Brian Gubernick breaks down why most delegation fails: leaders dump tasks instead of transferring responsibility with context, decision rights, and check-ins. He identifies three core mistakes: no ownership from the delegator, no modeling of the behavior, and a sloppy hand-off. Effective delegation is about developing people, not saving time.
Chapters
Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today we're going to talk a little bit about leadership. Specifically, we'll talk around, around delegation and how delegation is not necessarily abdication. And I'm going to tell the story or an experience that I had to explain why this is in fact today's topic. The angle that we'll take today is probably not the angle you typically hear. This isn't about how to delegate more necessarily. It's, it's about how to better delegate, how to delegate well. Because when delegation is poorly executed, it doesn't create leverage, which was the intent. It creates resentment, it creates confusion, it could even create some failure. Like I mentioned just a moment ago, I recently got a front row seat to exactly how not to delegate, how not to do it. So about a week ago, I found myself on the other side of delegation. I wasn't the leader doing the delegating. I was actually the one being delegated to. Now, on the surface, it, it seemed fine. It looked fine. The task itself was being handed off. There were sort of some expectations that were mentioned. A deadline existed. But rather quickly, things seemed to break down. What became obvious to me was, was this. The person delegating didn't actually want to delegate. What they wanted to do was offload. And there is a big difference between delegating something and simply offloading. There was no real ownership by this individual that was, was delegating. There was no modeling of what great looked like, or nor just no display of, of their effort in other areas. There wasn't a proper handoff. There was no clarity on decision rights or success metrics. There wasn't even any context around this delegation. It felt less like leadership and more like, you know, here's this problem, go figure it out. This is, in other words, maybe it felt like this is now your problem to deal with. Here's the part that I think matters most. The outcome ended up suffering. Now, I did what I could to go execute, and I think it all panned out just fine. But if I reflect on that moment or on that experience, I think the outcome could have been even, uh, further improved if we were better aligned. It didn't have to do with me being capable or not. It had to do with the way delegation itself was broken. And so that experience has forced me to reflect pretty hard on my own leadership. The core truth is this: delegation does not remove ownership. Delegation does not transfer ownership. I think it's the first principle of effective delegation. I think it's also a non-negotiable. You can delegate the task, you cannot delegate the result. The moment a leader thinks, "Hey, once I hand this off, it's no longer my responsibility," they've probably already failed. Great leaders, in my opinion, stay attached to outcomes. Even when that execution is handed to someone else, they stay attached. Poor leaders tend to disappear, tend to fade away. So I think failure number 1 here was this, this lack of ownership. In my experience last week, the delegator had mentally checked out. There was no follow-up cadence, there was no curiosity, there was no sense of, hey, if this fails, it's on me. The delegation became a, became a dump, right? It just became a handoff, not a developmental tool or anything of that nature. When leaders start to abdicate ownership, teams start to feel it immediately. It shows up as hesitation or overchecking, or maybe even complete disengagement. Ownership is the anchor, in my opinion, of effective delegation, because without it, nothing else ends up mattering. Now, the second failure I found was what I'd like to call no modeling of the behavior. There wasn't modeling. The leader didn't show or hadn't shown, you know, how they would approach the task. They didn't discuss how they'd approach the task. They didn't describe what excellent actually looks like. They didn't talk about where precision mattered and where it didn't. And so, it became pretty clear this wasn't strategic delegation. It was just this handoff or move out of convenience. Delegation done right, I think, says, "I've done this. I understand it. Now, I'm teaching you how to own it." Said differently, delegation done wrong says, I don't want to do this anymore, best of luck to you. I think that in addition to the modeling I'm describing here, there was a breakdown in a different kind of modeling, in that this particular individual that handed this task off to me wasn't— it wasn't like this person was out there working hard or was overwhelmed or, or was looking at this particular task as something they should delegate so that they could focus on higher priority you know, matters. It wasn't actually that. It was truly a, I don't want to do this anymore, you take it. And so being on the recipient of that task, it felt a little weird. It felt a little different. And again, that's what— why I'm talking here today, because it forces me to reflect on my leadership and how I'm in fact delegating. Now, going back to this particular delegation, I think failure number 3 was an improper handoff. I think this is where a lot of people unintentionally fail. When I think about improper handoff, I think there was, you know, in my particular case, there was no context for why the work mattered. There was no clarity on what decisions I could make. There was no agreement on what success looked like, and there was no defined check-in points. I think a proper handoff would answer, you know, the following questions before the work even begins. Number 1, what does success even look like? Number 2, what decisions can you make without me? Number 3, where do I want visibility? And number 4, when do we regroup? If you ask those 4 questions, uh, during a handoff, you can see why that handoff would be so much more effective than not asking them at all. Because without those questions, delegation will feel like walking into a field with no rules and being told to just go win the game. You don't even know, you know, what rules you could play by or even what the field looks like. Now, I think most delegation failures aren't really about laziness. I do believe in my particular case, there was a little bit of laziness there. But I think that most of the time delegation failures aren't about laziness. They're actually about impatience. Leaders say they don't have time to explain or model or follow up. But here's the reality. If you don't have time to delegate properly, you'll have time to clean up or you'll be making time to clean up the mess. Delegation is a leadership investment. It's not necessarily some time-saving hack. So, for the No Days Off Nation, this week, here's your action item. I want you to take a delegation ownership test. Okay? Before you delegate anything this week, I want you to ask yourself, if this fails, will I own it publicly? So, number 1, if this fails, will I own it publicly? Number 2, have I modeled? Have I shown what great looks like? Or did I just describe it? And then number 3, is this delegation meant to develop someone or just unload my plate? I think if you can't answer those cleanly, then, then hold off on the delegation. Fix the leadership first. The leverage will, will come later. Because the great leaders, we don't hand off, we don't just hand off work, we transfer capability. And never, never let go of responsibility. That's extreme ownership. That's all I have for you today in the No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
