Delegation and Grief: The Emotional Cost of Learning to Lead

"Rest in the Country (Sancho Panza)," Honoré Daumier (artist) French, 1808 - 1879

Source: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington

Delegation is one of those leadership buzzwords that seems to hover in the background of every conversation about effective management. It’s often hailed as the must-have skill to advance as a leader, the key to managing teams effectively, and the cornerstone of organizational growth. As one Harvard Business Review article bluntly puts it: "To be a great leader, you have to learn how to delegate well."

The Benefits of Delegation

On the surface, delegation isn’t complicated. It’s the act of assigning a specific task or responsibility to someone else and ensuring they’re committed to completing it. And it offers countless benefits:

• It rebalances or reduces a leader’s workload.
• It builds trust and engagement between managers and their teams.
• It helps develop employees' skills and capabilities.
• It improves overall organizational productivity.

Why Is Delegation So Hard?

So if delegation is straightforward and so obviously beneficial, why is it so hard to do?

Recently, I worked with a group of leaders on building their delegation skills. As part of the process, we explored the common barriers that get in the way. The question was simple: What stops us from delegating effectively? The answers, however, revealed the underlying complexity of the issue—challenges like these:

• The time required to train and ensure others can complete tasks successfully
• The difficulty of balancing workloads across a team
• Anxiety that tasks will take longer or be done differently than expected
• Unclear lines of authority or decision-making power

But here's the challenge that stood out the most: not wanting to delegate out of "selfishness." When I asked for clarification, we got into a conversation about identity, the difficulty of letting go of tasks/skills that have helped someone succeed, and the loss associated with the change.

The Emotional Side of Delegation: Grief and Identity

We have a word for this feeling, though we rarely use it when talking about our work: grief.

Yes, there are technical challenges to delegating effectively, but frequently the bigger barrier is an emotional one. Delegation often means surrendering control, adapting to imperfection, and trusting others. And it requires grappling with and adapting to a new working identity that may involve less task-oriented work and different measures of what it means (and feels like) to be productive or to make a contribution.

Rethinking How We Teach Delegation

What if we considered the emotional foundation in the way we teach/train delegation? Instead of just focusing on skill-building, we might also encourage conversations around change; instead of laying out tactics, we might consider how to support employees in feelings of loss and transition.

Delegation isn’t just a skill—it’s a shift in identity and mindset (Blankenship, 2024), often accompanied by a raft of discomfort. But by acknowledging the emotional weight of letting go and creating space for those conversations, we can help leaders navigate the grief of delegation and grow into their full potential. After all, leadership isn’t just about what we do—it’s about who we become.