Leadership Lesson #2

There are many skills, competencies, and best practices demonstrated within leadership. One applicable skill is delegation, which requires a leader to entrust others to complete tasks, assign responsibilities, and relent authority in some decision-making processes. A key factor of delegation is that the leader maintains accountability for the completion of their team’s mission despite not being the one actively working on various tasks. Many leaders are appointed to their position due to factors such as their experience, reputation, dedication, capabilities, confidence, authority, and so forth. Due to these factors, leaders can become hesitant to practice delegation since it can evoke the fear of losing control, reinforce a lack of trust in their team, and even create anxiety surrounding their perception and reputation. Practicing effective delegation requires going beyond what many leaders currently practice, which is a basic notion of assigning menial tasks to the team while taking on the brunt of responsibility and workload. By utilizing beneficial delegation practices in leadership, many organizations offer developmental opportunities, increased team engagement, improved efficiency, and encouraged innovation. However, there are many nuances involved: strategic decision-making (what to delegate, whom to delegate to, etc.), a balance of power hierarchies, contextual and cultural sensitivity, and so forth. Is effective delegation worth the effort from leaders when taking internal and external factors into account? How can leaders balance these nuances to practice effective delegation? 

To analyze the effectiveness of delegation within leadership, many sources frame it as a core skill within the transformational leadership philosophy. Transformational leadership emphasizes the importance of providing inspirational motivation and individualized consideration to followers in order to foster organizational growth (Moradi Korejan & Shahbazi, 2016). Delegation involves assigning responsibility to others which increases employee engagement through given authority. Through delegating, a leader can foster greater alignment to the organizational goal and increase follower motivation (Baker & Murphy, 2022), connecting back to the tenets of the transformational leadership philosophy. Most scholarship that discusses delegation frequently correlates it with the idea of transformational leadership due to the similarities of encouraged follower development and other benefits. However, some fail to consider the complexities of implementation which can further the misapplication of delegation practices within leadership. Kuhnert’s (1994) chapter illustrates how delegation plays a core role within the framework of transformational leadership. This source effectively frames a unique complexity of delegation in leadership theory by emphasizing how it is negatively regarded by leaders in transactional leadership, as it is primarily seen as a subtraction from power and organizational efficiency, whereas it is positively regarded in transformational philosophy. As opposed to traditional perspectives of delegation, Kuhnert emphasizes the idea of utilizing it as a strategic leadership behavior to empower followers through promoting development and self-efficacy. Although his work relies heavily on theoretical reasoning, underutilizing empirical data, it contributes to the idea that delegation requires intentional thought by leaders to remain aware of the readiness of those receiving delegated tasks. However, by only highlighting the sensitivity required in the use of delegation, it fails to address how leaders have ineffectively applied delegation skills and provides a slim perspective into the nuances required for effective leadership. 

When applying for the Lead Forward grant, you are required to compose an impact team of two or more John Martinson Honors College (JMHC) students. My social impact initiative began from a program I led in high school and I was hesitant to include anyone else on the leadership team at Purdue. I was scared of losing control and being forced to compromise any pieces of the program I had worked so hard to create. I was scared of simply the idea of delegation. As a new leader in high school my perspective on delegation was clouded by various experiences such as frustrating group projects, unsuccessful recruitment efforts, and uncontrollable situations. I was a role model for ineffective delegation through assigning uninteresting tasks and grunt work to others while maintaining full authority and control of the progress. Not only did I burn-out easily, but giving menial responsibility without simultaneously giving up some control led to frustration and dissatisfaction within my team. Despite this, having to include someone else in the initiative worried me. It wasn’t until I met Michael that I began to truly consider it and see the nuances of effective delegation. Previously, I viewed dependency as a weakness, rather than acknowledge the benefits that could be achieved through reliance and collaboration. Although the delegation resulted in shared control, the shared responsibility opened the organization to new innovation and increased recruitment. As my leadership language and development have progressed, I’ve begun to understand the effectiveness of my leadership style, draw comparisons between various philosophies, and recognize all the mistakes I’ve made along the way. Many of these mistakes could have been corrected earlier on with a better understanding of what effective delegation truly looks like and the importance of its implementation despite the complexities. When assigning new responsibilities to my team members I began to enact some principles of transformational leadership; encouraging team development and inspiring others. As I began to create best practices that emulated transformational leadership, delegating became an easier process. The internal conflicts I had with giving up responsibility and trusting my team eased when I began to emphasize increased collaboration and team development. The external limiting factors hindering support decreased once I focused on inspirational motivation. There is a balance necessary within delegation, learning to trust your team and start the implementation process early helps to enhance the competence, engagement, and commitment of your team. 

References

Baker, E. L., & Murphy, S. A. (2022). Delegation: A Core Leadership Skill. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 28(4), 420-432. 

Kuhnert, K. (1994). Transforming Leadership: Developing People Through Delegation. In Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. (Eds.), Improving organizational effectiveness through transformational leadership (pp. 10-25). 

Moradi Korejan, M., & Shahbazi, H. (2016). An analysis of the transformational leadership theory. Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, 8(3), 452–461. https://doi.org/10.4314/jfas.v8i3s.192