Delegation: the right style
for each, not one style for all

To delegate is to entrust a responsibility to the right person, with just the right degree of support. And that right degree depends on the one who receives it, on what they know how to do, and on the desire they bring to it. The same gesture, laid identically on everyone, sustains one person and smothers another.

Three registers never to confuse

A leader is forever drawing on three registers, and blending them muddles everything. Feedback looks back on what has been done. Delegation entrusts a responsibility yet to come. Support accompanies the person as they act. Slip a reproach into a moment of delegation, offer help in the same breath, and the message turns illegible: the person no longer knows whether they are being judged, entrusted with something, or pitied. Trust is damaged at precisely that point. Delegating well begins with choosing a single register, clearly, and holding to it through to the end of the exchange.

There is no good style in itself

For a long time, we searched for the right style of leader: should one be authoritarian or democratic, turned toward the task or toward people? In 1969, Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard settled the matter in one simple sentence. No style is good everywhere. The right style depends on the situation, and above all on the person one is leading. Their model crosses two distinct behaviours, inherited from the Ohio State studies: the directive dimension, which structures and prescribes the what, the when and the how; and the supportive dimension, which listens, involves and encourages. A leader may be strong on both, weak on both, or lean decidedly to one side.

Four levels of autonomy

The decisive contribution lies in a third variable: the team member's autonomy in the face of a given task, the sum of their competence and their commitment. Four levels can be distinguished, each calling for a different hand.

• Enthusiastic beginner — they cannot yet do it, but they have the desire and the drive.
• Disillusioned learner — they run up against difficulty and gradually lose confidence.
• Capable but cautious performer — they know how to do it, but they doubt themselves or lack momentum.
• Self-reliant expert — they have mastered the task and commit of their own accord.

Four styles, a single principle

To each level answers a style cut to fit it, from the most directive to the most delegative. To the beginner, one gives the detail: the what, the how, the exact order of each move. To the learner who doubts, one adds the relationship, explains the meaning and rekindles the motivation. From the cautious performer, one gradually withdraws the instruction and offers a listening ear, for they already know how to do it. To the expert, one leaves slack and the pleasure of leading the way. A mountain guide does not rope the beginner as they would the seasoned climber. The whole art lies in that length of rope, adjusted to each person, task by task and never once and for all.

The cost of poor matches

Errors of adjustment come at a price. To grant a relaxed, wholly trusting relationship to someone who has neither the competence nor the experience is abandonment in disguise: the task will remain empty or botched, and one will conclude, wrongly, that the person was not up to it. To confine a motivated expert, conversely, within tight control is mistrust in disguise: they feel diminished, and the momentum falls away. Between the two, a shade of tone decides everything. To give the detail with irritation humiliates; to give it in an icy voice dehumanises. What remains is curious benevolence: I go down into the detail because I believe in what you will make of it.

Knowing oneself in order to delegate well

Good delegation does not begin with the other person: it begins with oneself. Each of us arrives with a natural inclination, and it is this that colours, without our knowing, every delegation we make. Some trust from the outset, to the point of finding it almost offensive to give details. Others, out of caution, spell everything out. Neither of these settings is a fault; the danger arises when they harden into a single style, laid on everyone. To know who one is in the face of control, of detail, of intuition is therefore no luxury: it is the prerequisite of fair delegation. This is the starting point our instrument, Florilège, works upon: to name one's inclinations in order to stop being ruled by them, and to adjust, at last, one's rope to the one who is climbing.