How much should I still know? When does visibility turn into micromanagement? How do I give someone room to grow without setting them up to fail?
For the "what happens after" part, a 90-year-old idea from developmental psychology helps: Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which originally was a way of understanding how children develop new capabilities.
He described 3 zones of learning:
Too easy: what someone already does alone. Comfortable, but no growth.
ZPD: what someone can't yet do alone but can do with the right support. This is where learning happens.
Too hard: out of reach even with help. This only produces frustration and quitting.
Most of us judge people by what they can do independently. Can they handle this? Have they done it before? Can I trust them to make the decision without me?
The ZPD asks a different question: what is within reach but not yet mastered? Maybe they need more context. A thought partner at the beginning. Access to relevant expertise. Permission to make a few decisions before they're completely confident. Or, perhaps they're ready for substantially more ownership than we've been giving them. This creates a different way of thinking about delegation.
Vygotsky called these emerging skills the “buds” or “flowers” of development rather than the “fruits”. Needing support today isn't a deficiency. It may be a capability becoming independent.
That changes how we think about delegation. It isn't a switch from "I do it" to "you do it." There are steps in between: You delegate the execution but keep the decision. You delegate the decision but keep the review. You delegate the outcome and agree on checkpoints.
Eventually, they know when to involve you and when not to.
Stepping in every time someone struggles solves today's problem and keeps the skill from becoming theirs. Disappearing isn't empowerment either. It can leave someone stranded past their edge.
Over more than 2 decades of working alongside teams, in both business and tech environments, I've watched this play out again and again. The teams that grew fastest had leaders who kept adjusting how much challenge, support, and visibility each person got, and who let the zone move as people grew.
So instead of only asking "What can this person handle?", try asking "What could they learn to handle if I changed how I show up?"
Good delegation isn't about shrinking your own workload. It's about growing someone else's capability.
What's one thing you're still holding onto that someone on your team is ready to own?
#LeadershipDevelopment #Coaching #TeamGrowth