Freedom to Act

 
"The nobleman lays claim to himself, the average person to others."
Confucius
 
If managers are delegating responsibilities using too many words, such as: "call him", "write this", "check that", etc., instead of talking about outcomes, then probably they are micromanaging. As opposed to managing.  
 
Giving people freedom, instead of micromanaging them, leads to at least three things:
 
1) Opportunity for the people to find the best way for them to achieve the results. The same results will be achieved differently by different people, following common rules, procedures, and principles.
 
2) Opportunity for the people to fall and get up on their own. To build muscles to get up and deal with mistakes. Not muscles to automatically escalate to their managers. Too many escalations turn the people into walking mailboxes that only carry escalating problems from one part of the company to another.
 
3) Clearing the calendar of some operational tasks and focusing on more strategic goals;
 
Managers find themselves in situations where they give freedom, then at the first difficulty, they rush to intervene, correct and help, i.e. take away the freedom of their people to cope on their own and to find a solution.
 
Things that stop managers from giving people more freedom have nothing to do with other people. They have a lot to do with their insecurities. Lack of trust in others. And unresolved fears. Even if they think that they cannot give complete freedom because others are not completely ready, they do not give it because they are not ready. They are not ready to trust completely. They are not ready to part with their painful perfectionism.
 
No one has an automatic sensor for the right dose of perfectionism. However, managers who find a way to self-regulate and trust people more inevitably take a step outside their comfort zone. In this area, they should leave themselves for a while in the discomfort of not knowing exactly how someone else will cope. To afford to suffer small losses. Because:
 
Small losses turn into big wins.
But to allow this to happen, managers must be comfortable with their discomfort of not having complete control over the result when delegating. The discomfort comes from the fact that:
 
They do not have full control, but they have full responsibility.
 
This discomfort causes this confusing pendulum movement when delegating: from complete freedom to zero freedom.
 
Managers give freedom when they plan and have comfort. They take it away when they sweat from the discomfort and when the likelihood of impending failure becomes greater than the belief, that others will cope on their own.
 
And now back to the beginning of the topic. If you are still using too many verbs like "call," "find," "send," etc., when delegating, you're probably trying to delegate from a place you don't fully trust your people. And the process. You can easily notice this if you get the impression that you are bombarding your people with too detailed information about exactly what to do, step by step.
 
At some point, all the energy and attention of the people on the team will be focused on following your instructions step by step, instead of looking at the result and find their best steps. These steps will not be infinitely different from yours, but they will be theirs.
 
Overcoming this problem of speaking with too many verbs can be done by focusing on outlining the ultimate results of the delegation. Instead of giving detailed instructions on how to get from Sofia to Varna, turn by turn, tell your people to just get to Varna in the fastest way.
 
A typical mistake, however, that occurs when managers delegate with a description of the final results, rather than too much detail, is to reach the point of complete abdication and loss of contact with their people after delegating responsibilities.
 
It comes down to a situation where team members say, "Some days I'd like to tell my manager to jump right out the window, but I'm afraid that he will delegate this to me."