Our leadership team is completely overwhelmed with tactical work, but when we use the Delegate and Elevate™ tool, everyone insists they must keep all their current tasks. How do we force leaders to actually let go of their lower-value work?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When leaders claim they must keep all their current tasks during a Delegate and Elevate™ exercise, they are suffering from a mix of micromanagement, fear of letting go, or a lack of trust in their team. To break this resistance, you must reframe the exercise not as a loss of control, but as a business necessity for scaling.

Start by showing them the financial and operational reality. If a high-salaried leader is spending ten hours a week scheduling meetings, formatting reports, or handling basic customer service tickets, they are actively costing the company money. Force them to put a dollar value on their time, then ask if the company should be paying their rate for those specific activities.

Next, look at the bottom two quadrants of their Delegate and Elevate™ sheet: things they do not like doing but do well, and things they do not like doing and do poorly.

Insist that they must choose at least two tasks from these quadrants to delegate immediately.

If they argue that no one else can do these tasks, that is your real issue. It means they have failed to document their processes or train their people. Write that down as an issue for the Level 10 Meeting™ and solve it by making the creation of training materials or process documentation their primary Rock for the next ninety days.

A leader who refuses to delegate is capping the growth of the company and their own career.