“Directors should direct.”
It was one of those comments that sounds incredibly obvious when you hear it, but it ended up starting one of the most interesting conversations I heard at our Community Breakfast in Liverpool.
We had brought together around 30 leaders from across the Neemar housing communities and, rather than filling the morning with presentations or speakers, we’d put questions on the tables and asked people to talk. I was moving between the different conversations when one group started discussing something that I hear surprisingly often in my day job: how difficult it can be for senior leaders to genuinely let go. Not because they don’t want to develop their teams. And not because they deliberately want to control everything.
Often it’s much more ordinary than that.
You’ve done something for years. You know how it works. You know you could probably do it faster yourself. You know exactly what “good” looks like. Then you become a Director and, although your job has changed, some of the things you’ve always done have a habit of following you.
That’s where the comment came from.
Directors should direct.
It got me thinking about something we talk about regularly in executive recruitment: where the next generation of housing Executives actually gets the experience required to become one. When organisations recruit at Executive level, they’re understandably looking for evidence. Has this person operated strategically? Have they worked with a Board? Can they lead beyond their own specialism? Have they handled significant organisational decisions? Can they influence externally? Are they comfortable being accountable rather than simply responsible? But somebody has to give them the opportunity to do those things for the first time. And that’s where the conversation in Liverpool became much more interesting than a discussion about delegation.
People around the table talked about giving the layer beneath the Executive team genuine exposure to Board papers, major programmes, committees, external relationships and organisational decisions.
The important word there is genuine.
There’s a difference between inviting somebody to observe a meeting because it will be “good development” and actually giving them ownership of something that matters. The latter involves risk. They might approach it differently. They might make a decision you wouldn’t have made. They might take longer. They might occasionally get something wrong. And perhaps that’s why letting go becomes difficult at senior level.
Delegation isn’t really about workload. It’s about trust.
There was another side to the conversation that I hadn’t really considered before. If an Executive continues operating too far down into their previous responsibilities, it doesn’t only limit the development of the people beneath them. It potentially limits their own capacity to lead at the level the organisation now needs from them. Every hour spent holding onto something somebody else could own is an hour that can’t be spent thinking about the organisation, its people, its customers and what comes next.
So perhaps “Directors should direct” works in both directions.
Senior leaders need the space to operate at the right level, and the people coming behind them need space to step into the gap they leave.
For someone who spends a lot of time talking to organisations about succession, Executive appointments and future leadership capability, that left me with a question I’ve been thinking about since Liverpool:
Are we asking whether people are ready for Executive leadership without asking whether we’ve given them enough opportunities to become ready?
