The Martyr: “It’s just easier if I do it myself.”
The Micromanager: “I know I handed it over, but the output isn’t perfect, so I’ll fix it.”
Both are understandable. Neither actually works long term. So let’s shift the conversation to explore what's driving that behaviour, below the surface.
DELEGATION ISN’T ABOUT 'LETTING GO' OR 'SETTLING'
Here’s a myth that most leaders have been taught: Delegation means taking something off your to-do list and handing it to someone else.
But delegation is much more than that. Real, purposeful delegation is an act of generosity and trust. It’s not just about removing a task from your plate – it’s about staying involved in the right ways.
Let’s look at three common – and very different – delegation missteps that illustrate the cost of getting it wrong.
The scenario: You ask an employee to lead a project review and create a status update to present to the executive team.
Misstep #1: Hand-Off and Hope: You forward the meeting invite and say, “You’re up. Good luck.” They scramble to prepare, unsure of what matters most to the audience or what success looks like. Their output misses the mark, and you end up rewriting the entire presentation the night before. The result? Frustration on both sides and an employee who feels overwhelmed rather than empowered. What’s missing: the leadership scaffolding of clarity, support, and trust.
Misstep #2: Polisher’s Pitfall: Your employee completes their review, creates the report, and sends it back to you. It’s thoughtful, accurate, and 95 percent there, but not quite how you would have done it. Instead of offering constructive feedback or coaching them to close the gap, you quietly rewrite the whole thing to get it “just right.” It may feel efficient in the moment, but the cost is invisible and cumulative: confidence erodes, trust thins, and motivation takes a hit. Over time, your people stop stretching and start playing small.
Misstep #3: Ego Editor: If you’ve ever thought, “I just want to make a few improvements, to put my mark on it”, your edits aren't about quality control – they're about identity and ego. Many leaders unintentionally use editing as a way to demonstrate their value, showcase expertise, or subtly reassert ownership. But the trade-off is that every time you rewrite instead of coach, you send the message that your team’s work isn’t good enough, or that your version is the only one that counts. What starts as helpful becomes harmful. Over time, initiative fades, people disengage, and the team learns that ‘done’ doesn’t mean ‘trusted.’
Now picture a different version of this same scenario: You spend ten minutes upfront with your employee, walking through the context, clarifying expectations, and defining success. When they deliver the work, you don’t rewrite it or put your personal stamp on it – instead, you offer thoughtful questions and clear, actionable feedback that helps them refine, adjust, and learn. You’re not hovering, rescuing, or reasserting your mark – you’re scaffolding. You’re guiding.
When you delegate well, powerful things happen:
You build trust.
Your employee gains confidence and capability.
Your leadership style evolves as you shift from doing to developing, from directing to empowering.
Delegation becomes less about task completion and more about capability-building and culture-shaping.
This kind of leadership isn’t about perfection. It’s about being okay with 90%, if it means your people are getting stronger, faster, and more confident. It’s about holding the line between quality and growth – and having the courage to let your team take real ownership, even if it’s not perfect. Because that’s what builds future-ready teams. That’s what scales leadership.
To be fair, most senior leaders were never formally taught how to delegate. They built their careers on being high performers – solving problems, delivering results, and executing with speed and precision. These strengths earned them promotions, but once they step into leadership, the very habits that made them successful can begin to backfire.
As a leader, your job is no longer to do the work yourself – it’s to get the work done through others. That means shifting from being the expert who executes to the leader who inspires and enables execution. It’s about creating the conditions where your team can stretch, learn, and deliver, effectively and consistently.
When leaders continue doing it all themselves, they don’t just slow things down – they inadvertently block growth, erode trust, and limit team potential. To lead well, delegation isn’t a luxury – it’s a leadership necessity.
THE EMPOWERED DELEGATION MAP: FIVE QUESTIONS THAT CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING
This simple tool can help you plan your delegation moments more thoughtfully. Whether you're assigning a project, handing over a recurring task, or reflecting on something that didn’t quite land – the Empowered Delegation Map invites you to get intentional.
Here are the four reflection questions:
1. What’s the desired outcome? Be specific. What needs to happen? By when? And why does it matter?
2. What context or guardrails make this safe to delegate? What do they need to know? What decisions are theirs to make? What boundaries matter?
3. What would learning look like – even if it’s imperfect? What’s the stretch zone? What are you willing to tolerate in service of their development?
4. What’s the cost if I keep doing this myself? What’s the impact on your energy, focus, or leadership credibility? And what growth opportunity are they missing?
5. What will I do differently, as a result of this reflection? What new move do you want to experiment with? When will you try this? With whom? What criteria will you use to determine your level of success at this new move?
Try walking through the Empowered Delegation Map in advance of a handoff conversation, or even in retrospect. You might be surprised by what gets revealed through this simple but powerful coaching practice.
BE THE LIGHTHOUSE, NOT THE LIFEGUARD
Effective leaders are like lighthouses. They don’t climb into the boat and start bailing water – they shine a focused beam of light for others to find the hole. They broaden their beam and give enough direction to help the team find their way through a challenging strait. They are steady, anchored, and visible, and they trust their people to navigate with increasing confidence.
The challenging part is that most of us were trained to jump in and prove our value by solving and doing. But empowered delegation means resisting that impulse. It means letting others fumble a bit, so they can build awareness, skill, and capability, and learn important lessons that help them develop. It means learning when to shine a focused beam on something specific – and when to widen the light to illuminate the broader path.
When leaders delegate with clarity and purpose, something powerful happens. Their team stops waiting for direction and starts thinking for themselves. They feel trusted, and they step up in response. Ownership grows. Capacity expands. Leaders begin to spend more time where they create the most value – on strategic priorities – and less time putting out fires.
And there’s a bonus ripple effect: when your direct reports experience empowered delegation, they start to model it too, and before you know it, you’ve helped shift the culture toward greater ownership and trust.
TRY THE DELEGATION MAP – AND SEE WHAT SHIFTS
If you’re ready to delegate in a way that supports your people, strengthens your leadership, and frees up your capacity, download the free Empowered Delegation Map and give it a try. Use it before your next 1:1, during team planning, or even to debrief a delegation moment that didn’t land quite the way you hoped.
You might be surprised by how much shifts – not just in your team, but in your own mindset and habits as a leader.
