You want your team to lead more without losing your grip on what matters
The team could hold more than it does, and the question is how to hand over authority without losing sight of the work.
The people in this team are competent and could carry more than they currently do. You want them making decisions, solving problems and owning areas of the work. The difficulty is doing that without either hovering or losing sight of how things are going, and it is largely a question about your own practice rather than about theirs.
Presenting symptoms
- Decisions that could be settled in the team arrive with you for confirmation.
- You are the only person who knows how several things work.
- Colleagues describe areas as theirs while checking every significant choice with you first.
Possible causes
- Decision rights may never have been stated, so checking first is the safe default.
- The task may have been handed over while the decision was kept.
- There may be no agreed way of seeing how the work is going, so the only alternative to checking is not knowing.
- A previous handover may have gone wrong, and the response to it may still be shaping your practice.
Nobody knows what they can decide without asking.
Your most useful next step: For each area, write down what its owner decides alone, what they decide and tell you, and what they bring to you first. Three lines per area is enough.
Lead behaviours
You handed over the work but kept the decisions.
Your most useful next step: Pick one area and give away the next decision in it completely, including the right to make it differently from how you would, and say so where the team can hear it.
Lead behaviours
You have no way of seeing how it is going except by asking.
Your most useful next step: Agree two things per area that you will both look at, and the dates you will look at them. Then stop asking in between.
Lead behaviours
A previous handover went badly and you have not let go since.
Your most useful next step: Name what went wrong last time, out loud, and design the next handover with the person who will hold it, so the safeguards are theirs as well as yours.
Lead behaviours
Core behaviours
Delegation that keeps the decision is not delegation, it is allocation. What makes someone the leader of an area is the right to settle things in it, including the right to settle them differently from how you would.
How much to hand over is a judgement about a particular person at a particular point, not a policy. The same area given to two colleagues needs two different amounts of scaffolding.
Checking is not the opposite of trust. Unscheduled checking is. Agreed points at which you look together are what make it possible to stop asking in between.
Ownership comes from shaping the work rather than from receiving it. An area handed over with the approach already decided leaves its owner accountable for somebody else’s plan.
The practical alternative to hovering is knowing what you are watching. Two lead measures per area give visibility that does not require you to be in the room.
Secondary behaviours
Use this when setting decision rights. A colleague who understands why a boundary sits where it does can judge the cases you did not anticipate, which is the whole point of distributing leadership.
Use this before deciding how much to hand over. People are usually clear about what they are ready to hold, and are rarely asked.
Use this to write the boundaries down. Decision rights that exist only in conversation revert to checking first within a term.
A useful first action
For one area, write down the three things its owner decides alone, the three they decide and tell you about, and the three they bring to you first. If you cannot fill the first column, that is the problem.
Suggested approach
- Choose one area and set out what its owner decides alone, what they decide and tell you, and what they bring to you first.
- Ask the person what they are ready to hold, before deciding it for them.
- Hand over the next real decision in that area completely, and say so where the team can hear it.
- Agree two measures per area and the dates you will look at them together, then stop asking in between.
- If a previous handover went wrong, name it and design the safeguards with the person who will hold this one.