How to delegate

Have you ever found yourself just drowning in tasks that other people could do? But somehow you're the one still doing it yourself? Well, today I'm going to share a framework that completely transformed how I delegate, and it might just give you back a few hours of your week. Hey everyone, I'm Shane Leaning.

Welcome to Education Leaders, the chat-topping leadership podcast for school leaders like you. I'm an organizational coach, and in this show, I get to know the teachers, leaders and innovators making a difference in education around the world. Now, before we jump in today, I'm really delighted that this episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association, so stay tuned to learn. Now, let me paint a picture for you. Hopefully, I think it's going to be a familiar picture.

You're sitting in your office with a mountain of tasks ahead of you. There's that curriculum review. That needs your attention. There's those parent meetings you've got later. They're scheduled back-to-back.

And maybe there's that strategic plan, that school development plan that's due to the school leadership team by the end of the week. Sound familiar? Well, you might instantly jump to the idea that I've got to work harder. I've got to work longer.

But what if the answer is actually to delegate more effectively? And not just any type of delegation. Intentional delegation that matches the right level for each situation. This is what I want to talk you through today.

I want to introduce you to a framework that really did change my approach. And it's called the Nine Levels of Delegation. It's developed by the brilliant and late Tim Brighouse. He was one of Britain's most influential and charismatic educationalists.

And his framework gives us a really clear spectrum from essentially no delegation at all to complete handover of responsibility. So let's walk through those nine levels together. I'm going to give you some examples of how each might be appropriate in a school context as well. I found this really useful. I think you're going to find it useful.

If you want a printout sheet of these nine levels of delegation, a bit of a summary from this episode, head to the education leaders community, educationleaders.community and you will find a cheat sheet just for community members which you can use to reference later. So let's go through those levels together. So level one, look into this problem, give me all the facts and I'll decide what to do.

So this is barely delegation at all, right? You're essentially asking someone to gather information for you. But this can be useful. The thing that comes to mind for me for this is you might use it when you're dealing with a serious safeguarding concern, for example.

Let's say you're leading a school. You might say to another leader, can you gather all the information about this incident, including who was involved, any witness statements, all the different things that are important. And once I have the complete picture, I'll decide on the next step. This kind of mode of delegation can be really useful in sensitive situations where you as a head or you as a leader need to take full responsibility, almost de-risking your team, protecting them, but also it's so serious that the decision has to be made at the top.

So this is still delegation. Someone's helping you fact-find, but you're making the decision. That's level one. Let's go down.

So level two is let me know the alternatives available with the pros and cons of each, and I'll decide which one to select. Here, what you're doing is you're asking for analysis, but again, the decision-making lies firmly in your hand. So where is that level one? There was no analysis done by the person.

You were doing that analysis. Here, you're allowing them to do some analysis, but you're going to make the decision. This can be really useful, for example, let's say you were looking for a new learner management system. You were going to select one.

So you might ask your IT coordinator, can they research the top three school management systems? Maybe they look at pricing, features, pros and cons, and then ask them to present it to you, and you make the final decision. This works really well when there's situations where you've got a significant investment or school-wide implications. So that's level one and two.

Let's look at level three now. Here, you would say, let me know the criteria for your recommendations, which alternatives you've identified, and which ones appear best to you with any risk identified. And again, I'm going to make the decision. Here, you're getting closer to a true delegation.

You're inviting their recommendation, but you're still the final decision-maker. So maybe there's a parent complaint and you're trying to develop a response to a parent complaint that could escalate. You might tell a head of department, can you review the comms with the family? Can you identify some possible responses we might give, and a recommendation of what you think is best maybe also highlights some risks?

But I'll make the final call on how we proceed. This is useful because it balances that input with your need to maintain that oversight because it's a sensitive parent matter, for example. All right, level four. We're coming closer to the middle now.

This one goes a bit like this. Recommend a course of action for my approval. And this is kind of where many of us live as leaders. We want the recommendation, but we're not ready to fully let go.

A good example may be curriculum development. You might say to your curriculum coordinator, based on the data, the assessment data, based on teacher feedback, could you give some recommendations on what we need to do to change our year nine maths curriculum next year? I'd like to review and approve these before implementation. So they've got significant input, but there is a check and balance to align with your vision.

So they're creating something, and you're going to be approving it. There's a recommendation to you. This link's very similar to level five, but there's a subtle difference. Level five is let me know what you intend to do and delay action until I approve.

Now here, we're really moving towards meaningful delegation, but you still want to check before anything happens. Let's say you're hosting a school event or a ceremony or something like that. Well, let's give an example. Let's say it's a graduation ceremony.

So can you plan that graduation ceremony? Can you let me know the full program you've developed? And once I've approved it, can you just proceed with implementation? So that means the school event keeps that good tone.

It gives substantial authority to your team to deliver it, though. All right, here we go. We're getting towards the end now, so level six. This one is let me know what you intend to do and do it unless I say not to.

This is a subtle, but it's a really important shift. Action is going to happen unless you explicitly stop it. This might be appropriate for some regular parent comms that you've got set up, for example. So maybe someone is doing a newsletter.

So you might ask the person who's doing that, can you draft the newsletter and share it with me? Always make sure I'm looped in, share it with me. Unless you hear back within 24 hours, say, go ahead and send it out. That means you're in the loop, but there's no bottleneck in the process.

You're not holding anything up. They're not waiting for approval. You're saying it will be my responsibility to check that. If anything is not okay, I'll let you know.

And this is really useful because it puts trust back in their place. It's saying generally what I'm expecting is this is going to be absolutely fine. But just ping it my way. Parent newsletters are a good one for that.

This episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association. Now, I've been working with the ICA for quite a few years, but they've been around for 30 years and they've been around championing quality, unlocking potential and improving learning in international schools right around the world. I really, really love that at their core is a model for improving learning. And this model is focused on the learning experience and they have tons of great curriculum materials PD resources and even an accreditation pathway for schools just like yours.

So if you're interested and I really do recommend you check them out head over to internationalcurriculum.com Level seven delegation is take action. Let me know what you did and let me know how it turns out. Now we are in true delegation territory for these last three now.

Here they act and they report back on both the actions and the outcomes. So for example, you might in teacher recruitment season, maybe now is the time of year where you're thinking about recruitment. So you might tell your HR manager, go ahead, conduct the first round of interviews for that new size position, for example. I want you to make your selection and let me know who you've shortlisted and how that process went.

So this works well like routine things. It keeps you informed of important decisions that are being made. Level eight is take action and communicate with me only if your action is unsuccessful. This requires a high level of trust.

Only come back to me if there's a problem. You maybe have that trusted header department who's ordering resources, for example. You know, purchase that lab equipment we've budgeted for this year but only come back to me if you have any issues with suppliers or budgets. And that really, for you, frees you up from that kind of routine purchasing decisions.

But there's a bit of a safety net that they know that there's support there. The final level of delegation, level nine, is take action. No further communication with me is necessary. This is complete delegation.

Full autonomy, full trust. It's really common between heads and deputies sometimes. You know, a head says, okay, experienced deputy head. Can you organize the staff professional development days?

You've got full authority. You can plan it, execute it next month. I trust your judgment completely. And this kind of level really recognizes and validates the expertise of the person or the team you're delegating to.

So there you go, nine levels. Now, I want to confess something to you. For years, I operated, I think, pretty much exclusively in level one to four. I think I was maybe a bit of a delegation control freak, you might say.

And if I'm being really honest, I still sometimes default to those today. Now, why did I do that? I think part of it was that I felt a bit too polite to delegate properly. I don't know. Can you relate to that?

I'd make a request, but then immediately I'd try to make it more palatable, like, oh, could you perhaps look at this when you have time? No rush, only if it's convenient. Does that sound familiar to you? The thing is what inevitably happened was that the colleague I delegated it to wouldn't really complete the task exactly as I'd imagined.

And how could they? I hadn't been clear. And then I'd either have to do the work myself or correct it later. And if I just correctly stated the level of delegation needed from the beginning, it would have saved me so much time and so much frustration.

This problem is amplified in international schools where I spend a lot of my time, like working with different teams from different cultural backgrounds. It makes it really difficult to predict the right approach. Some team members might come from a more hierarchical culture where they expect clear directives. Others are used to more collaborative environments.

And then not just that, you've got a range of skill levels, a range of experiences, some staff are seasoned educators who need very little guidance. Others are newer to the profession or to your particular context and might need a bit more support. It can feel like a minefield and it is so easy to get wrong. So as I said, it can feel like a minefield.

So how do we navigate that minefield, especially in like diverse contexts? Well, I think there's a few things. First, we need to be super clear about that delegation method. Clarity is absolutely king here.

Most conflicts or most errors afterwards come from a lack of clarity at the start. So don't be shy to state exactly how the delegation works. So for example, instead of saying, could you look at that grade six curriculum review? Maybe you'd say I'd like you to lead the curriculum review and can you prepare recommendations for changes based on our assessment data and present them to me at next month's meeting.

I'd like to approve the recommendation before implementation. That's delegating at level four there. And that level of clarity, it might feel a bit awkward at first. It certainly did for me.

But I've actually found it's liberating for both parties. Your colleague will know exactly what's expected and you'll be confident you're getting what you need. Second, you want to match the delegation level to both the task and the person. And this is where knowing your team is going to be really crucial.

So like for your experienced curriculum coordinator who's been with that school for years, level seven or eight might be appropriate for most tasks. For a new teacher who's just joined your team, you might start level three or four, gradually move up as they develop their capacity. That's the beautiful thing about Tim Brighouse's framework is that it really gives you a common language to discuss. You can actually say to a colleague if you want, for this task, I'm thinking level six delegation.

Does that feel right to you? If you create that shared language, it really opens up a conversation about expectations and the support that's needed. Third, as I mentioned before, you're going to need to recognize that cultural differences impact how delegation is received. Some cultures being asked to take full responsibility, like a level eight or level nine might be seen as a vote of confidence.

In others, it might be seen as abandonment. So you really need to have explicit conversations about your approach to bridge those gaps. And fourth, and this is something I've learned the hard way, is that there is no one right way to delegate. It depends entirely on the context.

The same person might handle one task at level eight and another at level three, depending on their expertise or their experience with that particular area or the stakes that are involved. I've found the best way to learn is to try its level out. Take it as a bit of a task over the next few months. Maybe try your different conversations and see if you can have a go at a few delegation levels down the spectrum and really try to do ones close to each other on the list.

Those subtle differences, let's say, between level five and level six are the really important ones to practice. We can all do zero and total delegation, but the nuance in between is where real leadership change will happen and I guarantee you, it's really liberating. Let me share a quick example from my own experience. So I used to be in a regional role leading a big PD program across a region and I worked with this phenomenal learning technologist.

This guy, he was brilliant. He was fantastic at design. Less experienced with the messaging for participants. So for the visual aspects of the online learning platform and that technical stuff, I delegated at level eight.

It was literally kind of take action and just let me know if there's an issue. I delegated that way, but for those key messaging points to participants, I started at a level four, recommend what you're going to put out for my approval. And over time, as he developed his strategic approach and moved this up a scale to level six, eventually level seven, even for the messaging tasks, and this progressive approach to delegation not only got our job done, but developed his skills and his confidence. So let me leave you with that challenge.

Next week, try to be explicitly clear about your delegation level. In at least three conversations, use the framework. Think about which level you're delegating and see what happens when you're transparent about your expectations. I would love to hear how it goes.

Reach out to me on LinkedIn, Blue Sky, or get in touch in the Education Leaders community at educationleaders.community and share your experiences. Education Leaders is hosted by me, Shane Leaning, thanks to my show editor, Pete McGill, and for the original music by Guillermo Silva. Thank you so, so much for tuning in today.

It's been great to have you here, and if we don't speak before. I'll see you here next week. If you want to learn more about the brilliant work from the International Curriculum Association, head to internationalcurriculum.com.