Posts
Why Most Delegation Training Is Rubbish: A Better Way Forward
The biggest lie in corporate training is that delegation is about "trusting your team." That's complete nonsense, and I'm tired of hearing it repeated in every leadership workshop from Brisbane to Perth.
After seventeen years of watching managers struggle with delegation—and yes, I used to be one of those micromanaging nightmares myself—I've come to realise that effective delegation isn't about trust at all. It's about systems, clarity, and having the guts to let people fail safely.
The Trust Trap
Every delegation course I've attended (and trust me, there have been too many) starts with some variation of "you need to trust your people more." What absolute rubbish. Trust isn't something you manufacture through a PowerPoint presentation on a Tuesday afternoon.
Real delegation works when you create frameworks that make success inevitable and failure recoverable. When I finally figured this out—after watching three promising team members leave because I was breathing down their necks constantly—everything changed.
The truth is, 67% of Australian managers admit they struggle with letting go of tasks. Not because they don't trust their teams, but because they've never been taught how to delegate systematically.
What Actually Works
Here's what the training manuals won't tell you: great delegation starts with being selfish about your own time. I know that sounds backwards, but hear me out.
Last month, I watched a client spend forty-five minutes explaining a task to their assistant that should have taken ten minutes to complete. Why? Because they hadn't thought through what outcome they actually wanted. They were delegating activity, not results.
The leadership training programs that get this right focus on outcome-based thinking first. Everything else is just noise.
When you delegate properly, you're essentially creating mini-businesses within your business. Each delegated task should have:
- A clear end state (not a process to follow)
- Built-in checkpoints that feel natural, not intrusive
- Permission to solve problems differently than you would
Most managers get this backwards. They specify the how instead of the what.
The Australian Context Problem
One thing that drives me mental about imported delegation advice is how it ignores our cultural context. Australians don't respond well to hierarchical "because I said so" management styles. We're natural questioners.
The best delegators I know in Australia frame things as collaborative problem-solving rather than task assignment. Instead of "I need you to do this," it's "we've got this challenge, and I think you're the right person to tackle it."
This isn't just about being culturally sensitive. It's about getting better results. When people understand why something matters, they bring their whole brain to the problem instead of just their hands.
BHP figured this out years ago with their operational excellence programs. They stopped telling miners how to do their jobs and started asking them to solve safety and efficiency problems. Productivity went through the roof.
The Three Things Nobody Mentions
First: You have to be comfortable with people doing things differently than you would. This sounds obvious, but it's incredibly hard in practice. I still catch myself wanting to jump in when I see someone taking a different approach to a problem I've solved before.
Second: Good delegation requires you to become a better communicator, not a better delegator. Most delegation failures happen because the original brief was unclear, incomplete, or assumed knowledge the other person didn't have.
Third: You need to delegate authority along with responsibility. This is where most Australian managers fall down completely. They hand over the task but keep all the decision-making power. It's maddening for everyone involved.
I learned this the hard way when I asked my operations manager to "handle the client complaint process" but then undermined him by stepping in every time someone escalated. He quit within six months. Smart guy, too.
The Real Skill
The supervisory training courses that actually work don't focus on delegation techniques. They focus on developing judgment about what to delegate, when, and to whom.
Some tasks should never be delegated. Others should be delegated immediately. Most fall somewhere in between, and that's where experience matters.
Here's my rule of thumb: if the task requires your specific expertise or relationships, keep it. If it requires time and attention you don't have, delegate it. If it's a growth opportunity for someone else, delegate it even if you could do it faster yourself.
The last one is the hardest. Watching someone struggle through something you could knock out in twenty minutes is genuinely painful. But it's also how you build capability in your team.
Why Most Training Fails
The delegation workshops I've sat through focus too much on the interpersonal dynamics and not enough on the practical mechanics. They'll spend an hour talking about "building rapport" and five minutes on how to actually structure a delegation conversation.
That's backwards. The mechanics matter more than the mood music.
A good delegation conversation has three parts: context (why this matters), constraints (what you can't do), and success criteria (how we'll know it worked). Everything else is optional.
I've seen managers transform their effectiveness by simply getting better at these three elements. It's not rocket science, but it does require practice.
The Long Game
Effective delegation isn't just about freeing up your time today. It's about building organisational capability for tomorrow. Every task you delegate well is one less bottleneck in your business.
The managers I most admire have built themselves out of most of their daily work. Not because they're lazy, but because they've systematically developed their teams to handle complex challenges independently.
This doesn't happen overnight. But it starts with admitting that most of what you're holding onto doesn't actually need your personal attention. It just needs clear expectations and good systems.
Stop making delegation about trust. Make it about creating conditions where good people can do great work without you hovering over them like a nervous parent.
Related Reading: