When I became a principal, I thought the job meant being the person who knew everything. I wrote the master schedule myself. I read every discipline referral myself. I answered parent emails at midnight, because who else could do it right? I was proud of how late my lights were on. It took me far too long to see that what I was calling dedication was often a failure to trust.
I am not proud of the year I figured it out. A gifted assistant principal came to my office and told me, gently, that she had stopped bringing ideas to me because I always rewrote them. She was right. I had a person in the building with exceptional gifts and I was using her as a typist.
What Jethro Saw
There is a story in Exodus 18 that I have returned to many times. Moses is leading a nation, and every day he sits from morning until evening hearing every dispute himself. His father-in-law Jethro watches this for a day and says the words every overworked leader needs to hear: "What you are doing is not good. You and these people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to perform it alone."
"The thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to perform it alone." — Exodus 18:18
Notice that Jethro does not say Moses is incompetent. He says the load is too heavy. Then he offers a structure: choose capable, trustworthy people, give them real authority over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, and keep the hardest cases for yourself. The early church did the same thing in Acts 6 when the apostles chose seven men to oversee the daily distribution of food so that they could give themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. Delegation in Scripture is not abdication. It is stewardship of the gifts God has scattered through a community.
What the Research Says
Modern psychology adds something that surprised me. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, whose self-determination theory has been tested for decades, found that people do their best and most committed work when three needs are met: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When a leader hovers, rewrites, and corrects, he quietly strips out the first one. People comply, but they stop caring.
L. David Marquet, a former submarine captain, saw this on the USS Santa Fe. He stopped giving orders and began asking his officers to state their intentions: "I intend to dive to 400 feet." Ownership went up and the ship went from worst to first in the fleet. His book, Turn the Ship Around!, is now one of my recommended reads. The lesson is not that leaders should disappear. It is that control is a poor substitute for competence in the people you lead.
"Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge." — Simon Sinek
What Held Me Back
Let me say what was really going on in me, because it was not efficiency. It was fear. If someone else did it differently and it went well, what did that say about my value? If someone did it differently and it went badly, I would be responsible. Underneath, I was tying my worth to being needed. Marcus Aurelius wrote, "Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live," which for me was a reminder that my time and energy are finite, and that spending them on tasks others could do means not spending them on what only I can do.
I have found it helpful to think of delegation as a ladder rather than a switch. At the bottom rung, I tell someone exactly what to do. At the top, I say, "You own it; just tell me if it needs me." Most leaders only know two rungs, "do it myself" and "do it however you like and I'll fix it," and then they conclude that delegation does not work. I built a simple tool for climbing the rungs on purpose, which I call The Delegation Ladder. You will find it on the tools page.
There is one more thing I learned, and it came from watching that assistant principal after I finally let go. Once I stopped rewriting her work, she took on problems I had not even known existed. She redesigned our lunch-duty rotation, which had frustrated teachers for years, and she did it better than I would have. Within a semester, three other staff members were bringing me ideas again. Trust turned out to be contagious. The building did not run worse without my fingerprints on everything; it ran better, and I finally had time to do the work only a principal can do: walking the halls, sitting with a struggling teacher, praying with a family in crisis.
Delegation also requires honesty about what makes a good handoff. Be clear about the outcome you want, the limits of the authority you are giving, and when you want to check in. Then step back. A handoff without clarity is simply a dump, and people can feel the difference. The gift you are giving is not a task. It is trust, and trust grows when it is exercised.
Your Practical Takeaway
This week, write down three things on your plate that someone else on your team could do at least 80 percent as well as you. Pick one. Decide which rung of trust you will offer (for example, "Research it and recommend, and I will decide"), say it out loud to the person, and then, the hard part, do not take it back. When it comes back different from what you would have done, ask what is good about it before you ask what is wrong.
What are you holding that someone else has been waiting to carry?