One of our clients, a multinational business, is facing a challenge.  One of its three directors has been diagnosed with a serious medical condition.  His future as a leader in the business is very uncertain.  Fortunately, he has always actively empowered his team.  He acknowledged that his diagnosis could have placed the business at great risk if he didn’t believe in “working himself out of a job”.  He is confident that his management team can step up and continue to lead the business while he recovers.  If either of his other directors got sick, he believes there would be serious shareholder value and operational risks.  His colleagues have not been able to empower, delegate and step away from the day-to-day business. 

Sadly, this story is not unique.  Many businesses place themselves at risk by building a dependence on an individual or individuals.  We all want to believe we will live or be happy at a company forever, but good leadership says that we must manage this risk for the business and ourselves.  At RainTree Business Coaching, a team of middle management experts, we often encounter this obstacle with our clients.

Why are executives so reluctant to step away from control and empower their managers?

When we asked a group of Executives, they believe the key reasons are:

  • Holding onto their jobs due to the uncertain job market; and
  • Too frightened to relinquish control as this will reduce their perceived value in the marketplace/business.

Although there are elements of truth in their feedback, I believe this is an oversimplification of a complex human challenge.  Although fear is at the heart of why we don’t delegate and empower, the cause of the fear is much more subconscious than what they assumed.

Below are 4 causes that we have observed in our coaching:

  1. People have a need for a level of certainty.  Certainty makes our subconscious feel safe and in control.  The subconscious has one job – to keep us alive.  Certainty helps it to feel safe that it is doing its job.  Delegating and empowering challenges us to accept that we are not in control and that we may have to step in and fix when someone lets us down or makes a mistake.  Although this uncertainty is not life threatening, the subconscious feels the change is dangerous which drives us to hold on.  It takes immense courage to calm the unconscious and choose to empower and delegate.
  2. Our identity is also challenged when we delegate and empower.  Who we are will change with the handing over of tasks that we have always felt comfortable as the expert in. Delegating and empowering forces us to take the scary step of reinventing ourselves into our “new”.  This is daunting as it, once again, forces us into the unknown and uncertainty, sending our subconscious spiraling.
  3. The time and space that is created by delegation can also be an obstacle to empowering.  Society has engrained in us that being busy and delivering makes us valuable.  When we delegate and empower, we create a vacuum of time for ourselves.  This void is incredibly uncomfortable until we find the tasks and responsibilities that we need to deliver on when we fulfil our actual executive role.  For many executives, it is easier to remain busy with tasks that should be performed by their managers than to work through the void and step fully into their executive leadership role and opportunity.
  4. When we delegate and empower, the acknowledgement we are comfortable receiving is handed over to the person we have delegated to.  The need for recognition and significance is identified as one of the Six Human Needs (Tony Robbins).  Delegating and empowering can, therefore, feel like a loss. We are forced to give up the satisfaction we get from being acknowledged for doing a job well.  We need to shift our role and be the one recognizing our staff.  Taking a back seat while they have their moment in the spotlight can be difficult, especially when we know we could have done the task as well or even better than they did it.

I believe that it is aspects such as these that make leadership such a scarce and challenging skill.  Leaders must build their self-confidence and worth to:

  • Know that we will be able to cope when we are disappointed
  • Know we will find the solution when mistakes are made
  • Know we will find our new identities as leaders when we hand over the tasks
  • Know that we will find new, valuable executive tasks and activities in the time that is presented when we delegate and
  • Know that we can self-acknowledge and celebrate through the success of our team.

Only when we have leadership, courage and resilience will we take the risky step of truly empowering our managers and reducing the dependence that the business has on us.  Only then can we know that we are fulfilling our leadership responsibilities and leaving a business stronger and more able to scale and thrive when we step into our next…leaving a legacy.