Delegate for Development
Does it feel as if your team is delegating upward—bringing you every problem and waiting for you to make every decision?
When that happens often enough, it is easy to wonder whether your people are capable of more. Marquet’s story raises a harder question: do they have the authority, trust, and psychological safety to show you what they can do?
When Marquet took command of the USS Santa Fe, it had one of the poorest performance records in the fleet. It would have been easy to assume he had inherited a deficient crew.
During a training drill, Marquet ordered the electric propulsion motor to run at two-thirds speed. The officer on deck repeated the order. Nothing happened.
That motor had no two-thirds setting.
The helmsman knew it. The officer who repeated the order knew it. Marquet, who had prepared to command a different type of submarine, did not. Yet the people who understood the equipment did not feel able to challenge the captain’s decision.
That moment made Marquet question what the submarine’s poor results really said about its crew. They had knowledge that the way they operated was failing to use.
He began moving decisions closer to the people who understood the work. Instead of waiting for orders, crew members explained what they intended to do and why. Marquet could question their thinking or stop an action when necessary. He also gave them the responsibility and authority to act.
According to Marquet, Santa Fe rose from the bottom to the top in performance and retention. The crew whose ability had been in doubt became a top-performing team. Their success continued after he left, and ten crew members later became submarine captains.
That last result matters most to me. Marquet did more than improve one submarine’s performance. He developed people who continued to lead and develop others after he was gone.
A leader’s number one responsibility is to develop more leaders. Delegation helps us do that when we give people an outcome to own, the authority to make appropriate decisions, and the trust and support to grow into the responsibility.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Where are decisions still coming back to you even though someone closer to the work has the knowledge to make them? What might that person be capable of if you gave them the opportunity?
CHALLENGE
Choose one responsibility you have delegated. Make clear which decisions that person can make, then give them the authority and support to carry it through.
