There’s a moment every growing leader experiences. You are stretched too thin, your calendar is packed, you have 14 tabs open, and a blinking message says, “Just checking in on the thing we discussed.” So you do what the books say great leaders should do. You delegate.
Except something slips. The task gets done, but not the way you imagined. The pitch deck is ready, but the messaging feels off. The client follow-up went out, but it sounds like a template. You feel frustrated. They feel confused. And somewhere in the middle of that awkward silence sits the truth. You didn’t really delegate. You abdicated.
Early in my journey, I once handed over a product relaunch campaign to a new manager. I gave them a few bullet points and said, “You’ve got this.” What came back was technically correct, but it had no heart, no voice, no edge. And that was on me, not them.
I had skipped the part where I transferred not just the task, but the thinking behind it. That is the part most leaders forget. Delegation is not, “Here, take this.” It is, “Here’s what matters. Here’s what we are solving. And here is where I will still stay close.”
Great team members love autonomy, but not in a vacuum. They want to know what success looks like. They want to feel trusted, not dumped on. They want room to move, but also a place to ask.
If you disappear the moment you delegate, people don’t feel empowered. They feel stranded.
The irony is that leaders often disappear because they trust the person. But trust without support doesn’t build confidence. It builds second-guessing.
We have grown from a few people in a room to hundreds across geographies. And as we scaled, so did the need to delegate.
But every time something went sideways, it wasn’t because the person was incapable. It was because the handover lacked clarity.
Now, I ask myself two questions before I pass something on:
If the answer to either is no, I am not delegating. I am escaping. And that is a leadership problem.
Delegation done well creates leverage. Delegation done poorly creates clean hands and messy outcomes.
So the next time you hand something off, don’t just ask if they understood the task. Ask if they understand why it matters. Because the best handovers are not the fastest. They are the clearest.
Regards,
Rupesh
