Learning to Delegate Exposed Everything I Believed About Control

I had been promoted to a team lead role at the software consultancy in Atlanta at 27, managing a team of five engineers. The promotion was based on my technical capability and my consistent delivery, both of which were real and both of which turned out to be partially the problem.

My entire professional identity had been built around doing things well myself - around the specific satisfaction of a problem I had worked through and a deliverable that was mine in a way that mattered to me.

Managing other people doing those things, and being responsible for the quality of output I had not personally produced, was a different experience than I had anticipated and one I handled badly in the first six months. I could not let go.

I reviewed work in a level of detail that made my team feel their judgment was not trusted. I took tasks back when they were not completed to my standard rather than coaching toward that standard.

I was available for everything, which communicated that I did not believe the team could operate without my direct involvement. Two of my best engineers raised this with me - separately, carefully, with the courage it takes to tell a manager something they do not want to hear.

Both conversations said versions of the same thing: that being managed by me felt like not quite being trusted, and that not being trusted made it difficult to develop. I sat with this for about a week before doing anything with it, which is my processing pace for things I find uncomfortable.

What I eventually recognised was that my inability to delegate was not about their capability - it was about something in me that was not yet willing to accept that work I had not done could be as good as work I had done, and that this was a belief I needed to update rather than a quality standard I needed to maintain.

The update was practical as much as psychological. I started setting clear outcome standards and then stepping back from the process by which those outcomes were reached. I started asking questions rather than giving instructions. I started tolerating imperfection in the path when the destination was right.

The team's capability developed faster than I had expected when I got out of the way. My own capability as a manager developed faster when I accepted that the doing was no longer the job.