Delegation: Some Lessons Don’t Age
Had a great conversation recently with one of my graduate students—a seasoned nurse leader—about delegation. It reminded me of an article I wrote 17 years ago:
Hudson T. Delegation: Building a Foundation for Our Future Nurse Leaders. MedSurg Nursing. 2008 Dec;17(6):396–9, 412. PMID: 19248404
Back then, nursing as a profession was wrestling with what to delegate and to whom—mostly along clinical lines. Tasks, scopes, competencies, and who could safely do what. But that was never the heart of my concern.
What I saw then, and what I still see now, was a different kind of struggle: leaders who didn’t know how to delegate. Leaders who equated control with competence. Leaders who felt responsible for everything and trusted almost nothing.
It wasn’t about skill—it was about mindset.
Delegation: The Real Test of Leadership
Delegation reveals who you are as a leader more than almost anything else. It exposes your relationship with trust, your tolerance for risk, and your comfort with vulnerability.
If you can’t let go, it’s rarely because your team isn’t capable—it’s because you’re not ready to trust them.
If you offload tasks without clear intent or follow-through, that’s not empowerment—it’s abandonment.
If you hover, correct, and rewrite every effort, that’s not quality control—it’s insecurity disguised as perfectionism.
The real art of delegation is finding the middle ground: empowering people with ownership while staying engaged enough to ensure success. That tension—between authority and accountability—is where leadership lives.
The 2025 Challenge
Fast-forward to today. The tools are newer, the technology faster, the workforce more diverse—but the human dynamics haven’t changed. Nurse leaders are still being stretched thin between staffing crises, compliance demands, and the emotional toll of leading through burnout. Delegation isn’t a luxury—it’s a survival skill.
The irony is, the more complex the environment becomes, the more leaders try to do it all themselves. That’s the trap. You can’t sustain it. Delegation is the only path to scalability and sanity. The question isn’t if you’ll delegate—it’s how well you’ll do it.
Evolving the Lesson
Good delegation today means more than assigning tasks. It means aligning roles with strengths, giving people space to make decisions, and creating feedback loops that build trust. It means making empowerment a deliberate act, not an afterthought.
When done right, delegation isn’t a loss of control—it’s a force multiplier. It grows capacity, strengthens teams, and frees leaders to think strategically rather than reactively.
And when done poorly, it fractures trust and reinforces a cycle of overwork, resentment, and mediocrity.
Leadership Lessons Don’t Expire
What strikes me most is how the core truths endure. Leadership lessons don’t age out; they just adapt to the times. Trust, accountability, and communication look different in a digital, fast-paced healthcare environment, but their importance hasn’t changed.
Delegation still requires courage—the courage to let go, to trust, and to grow others even when it would be faster to just do it yourself.
That’s why I say:
Leadership lessons don’t expire. They just show up in new uniforms.
About Mission Ready Healthcare
Mission Ready Healthcare equips healthcare leaders to lead with clarity, courage, and conviction—especially under pressure. Through leadership coaching, workshops, and speaking engagements, we help teams become more capable, resilient, and mission-ready.