We know delegation is important.

(In fact, we have a whole article on the importance and benefits of delegation. )

It’s one thing to know why doing it is good. But what happens when you DON’T ? 

Short answer: it limits your capacity as a leader and the ability of your team and organization to grow and scale.

Long answer: let’s take a look at a few:

A lack of delegation limits the ability of your team and organization to grow and scale

Multiple studies have shown that for an organization to grow, a greater amount of delegation has to occur. One person can’t do it all.

It applies when leading a team as well. Even if you have just a couple of employees under you, by not delegating, you’re exponentially reducing the impact your team can have and limiting its growth.

It keeps you from focusing on the most important and limits the results you can get

When you’re not delegating, when you are doing work that others could be, it keeps you from focusing on what’s most important for you.

You have certain tasks in your role that give you greater impact than others – your 80/20. When you don’t delegate, you are spending time on tasks that are not important.

You are getting less results and impact because of that.

More than that, you only have so many hours in a day you can work. When you do tasks and keep control of areas you shouldn’t, some work isn’t going to get done.

A lack of delegation bottlenecks and limits your team’s productivity and results

This happens in multiple ways: if they have to rely on you for decisions, to solve problems, or to give explicit instructions on everything, you are a bottleneck.

You are limiting the effectiveness of your entire team because they have to constantly wait for you. Your lack of delegation slows everything down.

It keeps people from working and doing what they may excel at, and it is also demotivating and demoralizing, which decreases productivity.

It hurts your team’s development

When you handle all the decisions, micromanage, control everything, and try to do the work yourself, you limit your team’s ability to grow.

They aren’t expanding their capacity, making mistakes and learning, or growing in their roles.

You are limiting them in their development, and that not only hurts them, but it hurts your organization in the future, both competitively-wise and also during transitions and successions.

It increases burnout and stress

When you are doing what you shouldn’t be doing, when you spend all your time fighting fires, when you try to control everything, and when you are always feeling behind because you can’t finish everything, it is going to increase your burnout, stress, and feeling of overwhelm. You may even be putting those extra hours in because you must get everything done.

That, of course, can not only decrease your productivity even more, but it can also hurt your health and relationships at work and at home.

A lack of delegation tells your team that you don’t trust them, respect them, or believe in their abilities

Think about it. When you don’t delegate, when you try to control or do everything, what you are telling your team is that you don’t trust them to do it right. You are telling them you don’t believe in their abilities.

When you do that, that’s not only demotivating, it hurts your relationship, your influence, and your ability to lead.

Poor delegation keeps you from strategic thinking

David Stitt in Deep and Deliberate Delegation discusses how many leaders talk about how they have no time for strategic thinking because they are always “putting out fires.”

In other words, as Stitt said, they aren’t delegating effectively, because if they were, they would have the time.

When you are doing everything, it, again, keeps you from the important, and often the important part of leadership you are skipping out on is the strategic part.

A lack of delegation is demotivating and increases turnover

When you are (or seem to be) controlled, untrusted, disrespected­—how does that make you feel? How is that going to affect you, your motivation, and your desire to work at that company?

More than likely, it will impact you negatively.

Two of the big human motivators are autonomy and growth. When you aren’t delegating, you are in many ways keeping those motivations from people.

And when people feel controlled, micromanaged, untrusted, etc., they are more likely to leave.

Ineffective delegation can keep you from promotions and raises

Granted, we all probably have seen ineffective leaders raised up for the wrong reasons (probably by other ineffective leaders), but, in general, a lack of delectation hurts your career.

Look at the negative consequences above: your leadership is low, you aren’t getting the results you could, you are constantly stressed and overwhelmed, and your team is not being utilized as it should – why would someone who knows about leadership and business promote you or give you a raise?

A lack of delegation hurts the organization during successions and transitions

When you delegate, you are growing the capacity of your people. You use it to grow leaders and develop people’s ability to make decisions and solve problems.

When you do that and you or other leaders leave, people can continue the work because it wasn’t dependent on you or someone else. They have the skills and capabilities to continue the work. You have leaders able to step in and take over.

When you don’t, however, things can fall apart. You see it with many CEOs – things may seem good, at least on paper, while they are there, but when they leave, it all falls apart because it was dependent on the leader.

They think it shows how good they were, but in truth it shows how bad of a leader they were because they didn’t develop their people and prepare the organization to run without them.

As John Maxwell said in The Ultimate Guide to Developing Leaders, “If you’re not identifying the leaders of tomorrow whom you will develop, your potential and your future will always be limited.”

Worse decisions are made and problems are solved less effectively

Generally, those who are closest to the problem or decision know the problem and situation the best, and they can make the best decisions about those situations.

Too often, however, leaders think they know better because they are the leader or because of ego, insecurity, their college degree, or so on, so they try to make all the decisions. They don’t realize that the farther up as a leader you go, the more detached you are.

What frequently happens is that worse decisions are made, then when it doesn’t work out, it can be easy for those leaders to blame the front line for not “implementing it correctly.” So more bureaucracy and bad decisions are made instead of them ever looking at the mirror and realizing the cause just might be them.

A lack of delegation also slows down decision-making because – again – you become a bottleneck.

A lack of delegation hurts customer satisfaction

Have you ever had to deal with a customer service agent who had no power to do anything but always had to go back to their manager for approval of everything?

Yeah, not fun.

That’s what happens when you don’t delegate.

A lack of delegation makes the team or organization dependent on you – and you can’t get away

I’ve heard from different business owners that they feel they can’t get away because there is always a fire or phone call or someone needing them for something.

Those are good people, but they just don’t know how to delegate effectively yet.

Once they do, they will be able to step away without being needed because they prepared, trained, and delegated effectively.

You aren’t using your people to their full capacity and aren’t getting the best return on your organization’s investment in people

Your people have varying goals, passions, and dreams, and they have different skills and abilities.

When you delegate effectively, you can unleash them to get amazing things done. And as you unleash them, the more they can grow, and the more they grow, the more results they (and you) get.

When you don’t, you are wasting the people investment of your organization and the potential that’s there.

It’s just not smart to not delegate

I hope you can see the impact that happens when you don’t delegate and work toward delegating effectively.

The effectively part is, of course, important. It’s one reason people “try it” and quit – because they weren’t doing it right.

Delegation done right can have a tremendous impact on you, your team, and your organization.

How do you do it right? Check out this guide here.