A workplace does not run under one specific leadership style. It has to resort to different leadership styles through the different levels of hierarchy. Delegating leadership style tries to incorporate a sense of autonomy on an individual level.

Once incorporated, delegating leadership style can make the followers see the organization’s bigger picture. Then they are asked to deliver their performance based on the expectation they had agreed upon.

Go through this article if you want to know about the delegated leadership style. Here, I have provided this situational leadership style’s definition, advantages, and disadvantages.

What Is Delegating Leadership Style?

This leadership style is another low-task and relationship behavior approach to situational leadership styles. It requires the leader to empower individuals within the organizations to have certain levels of autonomy in their work.

While doing so, they provide the individual with a wider picture of the organization and make them realize their role in that big picture. Leaders can also take the approach of providing/ delegating tasks to their followers and offer them free reign over the project. While doing so, the leaders maintain their expectations from the project.

What Is The Objective Of Delegating Leadership Style?

Under this leadership style, the followers are provided with a certain level of autonomy and freedom to get the work done. The employees are allowed to make their choices, but they are also accountable for those choices.

This leadership style can also be compared and seen in the light of the laissez-faire leadership style. It has a hands-off approach where the leader provides the follower with autonomy and resources, and they remain responsible for making decisions and creating results.

The objective of this leadership style is to make the followers share the organization’s vision, build autonomy and leadership skills, and create a low-pressure work environment.

Characteristics Of Delegating Leadership Style

Below are some of the characteristics of the delegating leadership style –

1. Delegating Control

The first and most important characteristic of the delegating leadership style is the delegation of control among the followers. Followers get the work delegated among them but also earn a certain level of autonomy and freedom to make decisions. As an example, a marketing director can delegate the campaign among the project and campaign managers.

2. Sharing Vision

By delegating tasks and leadership, leaders can create a sense of autonomy among their followers. This helps them see the bigger picture related to the organization. They start to share the organization’s vision, strategy, goals, and deliverables.

This creates a sense of ownership among the followers, and they are more attuned to the organization’s vision than before. The leaders provide the followers with a shared vision which they make their own and are pumped to work on it.

3. Self-Governance

Followers under this leadership style can become self-governing individuals who can work autonomously. Followers are encouraged to make executive decisions regarding tasks and projects without the interference of senior management. However, leaders need to trust their followers completely to assign this level of autonomy.

4. Monitoring Activities

Leaders don’t need to resort to micromanagement to monitor the activities within the organization. Leaders can abolish the need for fundamentally wrong micromanagement by delegating responsibilities and leadership. Once the responsibilities are delegated, leaders don’t need to monitor the followers’ activities; they can rely on the followers to work on their own accord and return the deliverables.

Delegation of authority helps higher authorities to stay alert about the different developments within the organization through reports submitted by followers.

When To Follow Delegating leadership Style?

Delegating leadership style is also effective under certain circumstances. Here are some of those circumstances under which a leader can change their leadership qualities –

• The work and responsibilities can be delegated to an individual is consistently delivering high-standard tasks.
• When employees can work autonomously, they are ready to work under a delegating leader.
• When team members share bad and good news regarding work, they can be trusted to delegate tasks, responsibilities, and authority.

How To Perform Delegating Leadership Style?

An example of a delegating leadership style is that a manager might allow or assign the responsibility of handling and completing a challenging task to a trustworthy tenured employee. In return, they will finish the task in time autonomously.

However, the manager cannot assign such a task to a new recruit who they cannot completely trust yet. A huge part of the delegating leadership style is based on trust. Leaders need to be able to trust the employee before they can delegate responsibilities and authority.

Advantages Of Delegating Leadership Style

Here are some advantages of this leadership style –

• Once the followers have autonomy and ownership over their work, they are bound to spend more time and work with an increasing level of productivity rate.
• This type of leadership style allows a level of flexibility in leadership. The delegation of duties and leadership can benefit certain situations and environments.
• This leadership style encourages autonomy and makes the followers act as autonomous entities.
• Helps creates new leaders out of followers.

Disadvantages Of Delegating Leadership Style

Here are some disadvantages of delegating leadership style –

• Frequent transfer of executive responsibilities can create confusion among other members of the team, especially in large organizations.
• Delegating leadership focuses on a short-term basis. Long term projects are likely not to benefit from delegating style of leadership.
• The delegation of authority and responsibility is not possible without an experienced team. Leaders need tenured employees they can trust for delegating tasks.

Bottom Line

Since delegating leadership style works best for short-term projects, it is also a part of the situational leadership style. It only works for short-term projects, and the leaders need tenured and trustworthy employees to entrust the authority. Organizations can incorporate this leadership style after considering its pros and cons.

I hope that this article was helpful in providing you with all the necessary information on delegating leadership frameworks. However, if you are doubtful about anything regarding the same topic, you can ask us through the comment section. We will reach out to you as soon as possible.

Read More:

1. Selling Leadership Style
2. Participating Leadership Style
3. What is Servant Leadership Style? Defination, Example Pros And, Cons