Ben Morton explains why leaders avoid delegating: worry and the brain's negativity bias make them fixate on what could go wrong. The Momentum Process flips this by starting with the upside, then assessing actual risk and planning controls. One leader freed five hours a week using it.
Hi there, I'm Ben Morton, and welcome to The Leader's Kitbag, the podcast that delivers practical leadership insights in less than 10 minutes. Each episode tackles a real challenge faced by leaders and managers with simple ideas and tools you can take away and apply immediately. And because leadership doesn't happen sitting behind a desk. Many of these episodes are recorded outside whilst I'm walking and thinking. They're informal, unscripted, and straight to the point. So, wherever you are, let's get started and sharpen your leadership skills one episode at a time.
I'd like to ask you a question, and I want you to be really honest with yourself.
Is there something you're holding on to right now? A project, a particular task, or perhaps it's a meeting you go to every single week that deep down you know you should probably let go of?
Most of the leaders I work with would say absolutely yes. This comes up all the time in my coaching and leadership programs. And rarely does a week go by without a leader or manager telling me that they need to step out of the detail more, they need to delegate more and trust their team more. They know it's the right thing to do, but at the same time they don't do it. So what actually is getting in the way? What actually stops them delegating more, and stepping out of the detail. Most leaders know the theory of delegation. What stops them is something much more human. It's worry. Worry that things will go wrong, worry that we'll be accountable for something that goes sideways on our watch, or worried that something will get missed. And that worry is totally understandable, but so long as worry drives the decision we'll stay stuck and we'll limit our team's ability to grow and develop. And you know what? There's still a chance that something could get missed because we are spread too thinly ourselves.
There's a good reason why this happens, and it's rooted in how our brains are wired. You see, we're naturally inclined to give more weight to what might go wrong than what might go right. Psychologists call it our negativity bias.
It means if you're trying to decide whether to delegate something or step out of a particular meeting, your brain is naturally working against you. It's scanning the world out there for all of the threats, the risks, and the downside. And this is exactly why if you ask yourself the seemingly simple question, should I delegate this? Should I stop going to that meeting? The answer you'll likely come up with is probably not.
Now, that's not because the risks are necessarily real.
It's simply because your brain is wired to notice the downside first.
So some time ago, I developed a simple system to counteract that. I call it the Momentum Process. It's not complicated. In fact, it's based on something that most people in business will be very familiar with, the simple risk assessment. But there's one crucial difference. A standard risk assessment, as the name suggests, starts by identifying all of the risks. The Momentum Process is different. The very first step is to identify the potential upside. What could happen if things go brilliantly well? The first question you need to ask yourself is, what's the opportunity here? For example, if I do delegate this, if I do step back from that monthly meeting, if I do let my team lead on this project without me hovering over it and constantly meddling, if I do that, what is the upside? Maybe it frees up 5 hours a week that you could use far more effectively. And in case you think that's unrealistic, someone on one of my programmes recently freed up 5 hours a week by using this exact framework. By starting here, by focusing on the opportunity, you're doing something very deliberate. You're giving your brain permission to see the positive, the best case scenario, before worry kicks in and it focuses on the worst-case scenario. From there, we move on to think about the risk. Now, it's not the imagined risk, it's the actual risk. And just like in a real risk assessment, we think about the likelihood of that thing happening and the severity if it did. And I find by the time we've done that, we generally notice that the the risk is smaller than we thought, and the severity or impact, if it did happen, is far less significant than our negativity bias had us believe in the first place. Next, you think about the control measures. What can you do now in the setup whilst you're planning ahead to reduce that risk before it even happens? Maybe it's a clear brief to your team member, or a check-in at the midpoint.
And then, and this is the part that many people miss, you think about the recovery measures. If the risk did come to fruition, then what would you do to recover? Because in reality, there are very few decisions that you hand to your team that would be catastrophic if they went wrong. Most things can be corrected, adjusted, or at least learned from for next time. And when you actually think that through, the worry really does start to dissipate.
When leaders start to use the Momentum Process, especially the first few times with the worksheet in front of them, something starts to shift.
And over time, you'll find you won't need the worksheet because using the Momentum Process that just becomes your default way of thinking and operating in the world. And if you want to grab a copy, I'll make the Momentum Process worksheet available for you wherever you happen to be watching or listening to this via a link below. That's it for today's episode of The Leader's Kitbag. As always, I hope it's been useful. Look after yourself and those you've got the privilege and responsibility to lead. And until next time, lead on.
