Delegation Takes Courage

Keen readers of Monday Musings will have noticed that I’ve consumed a lot of military literature. The main reason that’s the case is because humans have been involved in the high-stakes contest of combat and trying to take each others’ stuff for thousands of years, and militaries have thought deeply about how to organize humans to achieve goals. 

Comparing those works with the wider leadership literature, my core insight is this: Leading people is similar in every context because, well, they’re human beings. But the dynamic and uncertain nature of combat requires leaders to delegate and empower subordinates. Unlike in the civilian sector, being a leader who practices decentralized command is a must-have, not a nice-to-have in combat.

One of my favorite books in this genre is The U.S. Army Leadership Field Manual. This quote is instructive:

“At each level, the leader must let subordinate leaders do their jobs. Practicing this kind of decentralized execution based on mission orders in peacetime trains subordinates who will, in battle, exercise disciplined initiative in the absence of orders. They’ll continue to fight when the radios are jammed, when the plan falls apart, when the enemy does something unexpected.”

And: “In combat, the loss of a leader is a shock to a unit, but the unit must continue its mission. If leaders train their subordinates properly, one of them will take charge.”

In other words, leaders need to lead every single day as if they won’t be with the team tomorrow. It may seem subtle, but it’s worth looking at how you would lead when designing for your own absence. 

You’d spend way more time communicating, so that everyone has a full understanding of the strategy or underlying objective of the work (“commander’s intent”). It wouldn’t be OK for some team members to just understand their small piece of the puzzle. 

You’d spend way more time teaching, so that others have the technical skills you have, and they know enough about how to do each others’ jobs. If you as the leader were indispensable to the team, you’d see that as a serious problem, not a reflection of how good you were.   

You’d put subordinates in a position to make decisions, so that they continually build their judgment and confidence. You might, in fact, avoid making any decision unless absolutely necessary (e.g., in urgent or potentially unsafe situations). 

And you’d provide an overwhelming amount of feedback, so that teammates learn as rapidly as possible. After all, you might be gone before their next performance review or the monthly meeting you have for “development.” 

Of course, most of us would recognize those leadership behaviors as being ideal. But with lower stakes, it’s easy to be lax—a little controlling behavior here, a little micromanagement there, especially when we fear that subordinates’ mistakes might harm our own reputations. 

The field manual addresses this point directly: “It takes personal courage to operate this way. [...] Is there a risk that, for instance, a squad leader—especially an inexperienced one—will make mistakes? Of course there is. But if your subordinate leaders are to grow, you must let go of some control and let your subordinate leaders do things on their own—within bounds established by mission and your expressed intent.”

(By the way, I asked a friend who is a U.S. Navy officer if they had a leadership field manual similar to the Army’s. In typical competitive fashion, she replied, “In the Navy, we don’t need one.”)

The majority of the military texts I’ve consumed were introduced to me by Jocko Willink and his podcast. In a recent episode, Jocko articulated just how much energy is created when a leader truly delegates: 

“You know, it's interesting—a lot of times I tell leaders, ‘you know you should have, if you got seven or eight direct reports, you should have two or three of those direct reports that are ready to step up and take your job.’ [...] And by the way, in their direct reports there should be five people that are ready to take your job. That's impressive. And if you made that your goal …[that] there were people that were two levels below you in the chain of command who could step up and take your job if it need be, imagine how effective and efficient those individuals would be. Freaking awesome!” 

Indeed.