Delegation is supposed to get easier the higher you rise. In reality, it becomes challenging in a different way,
Common delegation advice is helpful for first-time managers, who typically have trouble letting go. But for senior leaders, effective delegation looks different. It’s not about handing off tasks. It’s about leading through a paradox. They need to stay close enough to align and coach, but they also need to step back enough to empower and grow others.
At this level, for many, the risk isn’t micromanagement, but over-detachment. When you’re too removed, you miss chances to align strategy, spot risks, or coach your leaders.
Delegation is about managing a polarity
These risks don’t happen by chance. They’re likely to happen when we don’t see what delegation really is: a polarity to manage. It’s a continuous balancing act of two interdependent poles, involvement and autonomy. Both are valuable. And there are downsides to doing too much of both.
That is the essence of polarity management, which Barry Johnson first described in his 1992 book, Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems. Yet it remains more relevant than ever for leaders today. Polarities are paradoxes and tensions you can’t solve, but only manage, over time. Think speed and quality; short-term and long-term; stability and change. Two poles of a polarity are interdependent, so you cannot choose one as a “solution” and neglect the other, just like involvement and autonomy. To get the benefits of one, you need to attend to the other.
Senior leaders live in this paradox every day, but few think about delegation as the polarity it actually is. It’s not about choosing between involvement and autonomy, control or letting go, but about continuously managing the tension between the two.
The trap of the pendulum effect
Most leaders have a natural preference. Some stay deeply involved, others pride themselves on giving their people wide latitude. Both preferences work—until they don’t. When there’s too much autonomy, it can lead to organizational misalignment, missed risks, and late-stage pivots. But when there’s too much involvement, that creates decision bottlenecks at the top, and team members can feel micromanaged and disempowered.
The actual trap is the pendulum effect—leaders swinging from one pole to the other. If too much autonomy leads to drift, they jump back in and get more involved, potentially exerting too much control. When that frustrates and disempowers their team members, they swing back to being hands-off. And the cycle repeats.
Breaking the cycle requires a different mindset. Leaders need to see delegation as a polarity to balance. That means recognizing the pattern, anticipating the shifts, and proactively balancing the upsides of both poles before the downsides start to emerge. The art of high-impact delegation at senior levels, therefore, lies in cycling between involvement and autonomy. You need to be able to switch between the two depending on the stakes and context of the work, and trust in the relationships and capabilities of your team members. There is no perfect and stable point of balance. It’s a continuous practice of adjustment.
How to show up differently
A tech company I’ve worked with trained all its senior leaders to look at delegation through a polarity lens, while emphasizing that involvement was an integral part of their culture. Leaders mapped out their tendencies, learned to recognize early warning signs of leaning too much into one pole, and experimented with new ways of showing up.
A few big shifts stood out:
Where they showed up changed
They realized involvement wasn’t about hovering everywhere. It was about leaning in with more focus and attention when the stakes were highest. This means critical work like high-stakes or unusually complex projects, when they need to coach, support, or provide people with stretch opportunities. This was also crucial during strategic moments when they needed perspective to align across the organization.
How they showed up changed
Instead of inserting themselves or taking over, leaders leaned on dialogue. They were:
- Asking big-picture questions about context, impact, or purpose, like “Why are we doing this?” or “Who else will be impacted?”
- Helping teams zoom out to see risks, interdependencies, and strategic connections.
- Clarifying expectations and roles upfront, and using check-ins for alignment, problem-solving, and coaching—not just updates.
The result? Leaders weren’t doing more of the work themselves, as many had feared. They were actually influencing the work, bringing perspective, context, and coaching in ways that elevated their teams. Through modeling deeper thinking and strategizing, their teams started internalizing those behaviors and applied them independently, even when the leader wasn’t present.
And once leaders got comfortable with polarity thinking, they started applying it elsewhere—candor and care, stability and change, results, and relationships. They stopped asking which side was “right” and started asking how to get the best of both. That development shift—from either/or choices to both/and leadership—is what unlocks deeper effectiveness, not just in delegation but in leading in complexity.
Leading with the paradox
So how can you put this into practice? You can start by doing the following:
- Reflect on your patterns. Notice when you overdo autonomy or involvement. Watch for the early warning signs: drift, misalignment, bottlenecks, and disengagement. Ask yourself the following questions: How do you intentionally cycle between the two poles, depending on context and capability? How do you ensure your involvement adds value without disempowering? How do you ensure autonomy doesn’t become detachment?
- Align expectations upfront. Be clear on outcomes, roles, responsibilities, and decision boundaries. You should also discuss and align around your work styles and preferences for updating and keeping each other informed.
- Continuously calibrate. Contexts shift. Projects evolve. People grow. Ask yourself: “What requires my attention right now? Where will involvement matter most? Where can I step back to create space?” Trust your intuition and check in with your teams.
This cycle of reflection, alignment, and calibration allows you to balance both poles of the delegation paradox over time without getting stuck in either.
Delegation at senior levels isn’t about handing off tasks and hoping for the best. Treating delegation as a polarity–rather than a skill to master—helps leaders embrace it as an ongoing practice.
Leaders who do this well don’t ask, “Am I delegating enough?” They ask, “Am I balancing involvement and autonomy in a way that serves the whole organization, my teams, and the individuals I lead?”
