Level-up Your Delegation

A significant part of my job is resolving conflict, but as a site reliability engineer at heart, I prefer to head off the conflict whenever possible. There are a couple of patterns that these conflicts usually boil down to, and today I want to discuss a big one: mismatched levels of delegation.

Sometimes your manager or your project lead might need to delegate something to you. In turn, you might need to delegate another task to someone else. It’s useful to know what level of delegation you’re expecting when this happens. As you move up ladders in your career, you might spend more time at higher delegation levels, but rest assured that all levels of delegation happen at all job levels.

If you google “levels of delegation,” you’ll see all kinds of numbers for how many levels there really are, but they all boil down to essentially this:

Who is assessing the situation?

Who is coming up with options?

Who is picking the path forward?

Who is responsible for the outcome?

Or simply: Investigate → Recommend → Decide → Execute → Outcome

When I talk about them, I usually describe these nine levels.

1. Simon Says: I’ve looked at the situation. Here are instructions. Do exactly this.
2. The Rundown: Investigate this situation. I’ll make a decision on what to do.
3. Guided Tour: Investigate this situation, and we’ll decide together.
4. Recommend: Analyze the situation. Make a recommendation. We’ll decide together.
5. Green Light: Analyze the situation. Make a recommendation, but wait for my go ahead that it’s safe to proceed.
6. Sign-off: Decide and let me know your decision. Wait for my thumbs up before proceeding.
7. Speak Now: Make a recommendation and go ahead unless I say otherwise.
8. Solve and Report: Solve the problem. Report back with your method and your result.
9. Deputy: Take action. You don’t need to check back.

Lower levels are often a result of situations that require higher levels of coordination or communication between groups. For example, when running a software incident, nothing happens without the incident commander’s knowledge. Too many “helpers” can often make an incident worse or harder to keep state on. So we rely on defined roles and responsibilities. Those usually end up being somewhere between levels 1-3.

Higher levels can be a sign of increased trust, scope, and risk. They might be mentoring or coaching opportunities, or they might be a way to scale a team or organization.

Being able to recognize when there’s a communication breakdown in a level of delegation can be a powerful skill that greatly reduces the number of headaches at work.

Communicating levels of delegation

When you’re starting a project or task, gauge the level of delegation. The bigger the task, the more important this conversation is. You don’t need a Levels of Delegation conversation for routine tasks, but if you’re taking on something bigger than you ever have before, get on the same page on what’s expected of you in regards to communication and decision making. Similarly, if you’re delegating a certain task or problem to someone for the first time, be clear on what level you expect.

Adjusting levels of delegation

If you feel like you need a higher or lower level of delegation to be successful, that’s a conversation you should have with your manager. This is the number one root cause of people feeling micromanaged or under-managed.

If someone said they wanted a Sign-Off arrangement, but they’re not answering you or maybe they’re struggling to find time on their calendar for a discussion, reconsider if a Speak Now arrangement is better. Maybe that leader underestimated their bandwidth. Maybe they had another emergency dropped on their desk. Or maybe something else has them operating on a reduced capacity. Check in with them, seek to understand what’s causing the delay, and offer to operate at the next level. Be mindful of toe-stepping, but this can usually be a good opportunity to stretch yourself, provide feedback for a leader, or learn how to speak up when you need to get unblocked. Sometimes leadership won’t be comfortable with that, but you’ll usually find out some useful feedback about why.

Sometimes you need a lower level of delegation, too. I most readily hear complaints of people feeling micromanaged, but too often folks don’t speak up when they’re being under-managed. Maybe they’re struggling and can’t make a decision. Maybe they’re waiting for guidance that’s not coming. It results in a leader that isn’t sure what’s taking so long, and a frustrated report who feels unsupported. I once had to point blank ask a report why something was moving so slowly without any updates, only to get the response, “Should I have been doing that the entire time!?”

Yes, please do. But it led to a productive conversation surrounding expectations and a much better project with stronger results when it was clear that I expected the feedback loop to be closed.

Disagreeing on levels of delegation

Sometimes you’ll want a level of delegation to be lower or higher than it is. That’s a good explicit conversation to have. Maybe you think you’ve earned the trust and the risk, or you believe you already have the skills and it feels like your leadership isn’t convinced based on the level of delegation you describe. This can help drive a conversation with specific, actionable feedback for you. “What would it take for you to feel comfortable with me running this on my own?” or “Can you help me understand the reason this needs more permission, approval, review etc.?”

Sometimes you’ll need to disagree and commit anyway. That’s going to happen sometimes, too. I’d encourage you to have the awkward conversation first, though; you might just get a stretch opportunity out of it.

Reflection Questions

From time to time I’ll include reflection questions. I really recommend grabbing a physical pen and paper to sit down and write out your answers.

1. Think of a time when you felt micromanaged or under-managed on a project. Was this a breakdown in the level of expected vs perceived delegation? If so, which level did each party expect? How could you have solved the miscommunication?
2. What level of delegation are you working at with your manager currently? Do they agree? (No, seriously, go ask them.)
3. How comfortable are you with the levels above that level? What would you need in order to feel more comfortable? Opportunities? Mentorship? A safety net? Something else?
4. Are there other people that you often receive delegation from or delegate to? Map a few recent projects or tasks in each direction. For each, label which level you were operating in. Would the other person agree?