The Right Altitude Field Guide to Delegation

You think you're too busy to delegate. You're too busy because you don't. Every leader knows they should delegate more. Then the day fills up with work they could hand off, decisions their team could make, and problems that only reach them because they trained everyone to bring them. The calendar says senior leader. The actual hours say something else. And the strategic work, the part the role was really for, keeps sliding to a week that never comes. Here's what most delegation advice misses: it isn't a time management problem. It's an identity problem. The work you can't let go of is usually the work that made you successful. It built your credibility and your reputation. Letting go of it feels like letting go of the proof that you belong in the room. So you review the deck one more time, sit in the meeting you don't need to attend, and rewrite the update on Friday night. This field guide is about letting go without losing control. It's built around 5 practices, each aimed at a specific way delegation breaks down: The Altitude Audit. Label every task on your calendar Below, At, or Above your level. Once you see the number, you can't unsee it. The Dentist Trap. Being the best at the work is how you got here. It's also your ceiling. Learn to answer questions with questions and close the routes people use to go around your team. The 70% Rule. If someone can do it at 70% of your level, hand it off and let it ship. Most of the time, nobody notices the difference except you. Learn to tell a quality issue from a preference issue, and know the few places where 70% is the wrong standard. Delegation vs. Abdication. Handing off the task without the context, the authority, and a check-in rhythm isn't delegation. It's abandonment. A 5-part brief, written in 10 minutes, fixes most of it. Building the Bench. If the operation stops when you leave, you haven't built a team. You've built a dependency. The leader who can't be replaced can't be promoted. Start with the 5-question diagnostic to find where you hold on too tight, then go straight to the practice that loosens it. Every practice includes coaching questions, a 48-hour experiment you can run this week, and a 30-day build that turns the change into a habit. You'll also get the tools that make a handoff stick: the 5-level delegation spectrum, from "do it and tell me" to "own it"; the shadow assignment that builds judgment, not just capability; and the 3 debrief questions that turn every meeting you skip into a development rep. Section Three shows you the 5 delegation patterns (the Rescuer, the Perfectionist, the Ghost, the Bottleneck, and the Nostalgist) and the seams where 2 practices quietly fail together. The stories are drawn from coaching conversations with leaders who were stuck in exactly this spot: the VP spending 12 hours a week in code reviews, the director rewriting every press release, the senior director turned down for VP twice because nobody could do what he did. This is for the leader who is good at the work and tired of being the only one who can do it. Outcomes, not steps. 70% and shipped. Part of The Right Altitude Field Guide series: short, practical guides by executive coach Don Eash, MCC, ACTC.