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We often confuse delegation with abdication.

Be a leader, not an absentee landlord.

Too many leaders treat delegation as a way to empty their inbox: a request comes in, they don’t want to do it, so they quickly pass it to someone else with vague instructions. When the team inevitably fails, the leader blames them (or “holds them accountable”).

But predictable failure is a leadership failure. If you hand off work without accounting for its complexity or the unknowns involved, you are setting your people up to fail.

Effective delegation isn’t binary (I do it vs. you do it). It is a spectrum based on uncertainty. The more unknowns a task has, the more involved you need to be. This is literally what leadership is, helping people find their way to success in the face of uncertainty.

I’m intentionally writing this as an executive summary, so leaders will read it. If you want more, leave comments.

In the video, I create a board for this. But every leader needs to understand and implement at least these four buckets of potential work.

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The Delegation Filter

All tasks that you delegate need to go through a simple filter. Do we understand this enough to reliably ignore it? Do I as a leader feel comfortable I understand it enough to delegate it?

As a leader, it’s important to understand the impacts of your direction on any given resource.

In this model, there are four buckets of potential delegations:

1. Collaborative Delegation (High Unknowns / High Involvement)

* Use when: The path forward is unclear, standard work doesn’t exist, or the problem is novel. (Novel problems, when solved, are new IP).

* The approach: You aren’t handing this off; you are bringing someone in. You create the plan together, learn together, and build the standard work as you go.

* Your role: Co-pilot. Do not leave them alone with the ambiguity. Let yourself learn with them. (This is often a strategic benefit.)

2. Supported Delegation (Medium Unknowns / Guardrails)

* Use when: The team has the capability, but the task has “gotchas” or high stakes.

* The approach: “I trust you to run with this, but here are the guardrails.” Check in with the team often. Become a light collaborator.

* Your role: Safety net. Define specific triggers for when they must come back to you (e.g., “If the budget exceeds $10k” or “If we need to build a new facility”). Give them agency within those bounds.

3. Full Agency Delegation (High Trust / High Autonomy)

* Use when: You trust the person or team’s judgment to navigate unknowns without you.

* The approach: You are explicitly granting them the authority to make decisions and, crucially, the permission to fail. Check in regularly.

* Your role: Shield. You agree upfront: “Unless there is gross negligence, if you make a call and it doesn’t work, that is learning, not failure.” You cannot punish them for outcomes if you gave them agency over the process.

4. Standard Delegation (Low Unknowns / High Clarity)

* Use when: The task is routine, instructions are clear, and “standard work” exists (e.g., “Extend the discount to Client X”).

* The approach: This is what most people think all delegation is. It only works when the recipient knows exactly what “done” looks like.

* Your role: The issuer. Verify it gets done, but get out of the way.

The Golden Rule: Reasons vs. Excuses

When a delegated task fails, leaders often hear “excuses.” But there is a critical distinction:

* A Reason is information given to you in time to act on it.

* An Excuse is a reason given too late.

If you don’t create the safety and the cadence for your team to bring you “reasons” early, the excuse is on you. You cannot hold people accountable for silence if you gave them under-described work, an unreasonable demand, and walked away more interested in “results” rather than understanding and professionalism.

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