No! You Are Not the Only Person Who Can Do That

"It's just faster if I do it myself."

Every leader has said it. Every leader has believed it. And for many General Counsel, it becomes one of the biggest obstacles to leadership effectiveness.

How many times have you heard an interviewee describe their "weakness" as an inability to delegate? It often sounds safe because it barely sounds like a weakness at all. It signals ownership, quality control, and a refusal to let things fall through the cracks. I understand the instinct because I used to say it myself. Now, though, it raises a red flag.

As you advance into leadership, an inability to delegate becomes a real weakness, not a safe one. And the issue is often deeper than workload management. Many leaders confuse delegation with simply assigning work, when true delegation requires clarity, trust, judgment, and follow-through.

As lawyers, we are trained to be precise. We identify issues, develop solutions, and become accustomed to being the person with the answer. Those habits serve us well throughout much of our careers. But as we move into leadership roles, they actually become limiting. 

Great leadership is not about having every answer. It is about creating an environment where the best answers can emerge.

One of the biggest obstacles to delegation is not a lack of capable people to do the work. It may be our own belief that we are uniquely qualified to handle a matter. Most often, that belief is not reality, but rather habit, comfort, control, or even ego.

The organization does not need, or want, you to do everything. What it does need is for you to build a team that can. That distinction matters because delegation is not a personality trait. It is a leadership practice. The question is not whether you are naturally good at letting go; the question is whether you have built a repeatable way to decide what to delegate, to whom, and with what level of support.

Focus on the Outcome, Not the Process

One of the most common mistakes leaders make is delegating a task while prescribing exactly how it must be completed. This is where leaders confuse “delegation” with “assigning work.” 

Before delegating, ask yourself a few questions:

• What am I trying to accomplish? 

• What does success look like?

• What are the key risks and constraints?

  
  

Once those are clear, allow your team members the space to determine how to get there. Explain the objective, define the deliverables, and then give them the runway to succeed. If you are delegating to someone who knows the issue better than you, they are likely to  identify a better, faster, or more efficient solution than the one you would have chosen yourself.

The People Closest to the Work Often Know More

Leadership requires humility. As a successful leader you should inevitably lead people whose expertise exceeds your own in certain areas. They may know more about privacy, employment law, intellectual property, compliance, technology, operations, or a particular business function than you do. One of your greatest strengths as a leader is recognizing that reality and not being threatened by it. It is not your job to be the smartest person in every room. 

We sometimes forget that our CEO and board are paying attention to more than just outcomes. They notice how we build teams, how we develop talent, and how we empower others to achieve the organization's goals.

Delegation Is a Development Tool

Every meaningful leadership opportunity begins with someone being trusted to take on more responsibility. If people are only given routine assignments, they remain capable of routine assignments. If they are trusted with larger challenges, they develop judgment, confidence, and leadership skills. Some people actively seek stretch assignments and become frustrated when they never receive them.

A good leader also recognizes that not everyone will succeed when given greater responsibility. That's okay. Delegation is also how leaders learn who is ready for more and who may have reached a plateau. Without those opportunities, you never truly understand the capabilities of your team. Delegation is one of the most powerful talent development tools available because it communicates trust and creates opportunity.

Remember that future leaders are not developed through observation; rather they are developed through experience. If you reflect on your own career journey, maybe you remember someone who helped develop you with that challenging assignment and then gave you room to prove yourself. 

Set People Up for Success

Delegation is not about handing someone a project and walking away. While it is important to give people the freedom to determine how to accomplish the work, leaders remain responsible for creating the conditions for success. To do this, you can: 

• Establish clear expectations 

• Define what success looks like

• Set a clear deadline

• Keep communication open and supportive

• Provide the necessary resources; and 

• Remain available for guidance when needed.

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Just as important to setting your team up for success, is to recognize that sometimes they fail, and a great leader creates an environment where someone can also fail, with grace. Growth requires both.

The Highest and Best Use of a General Counsel

One final lens from which to view delegation is to recognize that there are only so many hours in a day, and a good leader understands where to focus the highest and best use of their time.  Your CEO is looking to you for your judgment, strategic thinking, and leadership, not to perform tasks that others can capably handle. At the end of each day, there is no prize for doing it all yourself. And there is certainly no prize for believing you are the only one capable of doing it.

When leaders spend too much time doing work that others can successfully perform, they create a bottleneck for the organization and limit their own ability to operate as the enterprise leader the business needs.

Another way to think about delegation is that of a force multiplier. When leaders trust talented people with meaningful work, the organization develops more expertise, more leadership capacity, and more capability than any one individual could ever provide alone.

A great leader must embrace the idea that leadership is not about being indispensable. It is about building teams, processes, and organizations that can thrive without them.

One final thought: If you find yourself saying, "I'm the only person who can do this," pause for a moment and ask yourself whether that's actually true. Because most of the time, it isn't. And if it is true, you likely have a different problem. You may need to invest more heavily in developing your team, learn to let go of controlling everything, or you may need to build a different team altogether. The measure of your leadership is not everything you accomplish yourself. It is what your team is capable of accomplishing because of your leadership.