“With those two purposes for delegation, time management and people development, where is the leverage, for the manager?” I asked.

It’s a lizard eye question, destined to create silence in the room. The answer to that question requires a series of more specific questions.

“If your purpose for delegation is time management and you delegate a task that saves you one hour, how much time have you saved?”

“One hour,” someone shouted out. “As long as you didn’t have to explain it. But if it took ten minutes to explain, you only saved 50 minutes.”

“You must have been a math major,” I replied. “So, the relative leverage for delegation, if your purpose is time management is 1/1, as long as you don’t have to explain much.” I stopped to survey the room. Heads were nodding in agreement.

“And if your purpose for delegation is people development and you delegate a task that saves you one hour every week, in a years’ time, how much time did you save?”

“Fifty two hours,” shouted the math major.

“And so, if it took an entire hour to explain this one task, that now saves you 52 hours over one year, what is your leverage?”

The math major was still on his game. “52/1,” he announced. “And if this delegated task saved you one hour a day, your leverage for the year would be 260/1.”

“Now we are talking leverage. If your purpose for delegation is time management, your leverage is likely closer to 1/1, but if your purpose for delegation is people development, your leverage is huge. When I work with CEOs, I am always looking for leverage, where they work for an hour and gain 500 or 1000 hours of productivity. The only way to gain that kind of leverage is through developing team members to assume responsibility for tasks and roles that you think only you can do.”