The art of delegation

When it comes to leadership, one of the most common areas of concern I find is the inability to effectively delegate.

One would think that, in a world where someone has worked through to maturity, gained credentials, gained commensurate professional expertise, and is the pillar of their profession, they would want to pass these skills on, and maybe have some of the people coming up through the ranks ?do the work. Conspicuously, however, leaders in legal firms rarely do this. The whole notion of status within the organisation requires the lead partner to ?be a ‘do-er’. Add to this the omnipresent need for fee earning at the levels that seniority can acquire, and delegation is relegated to ?an activity that’s more often honoured in principle than practice.

For legal firms small and large, lawyers are skilled artisans, often in a specialist field crafted over the years. Therefore, it can seem counterintuitive that they should put this to one side and instead become a creature of delegation and management.

This is, of course, entirely understandable. The reality, however, is that organisations grow, the need for more sophisticated responses to the market increases, and, ultimately, we age and need to consider succession planning within the organisation. Somehow, those responsible for staff must start to turn their minds not only to the activity of delegation but to how to do it well. 

Delegation mindset

Delegation and, to a certain degree, staff supervision are discrete skill areas that require particular mindsets. We must recognise them as crucial to staff development, not just an extra workload pressure. I have seen many organisations where second and third-tier staff have been undermined by a leader’s inability to give them true responsibility. 

The scenario goes like this: when an urgent matter comes in, rather than managing, delegating, and overseeing ?the response, a mixture of organisational risk, professional pride, and perceptions of relative levels of expertise results in the most senior people being deployed. 

The problem is that if this happens every time, no one ?else ever acquires the skills repertoire to do anything differently. Junior staff fail to gain the experience that they need in order to develop, while senior staff are taken away from other mission-critical activities. As a result, we reel from crisis ?to crisis and our organisations do not become strategic, well-managed, growing and evolving entities. We then assure ourselves that all is well, because things are ‘sorted’ and we were reassuringly busy.

I find it such a common experience to deal with a senior partner in a firm who tells me they are burning the midnight oil while junior staff go home at civilised times. While I am not encouraging any employer to break the European Working Time Directive, they seem to rarely apply this to themselves, doing what they have to ?do to get through, and yet simultaneously placing relatively few demands on ?their own staff.

Leadership identity

Skilled legal practitioners need to adopt a leadership identity as much as they do a professional persona. They need to be able to inspire and motivate staff, organise and coordinate events, and ensure economy and efficiency of effort and activity. Failure to do so often results in ?a reactive, not proactive, company, where everything relies on the leading lights ?who seem indispensable, ?while junior staff’s abilities can atrophy or the best of them move on.

Delegation is more than ?a skill: it is part of the true leader’s identity and is essential. ?It shows one has made the transition from being a skilled artisan to someone who can co-ordinate others who are in the process of so becoming. ?The ‘art’ of effective delegation in this respect not only becomes part of one’s leadership development, it becomes part of what we mean by ‘managerial maturity’, and perhaps personal maturity also.

There is always an opportunity cost behind delegation. People rarely do things for the first time the way the leader or manager does them. But without the process of letting go, the ability to watch, support, supervise, ?and oversee, rather than rolling one’s sleeves up and immersing oneself personally in the fray, organisations simply don’t grow. 

Sometimes, we have to balance the sense of our own personal indispensability against the greater good, ?and therein lies an opportunity for everyone to gain.

David Cliff is managing director of Gedanken and chairman of the Institute of Directors’ Northern Sector Group @David_Cliff gedanken.co.uk