Abdication, delegation, interference

How do leaders know if what they are giving their people is right?

This was the question that was exercising a leader I met last week. He was very aware of the strengths and weaknesses of his team and the challenges they had on . He was also very clear about his own management style and was well aware that he loved 'doing the doing'  and was in danger of getting overly involved and potentially becoming an interference and a nuisance to his team

He'd also experimented with more delegation and talked fondly of a happy couple of weeks when he'd been able to go home at 5pm after off loading his project backlog. This had backfired slightly when he discovered his team straining to complete tasks and he'd  concluded that his 'delegation' had actually become abdication.

This delicate balance is of course the stuff of 'situational leadership' - the fine art of judging the right degree of empowerment and autonomy. And art is is ... if there was rule book on how to do this perfectly it would be a best seller. My leader was more than half way there as he understood that getting it wrong was normal and was willing to have conversations with his team about what he needed to provide them. How refreshing!