4 Reasons Why First-Time Managers May Resist Delegating Work

Overcoming resistance and boosting organizational productivity

 
Organizations that require managers to delegate increase their own productivity and hold an edge over their competitors—without making additional investments in people, programs, and systems. However, both first-time and experienced managers can resist delegating.

Why? And what can HR leaders do about it as they develop first-time managers? Let’s dive into the four most common reasons your managers may resist delegating work, and what leaders can do to head these reasons off.

1. They Don’t Believe That You Really Want Them To Do It

This is largely a communication issue. Managers need to hear on a continual basis that you expect them to manage their priorities and delegate effectively. Here are some stumbling blocks to their hearing that message:

• If senior management has no tolerance for the experience curve that is expected in delegating a task, then delegation won’t happen. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, he documents studies that suggest that it isn’t enough to have exceptional talent. It also takes 10,000 hours of experience to completely master a skill or knowledge area. It’s an important reminder that every master had to learn and master their trade one hour at a time, beginning with the first hour.


• If the actions of senior management are inconsistent with their words, employees will pay attention only to the actions. For example, every time senior management wants quick answers to extremely detailed questions – answers that can be provided only by the person directly handling the task – then middle-level managers are not likely to delegate that task to their subordinates. Likewise, every time senior management penalizes managers for tactical missteps made by a manager’s delegatee, the manager’s perception that they should have done the work themself is reinforced.


• If the company’s focus is purely tactical and dominated by firefighting, there is probably little investment in people for the long term – something that is required if you are encouraging delegation. Because the delegation of new tasks often takes more resources and more effort – and may result in somewhat lower quantity/quality of output initially – only companies planning for the long term will be willing to pay this price to invest in the development of their staff.

2. They Don’t Want to Do It

While managers want the company and themselves to succeed, they need to know why, as well as what, they want to accomplish through delegation. They need to see the value of delegation for themselves and the company.

• Fear and lack of confidence may be why managers are holding on to their “secret sauce.” Some are so paranoid that they may think this requirement to delegate tasks is a secret agenda to replace them with a cheaper, younger resource. (One of our clients discovered this when instituting a policy of paying for “piece work.” Many of their workers, who had figured out how to generate higher volume, were keeping their techniques secret in order to do better than their colleagues – a direct violation of the concepts of lean management.) Managers need the motivation to delegate as well as the information that will help them understand why delegation and personal accountability are important.


• Managers believe they are not being paid to have others “do their job.” Stated another way, many managers don’t believe that developing others is part of their job. (Whenever our clients have promoted “top guns” to be managers, they find out that the newly promoted managers don’t manage. Instead of working on the business and developing their people, they act “heroically” and do everything themselves. For example, I once worked with a vice president of marketing whose management concept included the following behavior: whenever there was a problem with Exxon, our largest client, he flew to Texas, “fixed the problem,” and only talked with his Texas branch manager long after the fact. (Lacking a true marketing VP had fatal consequences for the organization.)


• Managers believe it will take too long to delegate. They don’t want the extra work that comes with delegating tasks. If delegating takes longer, why not just do the task themselves?


• Some managers also want to “retain control” by doing the tasks themselves. To counter this, remember that there are other ways to exert control. For example, you can require a plan upfront and review it before granting permission to execute. Even better, by providing sustained feedback after each step in the project, you can help the delegatee quickly learn how to meet your expectations.


• Managers often believe that they personally can do the best job and are further convinced that only they can do the job right. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Every time they do the job, they get even better at it, and so they remain the “best.”


• Managers sometimes believe they have no one good enough to delegate tasks to. They may also believe others in the organization don’t have the right attitude and aptitude. (We tested this belief with one of our clients. This management team was surprised to learn that many of their employees demonstrated leadership and other skills in churches, scouting, and community groups. They would have been glad to take on similar challenges at work – if anyone had cared to ask them.)


• Managers actually don’t have anyone to delegate to because they hire only people who are less adept than they are. Why do they do this? Many managers are worried – and therefore don’t want to take a chance – that someone might have the capability to do a better job than they do. When I was running larger firms, there were two reasons I would fire managers on the spot. One was when they consistently hired people less skilled than they were. (If every manager on every level hires people less qualified than themselves, it won’t take long before you have a company of imbeciles!) The other situation was when managers told me they were “irreplaceable.” I replaced them on the spot.

3. They Don’t Know How to Do It

Managers must be given training and development opportunities in the delegation skill sets. (Delegatees also need training to learn new things and get comfortable with allowing their managers to assess their progress.) Management must realize there are some costs to mandating more delegation (and that leadership supports it).

For example, there is a cost associated with investing time as a mentor/coach. Also, initially, results may be of lower quality and less timely than if the manager performed the task. However, suppose the manager is very busy, even if the delegatee takes twice as long as the manager to deliver the result. In that case, it may still get finished in half the elapsed time it would have taken the manager to get to it.

4. They Don’t Have a Structure/Path to Follow

Managers need a system to size, shape, and sustain progress. Managers and delegatees need to understand the difference between delegation and abdication. The manager remains accountable for the successful outcome, and the delegatees must earn the authority to operate without close follow-up. The manager must accept and allow the delegatee to implement a task based on their competencies if there is to be any productivity. You might as well do the task yourself if you micromanage by not only specifying the outcomes but also the precise way that the outcomes are accomplished. Simply stated, it’s okay for the delegator to specify the final outcomes and measures but not the exact path to achieve those outcomes.

Many delegation attempts fail because the manager insists the delegatee do it their way or not at all. The good news is that it’s many times easier to specify an outcome than the details of the action steps required to produce that outcome. If asked, of course, you can explain how you would do it.

Delegate using the model of a chief surgeon. The chief surgeon focuses on the critical aspect of the task – the critical sub-tasks – that only he or she is competent to perform and then hands over the rest of the task to the assistants in the operating and recovery rooms. This may require re-engineering the main task into a collection of sub-tasks, most of which are candidates for delegation.

Delegating 80 percent of routine work to subordinates makes managers five times more valuable. Focusing their attention on the most valuable 20 percent of the most valuable 20 percent – i.e., the absolutely most valuable 4 percent – can enable managers to become as much as 25 times more valuable. All they have to do is implement an even more aggressive delegation program, developing the competence of their subordinates to routinely handle 96 percent of their current daily tasks.

Author Bio

John W. Myrna is the author of The Chemistry of Growth: A CEO’s Guide (QuickStudy Press) and several other books as well as Co-founder of Myrna Associates Inc.