Delegation and Reliance on Team Members

My boss was out this past week, which meant that it was down to myself and a few other team members to fill in for her as best we could, as well as support each other in carrying out that role. Given this, I wanted to take this week to explore the idea of delegation a bit.

I’m fascinated by the idea of delegation due to a leader’s absence in that we don’t speak about it much in our study of leadership. After considering the way it’s worked at my organization, I think it fundamentally requires things of both the leader and the followers.

For the leader, delegation  in a leader’s absence requires a level of insight into followers’ competencies, as well as enough organization to be able to clearly delineate roles and expectations for followers. Most importantly, it requires confidence in the followers’ abilities to execute on what the leader is asking the followers to do. I would imagine that followers are able to be most successful if the leader expresses high levels of confidence in them as, opposed to simply directing them to finish everything. Prior to my boss’s departure this past week, she left us an email with clear notes outlining what our expected roles were and what tasks she wanted us to complete. For example, since our work is broken down into projects, she made sure to highlight who was taking the lead on certain projects, and with whom she had paired us to ensure we weren’t shouldering projects alone. This level or organization and clear delineation of responsibilities made filling her shoes seem much more manageable, even though there was a significant amount of work to be done.

For the followers, delegation in these kinds of scenarios requires willingness of the followers to manage the work that leaders hand them. Furthermore, followers must be able to cooperate well with their team members. In the situation presented by my boss’s departure last week, it was really important that I felt I could rely on my teammates when I needed help, so I was grateful to be able to rely on them. I do think that delegation to assist with a leader’s absence (whether because of a physical absence or because the leader is simply unable to be fully present mentally while shouldering other duties) does even require followers to take on some degree of their own leadership. This is needed to direct normal activities when the leader is “missing” and ensure that team relations remain strong, the work product needed is produced, and everything runs smoothly.