Have any of you in a leadership position struggled with delegating tasks to your software team? How did you get more comfortable letting others do the work instead of doing it yourself?
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Effective leadership requires a shift from "doing" to "leading," empowering and enabling your team to scale impact. My approach to delegation begins with building trust through small, manageable tasks. As team members demonstrate success, I gradually increase the scope and complexity of their responsibilities. I strategically assign tasks based on individual strengths, experience, and career aspirations, using the RACI framework to clarify roles and expectations. Understanding each team member's workload is crucial for ensuring high-quality outcomes and giving sufficient time to complete delegated tasks. We conduct post-mortems or retrospectives to continuously improve our processes. To guide without micromanaging, I implement regular check-ins, additional design/code review steps, rigorous unit and integration testing and checklists. This approach allows me to monitor progress while fostering team ownership. I have to be patient and have to set expectations for continuous improvement rather than perfection (Agile helps). Finally, by regularly tracking and reflecting on my delegation experiences, I identify successes and areas for improvement, constantly refining my leadership approach.
Based on my experience, delegating tasks was something I initially found challenging in my leadership journey, but here are a few insights that helped me:
1️⃣ Build Trust in the Team: I focused on understanding the strengths and expertise of each team member. This gave me confidence in their ability to deliver quality work.
2️⃣ Start Small: I began delegating smaller, low-risk tasks to ease into the process. As I saw their success, it became easier to delegate larger responsibilities.
3️⃣ Provide Clear Expectations: Clear goals, timelines, and resources are critical. I learned that setting the right context empowers the team to execute effectively.
4️⃣ Accept Imperfection: I shifted my mindset to embrace that tasks might not always be done my way—and that’s okay. It’s about outcomes, not control.
5️⃣ Feedback Loop: I established regular check-ins to support without micromanaging. This gave me peace of mind and helped the team stay aligned.
Ultimately, delegating isn’t about letting go—it’s about enabling your team to grow and succeed.
We have to trust our team, as we cannot afford to micromanage our team. As a leader, the focus needs to be on building trust in their capabilities, setting clear expectations, and empowering team members to take ownership (fail and learn without fear of retribution or retaliation). Yes, there would be some gold plating in their estimates and commitments, but I would still resist micromanaging the team or doubting their work ethic.
It's essential to align tasks with individual strengths, provide support without micromanaging, and adopt a strategic leadership mindset that prioritizes long-term goals over daily execution. Regular feedback and continuous improvement in delegation skills help refine the process (daily stand-up, biweekly checkpoints), ensuring accountability while allowing the team to grow and succeed independently. This will help build trust, keep morale high, and help retain your skilled workforce (particularly those who want to learn and grow and are not job hoppers).
The best book to read on this topic in my opinion is "Turn this Ship Around" by David Marquet. It is about how the Navy switched to a delegation focused culture from being command and control after David was assigned to a submarine he did not know, forcing him to rely on those around. This resulted in the "I intend to" language that I use a variation of with our teams today!
Good luck!
If you haven’t checked out Turn the Ship Around! by David Marquet, it’s a great read for learning how to let go and delegate better. The big idea is flipping the script on leadership: instead of the leader giving all the orders, the team brings their suggestions to the leader for approval. So, instead of, “What do we do, Captain?” it’s more like, “Captain, we’re thinking 30 degrees to the right—good to go?” It’s a simple shift, but it empowers the team, reduces reliance on hierarchy, and makes communication way smoother.
For software teams, this works like magic. Instead of you having to handhold every step, your team starts owning their work and coming to you with solutions instead of problems. Delegation stops feeling like a chore because they’re actively taking charge.
It might feel awkward at first to step back, but start small—let them run with smaller decisions and build up from there. As you see them killing it, it’ll feel more natural to let go. Plus, the team grows more confident, and things start running smoother across the board