In a world with increasing complexity and opportunities, where the amount of information is close to unlimited and where big data is getting bigger, decision making has become a challenging task. If you haven’t already acknowledged that you can´t be on top of everything, it is about time: You don’t have all the insights, and you can’t make decisions fast enough by yourself.

Distributed Leadership is a fundamental part of modern leadership. In short, it’s about moving away from one person making decisions at the top of his ivory tower, to delegating tasks and decisions to multiple hands. If you succeed in distributed leadership, you’ll most likely see that creativity and productivity increase in your organization.

But how do you delegate tasks and decisions, and why is it important to manage expectations when you delegate?

Get an overview of your tasks, then delegate

1. First step is to make a list of all tasks and decision points you have.
2. Find out if some tasks and decisions can be delegated.
3. Delegate tasks to those who have the willingness, time, and skills to run with them.
4. Get the spectrum of the levels of delegation, for example by playing Delegation Poker. This helps clarify who’s responsible for what and to what level and encourage employee engagement through controlled self-organization.
5. Make sure to catch misunderstandings or mistaken assumptions by having frequent touchpoints.
6. When three months have passed, evaluate.

Person + task + decision = a unique combination

Based on the seven delegation levels from Delegation Poker, it’s important to always look at the link between person, task and decision: Which mandate and decision level fits the situation?  This is the whole premise of succeeding with delegation. It’s about balancing expectations; scope, time, cost, quality, risk and resources, and ensure that both you, as the delegator, and the employee are confident in how decisions are made. Depending on the employee’s competence level, experience and the context, you also need to balance the right level of support, guidance and motivation. In other words, it is about Situational Leadership.

Authority versus Authorization

A way to balance expectations, is to be clear on the distinction between Authority and Authorization.  Having the authority to make decisions can be both confusing and stressful without the authorization – i.e. a clear mandate.

Longer engagement, say 6, 12 or 24 months leadership development programs, are rewarding. Challenging, but highly rewarding for the participants, the employees, and for the business.

I think that everyone can agree on that. Focusing long term on development is better than a one-time workshop or inspirational talk. But why is it so? Is it obvious that having a longer lasting focus on group-based development is beneficial?

Apart from the obvious goals for the leadership development programs (the goals that are mutually agreed and used for the kickoff, the flyers, and the campaign material), two often overlooked outcomes are reached (spoiler alert): A routine for reflection, and psychological safety.

The obvious reason

Every leadership development program is launched to solve a problem or to exploit a possibility. It has to – that is the business reason for it. From time to time, we run into requests for education or training projects that “just should give the leaders some new tools and better skills” without knowing exactly why. Luckily those cases are rare.

Typically, modern development programs are launched to approach business challenges like these:

• To nurture innovation in the organization
• To instill an agile approach to decision making and to technological changes
• To adapt the organization to an updated business model
• To attract and retain the right employees
• To ensure that the leaders are modern leaders that can collaborate and encourage the employees to collaborate too
• And more

There is always a business or cultural reason for doing it.

That also means that measurements and feedback loops can be created. We can observe the progress of those areas by either direct measurement or indirect perception.