It won’t grow if you don’t delegate

The first time I read It won’t grow if you don’t delegate, I was at Vänsterpartiet Malmö's studier för förändring course at Kvarnby folkhögskola. It had been translated into Swedish and printed onto paper, and it was all very exciting.

The article itself's a must-read for any new organiser. The leadership stuff it covers is similar to what you learn when you go into management, but re-contextualised for the labour movement. It felt great to have stumbled on this key bit of knowledge and I was dead excited to have become a little bit more dangerous.

Thing is, in hindsight it's pretty clear that the message didn't sink in completely. Like I think I'd understood it superficially, at an intellectual level, but emotionally I hadn't bought in fully. It's not as if this was anywhere near the campaign's biggest problem or setback, but it's probably the one thing I had the most personal control over that could have gotten us even further sooner if I'd been more on top of it.

Looking back, there were some warning signs that I missed. I feel like writing them down. I'd love if it could help someone else's campaign gain ground faster by enabling them to internalise this lesson earlier.

Warning Signs Of My Failure To Delegate

Warning Sign #1: Exhaustion

Sounds obvious, doesn't it? Like if you're working your fingers to the bone and feel like the intensity might actually be killing you, the delegation light should just automatically switch on in your head, right?

Didn't happen for me. You think you're immune to all that "rise & grind" glorification of overwork until suddenly you realise you're arsehole deep in it and hadn't even noticed it happening.

I've come to understand that behaviours that feel intuitively toxic in a profit-driven context can seem like righteous self-sacrifice in a union campaign. The fact that I wasn't making any money in the process biased me away from noticing any similarities between the choices I was making and the workaholic loner tech industry stereotype I'd spent my career trying to escape.

Warning Sign #2: Passive Aggressive Delegation

There were a few occasions when I just totally fucking imploded. I remember one time in particular when I was in the middle of the redundancy process and a total nervous wreck about it, and had some kind of outburst to the rest of the group.

I was overwhelmed and failing real fuckin hard at any kind of emotional regulation. Instead of taking a little inventory of the stuff to do and figuring out what to offload, I just expressed my general desperation and panic to the group. An ugly moment.

This was a lovely bunch of folks, and I got some great support out of that. But instead of getting that support by doing actual pro-active delegation like a proper leader, it had happened the opposite way around, by me catching fire and the others rushing to rescue things from the flames.

Warning Sign #3: Denial

At some point the penny did drop. I wasn't delegating enough and it was hurting the campaign, not to mention hurting me. It's interesting now – with some distance – to reflect on how even after that realisation I still managed to avoid learning the lesson completely.

There's just so fucking many ways to bullshit yourself. "This one would be too much to ask anyone else to do", "that person's too busy for this", "I already delegated that one other thing so now I'm lazy if I delegate this too", "they didn't sign up for this level of commitment", "this task's scary, and the risky stuff is my job".

The first two warning signs feel more like once-and-done lessons learned, but I reckon this last one is more of an ongoing process. Might be more like something I always have to look out for, rather than a to-do list item that can be crossed off forever at some point. But these denial thoughts have a certain recognisable smell to them, and once that recognition's locked in real good I think it's harder for them to have as much influence.

Delegation's Hard

I have a theory that it's a very particular type of intense person who tends to find themself leading a union campaign. I've certainly met a good few of them by now. Maybe a little less interested in money than a typical entrepreneur, but similar in terms of risk tolerance and work ethic.

That work ethic part can be a real Achilles' heel, I reckon. If you're used to getting a lot of your sense of who you are out of the pride you take in your productivity, it's easy to mistake delegation for laziness.

In a business leadership context, you'd always have someone "above" you to coach you through this stuff. In a union campaign it's not so simple. I feel like if I'd been able to read something along these lines in addition to It won’t grow if you don’t delegate back in November 2022, I might have been more primed to learn this lesson sooner. Hopefully someone else stumbles on it in advance of their own campaign and benefits from it.