Have you had a recent promotion, or do you expect to receive one soon? If that’s the case, you’re going to want to get used to the single most-difficult aspect of leadership, that is, how to properly delegate work to your team. For me, this was one of the most difficult lessons I had to learn in my early career.

In a move that seemed long overdue at the time, my employer gave me the opportunity to head a small, elite group. This section was in high esteem at the company because it was responsible for the highest contribution of gross profit to the firm’s bottom line. But due to its special nature and status, this team had fostered some “difficult” employees over the years.
As the new boss, I inherited those special people and from day one had to deal with issues in delegation.

A monkey on your back

A classic article entitled “Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?” appeared during the mid-1970s in the Harvard Business Review. When the authors of this essay published that piece nearly 50 years ago, it was seen as a rather humorous (for HBR) “fluff” piece, the kind of thing that an editor would add on occasion to break up the monotony of a journal that focused on very serious and academic content.

But half a century later, it is recognized that this article brought a refreshing viewpoint to supervision through an accurate and easy-to-understand analogy of an issue faced by all new supervisors. That is, sometimes delegation backfires and becomes “reverse” delegation. Ever had this happen to you? Maybe you’ll recognize the feeling of having someone pass the job back to you after it was assigned to them.

The curious analogy used in this article was the “monkey on the back” that subordinates often bring into their boss’s office. I remember recalling those instances in which I had taken the burden of the monkey off the back of the employee who was the one charged with its custody. The “monkey” of course is the delegated assignment, and when it is passed back to the supervisor to solve, it may go like the following example.

Imagine that Shelly, a laboratory manager, is walking down the hallway and heading to a managers’ meeting. Outside the conference room, she bumps into her subordinate, George, who has asked for a moment to get with her on a problem. He describes it, a sudden and dramatic change on a reliable assay that had been working fine previously, and ends with a look of expectancy.

Shelly recognizes the type of question, as she has heard it before from George and other subordinates on regular occasion. It’s a part of George’s work assignment, and it’s something that she can’t answer with an on-the-spot solution. Shelly is obviously qualified to work on it, as she’s been solving problems like this one since joining the firm as a chemist five years earlier.

“We need to get that assay back on track immediately. I’ll think about this and get back to you later today.” Shelly and George then part company, but there is something critically different in their relationship: That’s because the Monkey has jumped to Shelly for care and feeding.

There’s been a role reversal, hasn’t there! Suddenly, the boss is in the position of taking on assignments from her subordinate. Not only has Shelly been assigned a project from one of her staff, she’s promised to provide a status report by the end of the day. The situation goes further astray in the afternoon when George pops his head into Shelly’s office and cheerfully asks his boss, “How’s it coming, Shelly?”

As the original HBR article makes clear, when this happens the subordinates are supervising! And the longer that Shelly requires to get back to George with an answer on the current problem, the more likely that she will be accused of holding back progress at work.

In that new supervisor role I mentioned, I had four people in my group with an average of 3-4 monkeys for each of them at any one time. I was staring a nervous breakdown in the face unless I learned to delegate completely and not take back my previously delegated projects at every opportunity.

It’s that word “completely” that makes such a difference in delegation. If you’re willing to take the problem on yourself when asked, not only does that add to your burden of work but you are also short-changing the learning opportunities that your people get by taking an assignment all the way through its paces.

The pain of delegation

After the first couple of weeks, I charged into my new job of supervision with huge energy, thinking that if I was going to accomplish my lofty goals with the group than I would have to do much of the work myself. It seemed that I had a group of specialists, each of them very capable in one area but none qualified to generally problem-solve as well as I could.

Each time I actually delegated an important task, I would take the monkey back on regular intervals for feeding. I found myself caught in this never-ending cycle of delegation and problem solving (monkey feeding) and the people on my team remained specialists when they could have been picking up other skills and broadening their value to the company.

Let’s go back to Shelly and George for a moment. How do you think that George would respond if Shelly had answered his concern about the assay in this way:
“That sounds like a big concern, George. I would guess that we may have a problem with an unexpected change in one of the HPLC parameters. You might get with micro to see what they think about possible changes in their sampling process. Can I hear from you by the end of the day?”

Shelly’s attitude is one of positive cooperation and concern, but not to the point where she takes on the personal responsibility of solving George’s problem. She gives her employee a starting point and sets up a time to discuss it again. Chances are, George will be a much happier and productive employee as well. He’ll have the experience that comes from stretching himself to get over hurdles.

Other ways to pass the monkey

Here are two other ways that managers can foster “reverse delegation.”

• Memos. Each time you answer a question about a subordinate’s problem with the infamous “send me a memo on it,” you set the stage for the written transference of the monkey to your back. After all, until you respond, that problem is unsolved and most likely unwanted. (I can just see all the delays attributed to the supervisor because someone “wrote a detailed memo to the boss months ago, but she’s still sitting on it.”) Problems are very much like an orphaned monkey, and employees will do whatever they can to get rid of it, even if it is only temporarily by written memo.
• Setting the course. Have you worked for the kind of boss that gives you the responsibility for a key job but insists on “setting up the project” himself? It creates a high degree of frustration and completely immobilizes the employee. In this case, the manager harbors the monkey right from the beginning. If you are going to give a subordinate the responsibility for taking on a major project, why not allow them to set up the project, thus strengthening their commitment?

In conclusion

Delegating can be a lesson that takes a lifetime of work to resolve. In every job I’ve ever had, I’ve fought off the urge to be involved in every aspect of the company personally and find myself offering “advice” a little too freely. When asked for help on a particularly challenging aspect of some computer program, instead of referring my colleague to that part of the manual, we’ll veer off for a 45-minute training course that leaves me frustrated and the other party wishing they’d never asked.

I’ve discovered that I’m never going to be perfect at delegation.  But once I do delegate, at least I now recognize those warm, fuzzy little problems before they start coming home to papa!

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Dave Jensen is CEO and Founder of CTI Executive Search. He can be reached at (928) 274-2266 or via davejensen70@gmail.com.