Advanced Leadership and Administration ML503 Administration … · 2019. 9. 13. · basic reason we can easily support delegation is that it’s biblical. Moses found himself strained

Advanced Leadership and Administration

Transcript - ML503 Advanced Leadership and Administration © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 22 of 24ML503

The Leader as Delegator

Advanced Leadership and Administration

Amazing as it seems, one can pursue the indices of numerous leadership books, as I have done in preparation for this study, and find no entries at all under the term “delegation.” Sometimes that occurs because the author has focused on one specific aspect of leadership, such as conflict management. More commonly, however, the book deals only theoretically with its topic and, therefore, pays little more than lip service to the actual functions that make leadership possible, and certainly delegation is one of those. In my view, one should not suggest that any one aspect of leadership is more important than the rest. Can we say that decision making is more important than planning and organization is something else more important than human relations, for example, is supervision? How can you do supervision without adequate human relations. Those kind of value judgments seem futile.

Team leadership is a seamless garment of variable activities, each interwoven with the rest, but on the firing line, when you’re out there and the desk is piled high and the week is ending and the year’s ending and you’re not near finished, you run out year before you run out of work, the delegation comes as close to being indispensable as any characteristic I can name. Now I’m not the great communicator, that was Ronald Reagan, but some of my staff think that I may be the great delegator. Maybe not because I do it well, but because I do it often.

Delegation has to do with a leader assigning certain tasks and authority to do those tasks to other people in the organization. The process is rather simple to define, but it’s exceedingly difficult to carry out. In a rather old book, Bower has a very good chapter on delegation. He says,

The larger an organization becomes, the more important it is for an administrator to apply the principles of delegation Those on the staff of a moderately large and

Kenneth O. Gangel, PhDExperience: Scholar in Residence,

Toccoa Falls College



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growing church, will of necessity concern themselves increasingly with more abstract operations—policy-making, supervision, counseling, coordination. These more important activities can be adequately carried out, however, only if lesser important duties are delegated to a Sunday school superintendent, sponsors of youth groups, adult fellowship officers, and other leaders. As a matter of fact, the aim of the administrator ought to be that of utilizing the delegation process as frequently as possible, so that duties and decisions of lesser significance will be transferred to those at the lower levels of the church structure. The making of decisions should ordinarily be delegated to the lowest possible level of the hierarchy. This will then permit him to devote himself to those administrative tasks which demand the presence and skill of a full-time, well-trained staff person and assure a continuing expansion of the church’s program.

That’s a long quote, and I don’t agree with everything that Bower has said there. I would like to see important decisions, not just unimportant decisions, decentralized, but that kind of delegation fits, of course, with the view of team leadership this study has focused upon. It directs our attention to the achievement of group goals rather than the retaining of authority and power by individual leaders.

An autocratic leader, I think, will generally be ineffective at delegation. A free-reign leader, on the other hand, may allow too much flexibility. So the delegation process seems complicated by the leader’s constant dealing with volunteer workers. A leader can only ask someone in the organization to take the task and carry it out, even though such authority may be consistent with the org chart. But difficult though it may be, delegation stands central to leadership roles carried out by pastors and associate staff and other team leaders.

Well, so much by way of introduction. Let’s look at the necessity of delegation more specifically. Why should leaders delegate? One basic reason we can easily support delegation is that it’s biblical. Moses found himself strained almost to the breaking point under his responsibilities as the single leader of a wilderness nation.

Such unilateral responsibility was not necessary; wasn’t God’s plan, just something that happened. So Jethro comes along in Exodus 18 and teaches Moses to divide his leadership among



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other people capable of assuming the assignment of those kinds of tasks. There’s a wonderful verse in the King James Version; I think I can come close to quoting it. Jethro says to him, “You shall surely . . . or thou . . . thou shalt surely wear away, thou and all this people with thee.” In other words, you’re killing yourself and you’re killing everybody else. Parceling out some of these tasks.

In the New Testament, the Lord certainly used delegation. He consigned many tasks of ministry to His disciples. At the time of His ascension, He passed on to them the entire responsibility for the ongoing church. All biblical commissions, such as those found in Matthew 28 and John 20, delegate first to the disciples and then through them to every Christian.

Another argument for delegation is sheer necessity to get the job done; the physical and mental weight of team leadership can’t be carried by one or even a few people. Our incapacity to function adequately under these kinds of burdens should be an obvious cry for delegation. You know, it’s the key to survival in leadership in my view.

A third valid case for delegation reminds us that it serves in the important task of training future as well as present leadership for the church’s program. Leaders who will someday bear heavy responsibility must first learn to bear lighter responsibility in some followership role; involving young people in plenty of their own programs is a good example. It’s delegation. It should result in more maturity and leadership responsibility on their part. People who have things done for them all the time rarely learn to do things for themselves, and consequently, they rarely do things for others.

Professionals place a great deal of trust in this kind of team leadership behavior. Again Kouzes and Posner:

You demonstrate your trust in others through your actions—how much you check and control their work, how much you delegate and allow people to participate. Individuals who are unable to trust other people often fail to become leaders.

They can’t bear to be dependent on the words and work of others and consequently end up doing all the work themselves. Conversely, people who trust others too much may also fail, because they lose touch and a sense



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of connectedness to their team. Delegation becomes abdication.

We don’t want that, but I have said repeatedly, and I probably have said on these tapes that I live and die by my staff and they know that. I am totally dependent. I’m a vice president, but I am not independent, free-wheeling, make my own decisions, go here, go there. I am dependent for virtually everything that happens in my life and ministry on one or another member of my staff—sometimes on the whole crowd together.

Why do some leaders fail to delegate? One of the reasons surely is that delegation tends to be fraught with fear of the unknown. Without ever saying so, many leaders hesitate to delegate because they don’t want to give up authority. They claim it’s theirs; they want to hold on to it. And you can sense a certain amount of carnality there. Selfish pride wins the day. But sometimes leaders just plain don’t know how. Most delegatees will not perform the assigned task to the same level of competence that the leader himself might have performed it; however, after exercising your responsibilities for a period of time, the level of competence will rise and even approach that of the mentor. This can be both a blessing and a threat to the leader who might already be somewhat skeptical of delegation process, and that’s one of the reasons people don’t delegate: because it’s a threat.

And some leaders fail to delegate because they don’t want to commit the necessary time. See, in the initial stage, delegation takes more time than doing it yourself. You make the assignment, issue reminders, check, double-check, make corrections. You know, you’re tempted to say, “I’d rather do this myself.” But it’s like planning. Delegation is not an expense, it’s an investment. Unfortunately, because the returns of the investment do not always appear immediately, discouragement sets in and people give up.

Now what kind of tasks cannot be delegated? At first glance it would appear that good leaders delegate almost without limitation, but there are some restricting guidelines. You cannot delegate items assigned in your job description.

If, for example, a church has hired a pastor of discipleship to plan and carry out an annual leadership training retreat, that job should not be passed on to somebody else in the congregation.



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If the basis and authority of delegation is not clear is another reason why you want to be careful about these restricting guidelines. If you don’t know whether or not you have a basis for authority in delegation, then you better not delegate. The person asked to accept the assignment should know that the leader asking has the right to do so, and this necessitates understanding the entire organizational structure. You know, is this yours to give is the question we’re asking here.

You can’t delegate something which belongs to someone else’s area of authority. An academic dean can’t delegate responsibilities relative to college finance. A missions field director should not delegate aspects of ministry related to another field, and so forth.

Generally, the literature on delegation argues that leaders delegate everything, but they do not absolutely, or I should say, everything that they do not absolutely do themselves. That may be an overstatement, but it generalizes the enormity of importance placed upon delegation in leadership.

And there are degrees of delegation. Delegation must carry with it the authority to carry out the task. Certainly the task and its authority constitute a responsibility, and to that extent, responsibility is delegated. In another sense, however, the leader cannot delegate accountability. So you have several words that are important here. You delegate the task. You delegate authority to do the task. You delegate responsibility for the outcomes, but you can’t delegate accountability for the ultimate achievements to your boss, whoever that might be. Assume, for example, that a senior pastor has asked his assistant to plan the program for the February workers’ conference. She passes on the responsibility to the chairman of the board of Christian education. All of a sudden at conference time there’s no program. Whose fault is it? It’s the fault of the assistant, not the senior pastor. Holds ultimate accountability. It’s very crucial to recognize how this whole system works.

Identifying ways to learn leadership, Callahan reminds us that people learn leadership best in an environment where there is a high delegation of authority, not responsibilities.

He points out that the scale—by the way, by responsibilities there, he means tasks—He points out the scale of competency, you must be in balance with the range of authority and neither should run ahead or behind of the other. Let me quote him. “People develop



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their competencies in direct relation to the authority that has been delegated to them, not the responsibilities they have been asked to take. In any organization, the higher the delegation of authority, the higher the level of competencies and the more leaders the organization helps to nurture forward.” It should immediately be obvious that if we overload a developing leader with authority beyond his competence, he’ll end up in frustration. On the other hand, if we withhold authority as competence develops, we get the same result. So in many aspects of leadership, we have it here again, balance becomes crucial.

The trick in delegation is probably to realize that leaders can never give away ultimate accountability. Now I mention that, and it bears mentioning again. We transfer tasks and even responsibility, but ultimately we are accountable for what we delegate to subordinates. That’s why some managerial scientists talk about four different degrees of delegated authority. They talk about executive authority. I’m not going to deal with all four, so scratch that numeral. I just want to talk about two. Executive authority. This highest level carries with it full authority to see that the task is carried out to its completion. The leader assigns to the delegatee some given responsibility and authority and then no longer concerns himself with it. In the illustration above, the pastor may have said, “Please plan a February workers’ conference,” and never thought about it again what the program would be. The pastor’s intention . . . maybe I should say the pastor’s inattention to follow-up, may pervert proper delegation processes. In other words, you really ought to follow up, but it serves also as an example of complete authority. In this illustration, it would also include the expenditure of funds for speakers, conference facilities, and so on. So it’s a high level.

And then there’s reporting authority. In a reporting type of delegation, the delegatee undertakes a task but must report to her supervisor at predetermined points in the process. Reports may be single or multiple, but the supervisor asks to be kept informed of decisions made in carrying out the task. I can tell you that I use both of these all the time. There are people in the organization whom you trust for executive authority and you say, “Well, will you handle this?”

I work with a very, very competent and highly experienced associate academic dean, and when I am away, as I often am, he runs the show, and I don’t worry about that. It’s a total executive authority delegation. On the other hand, in a lot of



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authority aspects, particularly in tasks that people have not done before, I may want to check and double-check a staff member’s performance on a certain issue.

There are some guidelines for effective delegation. We’ve been talking about guidelines since this study began, recognizing that delegation is essential; understanding why people fail to delegate; knowing what tasks can’t be delegated; understanding degrees of delegation; acknowledging ultimate accountability—these are all guidelines. But in the actual process of delegating itself, there are certain rubrics, certain patterns more likely than not to lead to effectiveness.

You make the duties clear. Clearly define delegated tasks. Generalizations won’t work here. It’s the bugaboo of successful delegation. Delineate specifically what you expect of the delegatee; what time or date you want the task finished. And if necessary, what form the finished product should take. Provide all necessary information to accomplish the task. Don’t ingest all of that yet until you hear the next one, do not assign methods.

You delegate according to results, not methods. How he gets there is his own question. I realize there may be certain procedures in an organization that are called for to be done precisely according to certain standard,s and so you say, “We do it this way here.” Accounting would be a good example of that. You don’t say to a budding new accounting leader, “Okay, it doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it any way you want.” You could throw a whole place into a tizzy if all the computers are geared up for a certain form of financial reporting. But where that kind of issue does not apply, you do not assign methods.

Many people will do things differently than you would. Assuming that they achieve the results that you need, no problem. At times it may be necessary to say that the end does not justify the means, but in the simple mechanics of delegation followers should be free to choose their own approaches.

Set up controls. We’ve talked about this before. This is one of the problems that can develop in delegation if you’re not doing it well. Establish controls to pinpoint difficulties at an early stage. How foolish to go all the way to that date of that February workers’ conference only to discover no one has planned the program. Why in the world didn’t you discover it before February? The point is, of course, he gave away executive authority when it should



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have been reporting authority. So periodically from the point of delegation to the point of conclusion, that pastor should have reminded his colleague and the educator should have followed up with the chairman of the board.

We could put such reminders in the form of simple questions, such as, How are the plans for the workers’ conference coming? Things like that; that will work. People will accept those kinds of things. And so it’s important to recognize that a more effective system of control is a regular reporting system such as that which would be required from every church leader. It depends on how big the task is and whether you’re doing executive authority level or reporting authority level. There are a lot of variables here.

You want to give praise and credit. The delegated task is successfully complete, and you want to thank people. That’s a reinforce. This important step of reinforcement is dealt with very nicely by Brethower and Rummler:

Since behavior is influenced by its consequences, there are several things the manager or management can do to realize the optimum effect of this relationship:

1. Train only when the behavior trained will be reinforced on the job.

2. Design jobs so rewards for the desired before exceed punishment for failure.

3. Arrange conditions so an employee can see which of his acts are being reinforced.

4. Arrange the reinforcement so it is given time to be linked to the act.

5. Select reinforcers that are in fact reinforcing this employee.

From Dale Brethower and G. A. Rummler, “For Improved Work Performance, Accentuate the Positive,” an article in Personnel magazine.

Let’s move on to delegating in an anti-authority culture. By now you know I believe the New Testament does not support a leadership style based on authoritarian attitude. Authoritarian leadership behavior refers to a relationship between persons, not



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only attributes of one individual. In other words, we’re not just talking about what a person is in himself, we’re talking about that himself or herself relates to other selves. It involves an exercise of social control which rests on a follower’s willing compliance, shall I call it, with certain directives from leaders. Remember the old line about followers developing leaders?

Well, let’s use an example again. A dean of students in a small Christian college. She wants to maintain a warm climate of rapport so she can be a friend and confidant to students in counseling situations. But she was hired to enforce rules as well, and her authority rests on the sanctions she can impose on violators. But the more she must appeal to this authority, the less attractive she will be for personal counseling, so the balance thing keeps haunting us on things like this. The question of authority and reaction to authority is crucial to the process of delegation. You can’t delegate without authority, and yet abusing authority can cripple the effectiveness of delegation. So the gentleness and kindness of the leader filled with God’s Spirit stands against the ancient conflict between labor and management. It always emphasizes the team concept of the people of God at work together. The Bible is full of passages on the unity of the body, but few are as poignant of Paul’s words to the church at Philippi. Listen to verses 1 through 5, chapter 2.

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being likeminded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others, and your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.

If you’re a Greek student, you know that’s a first-class condition and should read “since you have encouragement from being united with Christ, since you have comfort from His love,” then do these things.

We talk frequently during these studies about empowering other leaders as a central strength of the team leadership concept. Other than the decision-making process, few areas of leadership lend themselves more to empowerment than the process of delegation. Consider the words of Clark and Clark, “The appropriate



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distribution of power, authority, and influence is critical to the smooth functioning of an organization,” they write. There’s a word for it—empowerment. A theme of the empowerment movement is that a power to make decisions should be located at the place in the organization where the optimal amount of information exists on which base those decisions. Every work in a plant, every member of a community organization, every citizen in every community should be watching for ways to solve problems. There should be willing participants in any campaign for improvement.

Delegation builds the future leadership of ministry. That’s what makes it so crucial. Not just to get the load off of you, that’s important, we want you around for a while too, but it builds other leaders. Its elements include responsibility, authority, accountability, all within proper perspective in the delegation system. Someone has said that with all the evidence to commend it, failure to delegate is an emotional problem, not a rational one. A team leader who can effectively delegate tasks and authority to people and then effectively supervise them in achieving those goals and fulfilling those tasks demonstrates the gift of administration and contributes a great deal to the overall ministry of the church or other ministry organizations.

Delegation requires paying the price of leadership. James offered wise, experienced counsel when he said, “Not many of them to be teachers.” The price of leadership is not small. It includes faithfulness. It includes self-denial. So the time and the privacy sometimes and the personal life of the average person may be left behind in the role of leadership. I think you minimize that dramatically and strategically when you develop a team leadership style. But nevertheless study and preparation, attendance at meetings, poring over budgets consume hours in a week and weeks in a year and years in a lifetime. The responsibility never seems to abate.

But then we learn how to make an investment in other people, and we expect a return on that investment in the form of appreciation and thanks. What do we get? Sometimes the offense of some who misunderstand and who retaliate negatively for all our efforts on their behalf. At moments like this the limelight dims and the life of leadership can become a life of loneliness. It doesn’t have to be that, and it shouldn’t be that commonly, but it can happen and it can happen to you as well.



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Sometimes the leader’s a dreamer, the idealist, the visionary, the crusader for a cause. He or she finds himself bucking the tide of popular opinions, standing against the crowd. He may be something of a perfectionist; the leader could be her own most severe critique and tends to deal most harshly with herself. Maybe you have that problem too. That’s why developing a leadership team to share the burden becomes so crucial. Yes, take the yoke (Matthew 11), but share the burden. Taking the yoke is only part of it. Sharing the burden is the other very important part. And the very terminology “sharing the burden” ought to lead us to an understanding of the importance of delegation.

I think this pattern marked the lives of the great leaders of the Old Testament, the disciples, the apostles of the New Testament, and, of course, the example of our Lord Himself. Somehow amid pressing demands of ministry, He took time to carry out the most successful delegation the world has ever seen. He discussed theology with Nicodemus; He discussed living water with an adulterous woman; He shared intimate moments with the young apostle John; He prayed personally for impetuous Peter. He visited briefly with two disciples after the resurrection. Took time to make a special appearance for the skeptical Thomas. Why? What’s the point of all of this? He was engaged in the leadership development business, and in the leadership development business, you learn to delegate tasks, authority, and responsibility knowing that ultimate accountability still stays in your court. Jesus’s delegating relations with people reflected His relationship with the Father. He didn’t deal in horizontal communication alone but constantly represented the Father to those with whom He came in contact, and in return, their lives were ever brought to the Father in prayer, perhaps never more significantly than in John 17.

Now let’s not also fail to recognize how Jesus Himself carried out the delegated tasks of the incarnation. I mean, how many times did He say, “I don’t come to do my own work, but what the Father has sent me to do”? He was a delegatee as well as a delegator. So we see both examples really nicely reflected.

Completely spiritual human relations mark the ministry of the Lord and the ministry of the New Testament, and I hope your ministry as well. And those markings need to be found more widely, I think, in the ministry of team leaders who head ministry organizations on into the twenty-first century. Let’s get away from this hotshot, ostentatious, entrepreneur image of Christian leadership. Let’s look again at the Bible, especially the New


Christ-Centered Learning — Anytime, Anywhere

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Testament, and let’s see this fervency of sharing our work with other people not only so we that we can relieve ourselves of it, but also that we engage in the development of other leaders by giving them meaningful tasks to accomplish with the authority with which to accomplish them.

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Advanced Leadership and Administration ML503 Administration … · 2019. 9. 13. · basic reason we can easily support delegation is that it’s biblical. Moses found himself strained