Think about the last time you delegated something and it came back wrong. What did you tell yourself? Most of us land on “I’m bad at delegating” or “they weren’t up to it” and then quietly decide to do it ourselves next time. But that pattern isn’t a skills problem. It’s an identity problem, and it’s one of the main reasons professionals on the partnership track stay overloaded and under-strategic for far too long.
Drawing on a recent group coaching session with lawyers on the partnership track, this episode unpicks why delegation really fails: the briefing gap, the missing checkpoints, and the confusion between being responsible for the outcome and feeling you have to do the work yourself. Until you see the difference, no delegation technique will stick.
In this episode you will learn:
- Why junior professionals say “yes, I understand” when they don’t, and the one question that fixes it before it becomes a crisis
- How to build in an early review so you’re never fixing a delegation problem at the last minute under pressure
- The identity trap: why confusing “responsible for the outcome” with “responsible for doing the work” keeps you junior and overloaded
- When doing it yourself is genuinely the right call, and how to create space for that without dropping everything else
What help is out there for you to progress your career in the professions?
If you’re thinking, “I get the theory, but I need a proper system for making delegation stick,” our Delegate Like A Pro course inside the Progress To Partner Academy is designed for exactly that. It covers the mindset, the briefing frameworks, the checkpoint structures, and the feedback conversations that turn delegation from something you attempt into something you do consistently and well.
You can also listen to this episode on Substack and on Apple Podcasts
Hello, and welcome!
Think about the last time you tried to delegate something and it came back wrong. Or didn’t come back at all until the deadline was breathing down your neck. What did you tell yourself? Most of us go straight to one of two conclusions: either we’re not good at delegating, or the person we delegated to isn’t up to it.
Here’s the thing. Both of those conclusions might be true, or they might be completely wrong, but neither one is the real reason delegation keeps failing professionals on the partnership track. The real reason runs deeper, and until you see it clearly, no amount of delegation technique is going to stick.
This is the How to Make Partner podcast with me, Heather Townsend. The author of Poised for Partnership, and co-author of How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life. In this podcast, I will be highlighting some of the great stuff in our Progress To Partner Academy. New episodes are released weekly, so press subscribe so you never miss a new episode.
Right. Let’s get into why delegation actually fails.
I ran a group coaching session recently with a group of lawyers on the partnership track, and we spent a good chunk of time on delegation. Everyone in the room agreed they needed to get better at it. Everyone had tried. And everyone had a story about why it hadn’t worked. What struck me was that the stories all had the same shape, even though the people in the room were from completely different practice areas and different countries.
The shape goes like this. You delegate. Something goes wrong, either the output is poor, or the person said they understood when they clearly didn’t, or the whole thing comes back to you at the worst possible moment. You feel frustrated, then guilty, then you quietly decide it would have been faster to do it yourself. So next time, you do.
That pattern is not a delegation problem. It’s an identity problem.
One of the lawyers in my group had spent eighteen months training an associate on a complex case. Eighteen months. And when the time came to use that work to prepare for depositions, it turned out huge chunks of it hadn’t been done to the standard needed. She’d been checking in, asking “did you have any questions?” and getting “no” every time. What she’d missed is that “no” from a junior lawyer usually means “I didn’t want to admit I didn’t know, so I figured it out when I got back to my desk.” Which is exactly what we all did at that stage. We didn’t want to lose face in front of the senior lawyer, so we said yes and hoped for the best.
The lesson she drew from that experience was about follow-up and checkpoints, which is correct. But there was something else underneath it. She’d taken on the emotional weight of the whole thing. She blamed herself. She told herself she was bad at delegating. She pulled back from delegating for two years afterwards.
That’s the pattern I see over and over again. Every time delegation goes wrong, we pick up a new piece of emotional baggage. We tell ourselves a story: I’m not good at this. I can’t trust people. It’s just faster if I do it myself. And those stories feel true because they’re built on real experience. But every time we decide not to delegate – when we have the resources and opportunity – we are holding our career progression back.
So let’s unpick this properly. There are three reasons delegation keeps failing, and they each need a different fix.
The first is that we brief for understanding and then disappear. We explain clearly, we check they’ve got it, they say yes, we walk away. The problem is that junior professionals in particular are very good at seeming to understand in the moment. They want to impress you. They don’t want to ask a question that makes them look like they weren’t listening. So build in a checkpoint that doesn’t rely on them flagging a problem. Don’t ask “do you have any questions?” Ask them to walk you through their first three steps before they leave the room. That’s not a test. That’s you making sure they don’t blow your budget and leave you with lots of rework.
The second reason is that we wait too long to review. We hand something over and then look at it again the day it’s due. By then, we have no back pocket time. We’re fixing something under pressure, which means we’re doing the work ourselves anyway, and we’re doing it stressed. Build in an early review, when the first section comes back or after the first few days. You’re not checking up on them, you’re doing quality control at a point when there’s still time to course-correct together.
The third reason, and this is the one we talk about least, is that we confuse being responsible for the outcome with being responsible for doing the work. One of the lawyers in my session put it well. She’d been asked to handle an urgent matter by a practice group leader, and her instinct was to do every single word of it herself because he’d asked her specifically. “He trusts me to do this.” But what the partner actually needed was the right advice, delivered correctly and on time. Whether she wrote the first draft at midnight or whether she briefed a good associate and reviewed it at lunchtime, the outcome would have been the same. Her responsibility was the outcome, not the doing.
Now, there are genuine exceptions. Some client relationships are so sensitive that only approved people can work on the matter. In those cases, you are doing the work, full stop. But then the question becomes: what else on your plate can you clear so you have the space to do it well?
We have to stop telling ourselves that doing it ourselves is safer. It feels safer in the short term. In the long term, it keeps us from progressing our career. And it keeps the people beneath us from developing into the team we need them to be.
Delegation isn’t a technique. It’s a practice you build over time, and it only works when you separate your identity from the doing and put it where it belongs: on the outcome, the team, and the relationships.
If you’re ready to make delegation something you do consistently and well, rather than something you attempt and then give up on, our Delegate Like A Pro course inside the Progress To Partner Academy is built exactly for this. It takes you through the mindset piece we’ve covered today, and then gives you the practical frameworks for briefing, checkpoints, and feedback so your delegation actually sticks.
I’ve popped a link to the Delegate Like A Pro course directly in the show notes for this episode. Also in the show notes, you’ll find links to my books, Poised for Partnership and How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life, so you can easily find them on Amazon. And as a thank you for listening, there’s a link for a 10% discount on annual membership for our Progress To Partner Academy using the code PODCAST10.
That’s all for this episode of the How to Make Partner podcast.
Your action for this week: the next time you delegate something, don’t ask “do you have any questions?” Ask them to walk you through their plan before they leave. Notice what comes up.
If you have enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or give us a comment on Substack. This helps us get the word out to others who may need this advice too. Remember to hit subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode. Thanks for listening!
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