Leading and Delegating

As a president of an organization, I have had to ponder two concepts – leadership and delegation.


Oxford Dictionary provides the following definitions:

·         Leadership: “the action of leading a group of people or an organization.”

·         Delegate: “entrust (a task or responsibility) to another person.”

I remember as a young man, looking at various organization’s presidents, that once you reached that position, you were the one everybody had to listen to and the person that dictated every action.  As I got older, I realized that sometimes this is true and other times, not.  In truth, the role does come with the phrase that President Truman stated, “The buck stops here.”  Meaning that all the accountability, responsibility for the success of the organization at the end of the day falls on that person’s shoulders.  Leading means having the ability to know everything that is going on in the organization.  Since my synagogue is a microcosm compared to large entities, this can be an ominous task.  No one person can be involved in everything, make all decisions and action every item.  To attempt this leads to frustration and does not give a feeling of inclusion to the other people involved in leadership or the organization.

At some point I was taught the importance of delegating tasks.  This can become a fine art where you have to learn what to delegate, who to delegate to and how to engage with the person, or persons, involved.  You cannot just push responsibilities onto other people, look the other way, and hope that the tasks required are completed.  This is where relationships need to be developed as you have to be able to work with the people you ask to assist you in achieving goals.  If you delegate, you have to make sure that the person you work with has a vested interest in succeeding with the assignment, someone that you know will involve other like-minded individuals (building a team) and has the ability to communicate what happens.  Not everyone that we involve will work out as expected.

This is where the balance has to be made.  As a leader, you need to set the example, own your position and engage other people.  To do this alone, can lead to becoming a dictator where you build the expectation that you must be included in everything (i.e., managers that need to be on ALL emails), stifle creative suggestions (which all organizations need to thrive and change alongside our broader environments) and push potential help away.  Similarly, reactions where one delegates everything and takes on no responsibility, as this can lead to teams feeling they have no support, lack a broad direction and can lead to a feeling we are in the wild west.  This is the hard part, as a leader you never cede your responsibility, trust the people you ask to help, providing support and guidance, and encourage their creativity.  As General George S. Patton stated, “Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”