Leaders Must Delegate and Trust

This two-step formula creates competence and confidence within your team.

“I want all the Marines trained and refreshed in small unit leadership, patrolling, radio work, and land navigation over a three-day period.”

“Understood, Gunny, Where do we get the…?”

“Just do it — you’ll never learn if you don’t do it!” he said, “Get ’em all up there (to the jungle in northern Okinawa) and train them!”

“Roger that, Gunny.” I knew that was the end of the conversation. I wanted to ask where you would go about getting permits for transporting ammunition through Japan. Where and what are the Marines eating? What vehicles and radios do we need?

As I left the office he said, “I want it all taken care of by the end of next week.”

Frustration was knocking at my door at the thought that I was getting zero help coordinating this training exercise. My Company Gunnery Sergeant had just put me in charge of coordinating the scheduling, embarkation, training, billeting (sleeping arrangements), and safety for roughly 120 Marines for a three-day training exercise.

Since I had just been promoted to Sergeant a week prior, this kind of thing was my job now and I had better get used to it. The problem was, I had never really done any of that kind of logistics planning before in Japan, as I had just arrived there two weeks prior. I barely even knew the people in my unit whom I thought might know answers to these questions. Listen to all those excuses. None of that mattered because I had to find a way to manage the situation and get it done.

My leader had delegated this task to me and was trusting me to do it right.

That didn’t keep me from cursing under my breath, though. Being challenged by a leader to exit your comfort zone often hurts at first, but growing pains are sometimes a side effect of growth.

He hadn’t assigned me something that I had no way of succeeding at. He knew I would be able to succeed. I just didn’t know it yet.

So how does delegation and trust help your team?

Delegate

What happens when you delegate? For one, it gives you as the leader time to do other ‘leader’ things. You can’t do everything. When you try, you burn yourself out and you show your team you don’t trust them. A double-whammy to your effectiveness. When you try to do it all, you become a tired and resented leader.

Once you delegate, then back off. The more you micromanage, the more you squash initiative. Micromanaging is the most initiative-killing form of distrust a leader can exhibit. You must be diligent in not succumbing to this damaging tendency.

Just make sure your team actually is able to complete the task. Setting them up for failure is the flip-side of this delegation/trust coin. Employ your team in accordance with their capabilities. Your job as a leader is to lead them to do more than they think they can, but also to make sure their goals are attainable.

“The inability to delegate is one of the biggest problems I see with managers at all levels.” -Eli Broad (Builder of two fortune 500 companies in different industries)

Trust

This can be very difficult. But it is critical to how your team sees you and sees themselves. There are so many negative things that happen in someone’s mind when they’re not trusted.

One can be a result of self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t trust them, there must be a reason right? That reason could only be that they aren’t trustworthy. When you treat someone as not trustworthy, sometimes they become that way. They won’t be at their best. You’ve relegated them to someone who needs closer supervision. You’ve weakened with your leadership.

Instead, empower them with your trust.

Treat them like the people you believe they can be and they’ll become that. Trust them and they’ll be trustworthy.

Trust also goes both ways. If you want your team to trust you as a leader, you need to trust them. If you truly believe in them, they’ll believe in you.

“He who does not trust enough will not be trusted.” — Lao Tzu

After a week of scrambling, scheduling, and coordinating — and making mistakes — I was ready. The exercise happened. The mission was a success. The training went well and everyone was safe.

As I was riding south in a Humvee in the convoy back down the highways of Okinawa, I realized why Gunny hadn’t been more helpful — or rather, why he hadn’t been more helpful in the way I wanted him to be.

He was delegating to me. He was trusting me.

He taught me ten times the amount I would have learned if he had “helped” me. This doesn’t mean you don’t ever help once you delegate, it means you don’t help to a level that enables a decrease in responsibility on the part of your follower. Why damage them by helping too much?

That being said, make time to get your hands dirty when you can. The best leaders do. If you do this, it motivates your people. But make sure you briefly become a follower when you do this. “Work for” the person you put in charge of that task. There’s a fine line between getting your hands dirty and micromanaging. The first is motivating to your followers as they know their leader isn’t asking them to do something they wouldn’t or couldn’t do themselves. The other, micro-managing when you “help”, is demotivating and demoralizing.

Gunny was helping me by not doing my tasks for me, not “holding my hand.” Instead, he had challenged me through delegation and empowered me with his trust.

I finally felt like a Sergeant after that. I was a more confident and competent follower and leader after that.

Gunny knew exactly what he was doing.

“Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.” — Booker T. Washington