Keep in mind that no single style will work in all situations, and that it is helpful to be skilled across a range of methods. We offer the following rough guidelines for group decision making:

1. Whenever appropriate, delegate decisions downwards; give people a chance to build their decision-making “muscle.” Be crystal clear about what decisions you have delegated, and hold people accountable for those decisions.

1. On important decisions that require widespread commitment for successful implementation, make the decision as a group, either participative or consensus. Enter the process with your own points of view, but be open to having your ideas influenced by others. Be clear whether the final decision is to be made by consensus or by you.

1. Encourage disagreement during the process.

1. Reserve autocratic decisions for situations where there’s no time to invite participation (e.g., when the ship is crashing on the rocks), for trivial decision, for decisions where you want to send a symbolic message to reinforce your values, and for the small set of decisions that you believe should always be made entirely by yourself.

1. Whatever style you use, be up front about it. Pretending to be participative or consensus-oriented in an effort to get “buy-in” to a decision that you’ve already made is terribly destructive. If you practice this type of deception, people will see it, be unimpressed, and feel manipulated. Such deception creates cynicism and lack of genuine commitment. If you’re going to be autocratic, then just be honest about it.

I ended up delegating it accidentally. During my parental leave, I asked a few of my teammates to sub for me while I was out. When I came back, the meeting was running better than I’d left it. The presenters came in more prepared, the content was better organized, and even our introductions felt more fun.

That was when I realized my mistake. I should have handed off that meeting a long time ago. I felt tied to it because it had become habitual, even a part of my identity. And yet, in my absence, the organizers breathed new life into it. They were excited for the challenge, and I was able to focus on other priorities. Everybody won.

The rule of thumb for delegation goes like this: spend your time and energy on the intersection of 1) what’s most important to the organization and 2) what you’re uniquely able to do better than anyone else.

From this, you can extrapolate that anything your report can do just as well or better than you, you should delegate.

Successful delegation requires four components, assuming you have delegated a job to the right person or team:

1. Pinpoint what the person or team needs to accomplish (Priorities — One-Page Strategic Plan).

1. Create a measurement system for monitoring progress (Data — qualitative and quantitative key performance indicators).

1. Provide feedback to the team or person (Meeting Rhythm).

1. Give appropriately timed recognition and reward (because we’re dealing with people, not machines).

Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people. But it takes time and patience, and it doesn’t preclude the necessity to train and develop people so that their competency can rise to the level of that trust. I am convinced that if stewardship delegation is done correctly, both parties will benefit and ultimately much more work will get done in much less time. I believe that a family that is well organized, whose time has been spent effectively delegating on a one-on-one basis, can organize the work so that everyone can do everything in about an hour a day. But that takes the internal capacity to want to manage, not just to produce. The focus is on effectiveness, not efficiency.

The principles involved in stewardship delegation are correct and applicable to any kind of person or situation. With immature people, you specify fewer desired results and more guidelines, identify more resources, conduct more frequent accountability interviews, and apply more immediate consequences. With more mature people, you have more challenging desired results, fewer guidelines, less frequent accountability, and less measurable but more discernable criteria. Effective delegation is perhaps the best indicator of effective management simply because it is so basic to both personal and organizational growth.