You’re Not Delegating. You’re Abandoning.
The handoff that breaks your team (and how to actually let go)
Part 2 of a series. If you haven’t read “Hire Slow, Fire Slow, Regret Both,” start there. This one builds on it.
Last week, I wrote about keeping the wrong person too long.
This week’s uncomfortable follow-up: sometimes the person isn’t wrong. You just never gave them a real chance to succeed.
I’ve done this. I’ve been on the receiving end of this. And I’ve watched it destroy teams that should have thrived.
Let me tell you about the project I almost killed by trying to “empower” someone.
The Time I Called Abandonment “Trust”
A few years ago, I handed a major campaign to one of my best people. Smart. Capable. Had earned more responsibility.
I gave her the brief. Told her I trusted her. Told her to run with it.
And then I disappeared.
Not literally. I was around. But I was “giving her space.” I was “not micromanaging.” I was “letting her own it.”
Three weeks later, the campaign launched. It flopped. Not catastrophically—just... mediocre. Off-target. Missing the insight that would have made it work.
And I had the audacity to be disappointed.
Here’s what I didn’t give her: the context on why this client was different. The stakeholder dynamics that would shape the creative. The history of what had been tried before. The unspoken expectations I’d built up in my head over years of working with this account.
I gave her a task. I called it trust. It was abandonment dressed up as empowerment.
Abandonment vs. Delegation
They look almost identical from the outside. The difference is everything.
Abandonment sounds like:
“Handle this.” (No context about why it matters or what success looks like.)
“Figure it out.” (When they don’t have the information or authority to actually figure it out.)
“I trust you.” (Said while walking away, never to be seen again.)
“Why isn’t this done?” (Asked three weeks later with zero check-ins in between.)
Real delegation sounds like:
“Here’s what success looks like. Let me paint you the picture.”
“Here’s why this matters and how it connects to the bigger thing we’re building.”
“Here’s who can help you. Here’s what you have access to.”
“You can make decisions about X. Come to me for Y.”
“Let’s connect on Tuesday to see where things are. Not to check on you—to catch problems while they’re still small.”
The first list feels efficient. The second list feels like more work.
And it is—upfront.
But the first list guarantees you’ll do the work twice: once when you “delegate” it, and again when you have to fix what came back broken. Or worse, when you lose someone good because they couldn’t succeed in the dark.
Why We Abandon Instead of Delegate
I’ve been guilty of all of these.
We’re too busy to do it right. Ironic, because we’ll spend more time cleaning up bad delegation than we would have spent setting it up properly. But the urgent always beats the important, so we throw it over the wall and hope.
We assume they know what we know. The curse of expertise. What’s obvious to you isn’t obvious to them. You’ve forgotten what it’s like to not know the context. You’ve had eighteen conversations and seven years of experience with this client. They’ve had the brief you wrote in eleven minutes between meetings.
We confuse delegation with testing. “I want to see if they can handle it.” That’s fine—but say that explicitly. Tell them it’s a stretch assignment. Tell them you’re evaluating. Otherwise, you’re setting them up to fail without telling them they’re being graded.
We want to feel like we empower. “I don’t micromanage.” Cool. There’s a vast territory between micromanagement and abandonment. You might want to explore it.
We’re avoiding the real work. Because real delegation—the kind that actually transfers capability—requires you to articulate things you’ve never had to articulate. It forces you to examine your own assumptions. That’s hard. It’s easier to just hand off the task and call it growth.
The Handoff Framework
After that campaign flopped, I built this. I use it for any significant delegation now.
It takes ten minutes. It saves weeks.
1. WHAT — What specifically needs to happen? What does “done” look like? Be concrete. “Improve the campaign” is not an outcome. “Launch creative by Friday that increases CTR by 15%” is.
2. WHY — Why does this matter? How does it connect to the larger goal? People execute better when they understand purpose. They make better decisions when they know what you’re actually trying to achieve. This is where I failed with that campaign—I gave the what without the why.
3. WHO — Who are the stakeholders? Who can they go to for information? Who has veto power? Who needs to approve what? Nothing kills momentum like discovering there’s a gatekeeper you didn’t know about.
4. BOUNDS — What decisions can they make alone? What requires your input? What’s the budget? What’s off-limits? Clear authority prevents the paralysis of “I don’t know if I’m allowed to do this.”
5. WHEN — What’s the timeline? When do you want check-ins? Not surveillance—waypoints. “Let’s connect Wednesday so I can remove obstacles” is different than “Report to me Wednesday so I can judge your progress.”
6. STUCK — How should they reach you if they hit a wall? What counts as an emergency? What can wait? Give them permission to ask for help. Most people won’t unless you explicitly open that door.
The Uncomfortable Part
If you read last week’s piece on firing slow, you might be wondering: how do I know if someone’s failing because they’re wrong for the role, or because I abandoned them?
Honest answer: Sometimes you don’t. Not right away.
But here’s the gut check:
Did you set them up with everything they needed to succeed?
Did you check in before things went sideways?
Did you give them the context, the authority, and the support?
Or did you hand them a task, call it trust, and vanish?
If someone fails after real delegation, that’s data. Maybe they’re not right for this role. Maybe they need more time to grow. Maybe—and this is the hard one—they’re the person from last week’s article.
But if someone fails after abandonment? That’s on you. And it’s not fair to hold them accountable for a setup they were never given.
The Reframe
Delegation isn’t giving someone a task. It’s giving them what they need to succeed at the task.
The ten minutes you spend on the handoff are the difference between building capability and breeding resentment.
Between developing your team and burning them out.
Between leadership and abandonment, with a good story attached.
That campaign I mentioned? I went back to her. Told her what I should have told her from the start. Walked her through everything I’d been carrying in my head that I never thought to share.
The next campaign was one of the best we ever did. Same person. Different setup.
The person wasn’t the problem. My “trust” was.
Think about the last thing you delegated. Did you hand off a task—or everything someone needed to succeed at it? If you’re honest with yourself, you already know.
If this landed, share it with another leader who might be calling abandonment “trust.” Sometimes the kindest thing is naming what’s actually happening.
— Captain