Sarah Rice | Executive Coach | Grow Business Coaching | mail me |
Most South African business leaders did not start their businesses to spend their days managing customer escalations. They also did not expect to second-guess managers or complete work they delegated six months earlier. Yet this is exactly where many of them end up.
Research by Bateleur Brand Planning, conducted in 2023, found that only 53% of South African employees are genuinely engaged at work. A further 20% are actively disengaged. Meanwhile, Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report found that 75% of employees across sub-Saharan Africa are either watching for or actively seeking a new job. This is the highest proportion of any region globally. South Africa forms part of that region.
These figures are closely connected. When leaders retain decisions that belong lower in the organisation, employees disengage. As a result, they often leave before leadership recognises the problem.
Driving managerial accountability
When I discuss this issue with clients, they usually point to a lack of ownership or competence among teams and middle managers. However, the real answer sits one or two levels deeper. Leaders, especially founders, often find it extremely difficult to let go.
“But how can I?” is a common response. “If I do nothing, nothing will get done, or it will be done badly.”
For many founders, this possibility feels existential. As a result, the leader becomes the bottleneck. They see themselves as the one person standing between the status quo and business failure. However, they also stand between the status quo and the very real possibility of scale.
The question I ask clients is simple: Which risk can you live with? Is it the risk that things go wrong if you let go? Or is it the risk that things never go right because you did not? Most leaders already know the answer when they consider that question honestly.
The work of letting go is a daily practice
The discomfort leaders avoid often comes from the daily work of choosing differently. Letting go is not a once-off decision. Instead, it requires a daily recommitment to building a new execution structure. This structure remains largely untested.
So, how do you start? Slowly. When an organisation revolves around a highly involved leader, stepping back suddenly can destabilise the system. Therefore, leaders need an intentional, measured, and collaborative approach.
Leadership development often feels like an art. It is intuitive, relational, and difficult to describe. However, it is also a science. It is analytical, objective, and focused on measurable outcomes. Once you identify what is missing, you know where to focus.
In most cases, organisations lack one or more of the four elements:
- Context
- Clarity
- Consequence
- Courage
A key enabler throughout this shift is empowering managers to lead, because delegation only works when authority and confidence move together.
Context – do your managers know what game they are actually playing?
Every organisation operates within two layers of context simultaneously. The first is internal. It relates to what happens inside the business. The second is external. It includes competitors, changing client profiles, rising costs, talent pressures and the economic headwinds affecting businesses today.
Most employees do not think about these factors regularly. Instead, they focus on their own responsibilities. They concentrate on support tickets, tax returns or software glitches. For the most part, that focus is appropriate. However, plans often go wrong when managers lack context.
Consider this example. Two urgent client support tickets arrive at the same time. One is straightforward, while the other is complex. If a manager does not know that the difficult ticket belongs to a client with 100 users who may cancel their contract, they may choose the easier task. In doing so, they could worsen an already fragile situation.
Context helps people make better decisions because it allows them to prioritise what matters most. The more context managers possess, the more context they can share with their teams. As a result, organisations create a distributed decision-making network they can trust. Employees gain the information they need to make good choices. They also learn when escalation is necessary. Consequently, leaders no longer need to know or decide everything.
Clarity – are your managers translating strategy or merely relaying it?
Leaders can usually identify a clarity problem because they receive complaints about “communication issues”.
Managers act as the Google Translate of business. They convert broad strategy and vision into practical plans for their teams. When managers achieve genuine clarity, they spread that clarity throughout the organisation. Therefore, leaders must invest significant time in clarifying the how, why, when and what behind their strategy. When they do, the organisation operates from a shared map.
This process is not easy. Effective managers challenge assumptions. They raise questions, offer opinions and provide information leaders may not know or want to hear. Achieving genuine clarity requires openness and honesty. Leaders must share both opportunities and problems.
For leaders who keep their cards close to their chest, this can feel uncomfortable. Letting go requires letting people in. This is where empowering managers to lead becomes operational, not theoretical.
Consequence – do your people understand what their work is actually worth?
People need to understand the consequences of completing or failing to complete work within agreed timeframes. This matters for two important reasons.
First, consequences give work meaning. For example, a developer may move a button on an application. That adjustment may reduce the time required to process a customer order. Faster processing may reduce the likelihood of customer churn. If reducing churn by 5% represents the company’s primary annual objective, the task suddenly connects to something much larger.
That connection matters. It creates ownership and care in ways that a simple task list cannot. Managers, therefore, need a deep understanding of organisational consequences. They can then communicate those consequences to their teams.
Second, consequences provide managers with authority. They can hold employees accountable and celebrate success. Managers can explain the real impact of mistakes and achievements. They can show how actions affect both individuals and the business.
Managers who understand consequences bring employees closer to the point where their work intersects with customer reality. That is where genuine engagement exists. This reinforces empowering managers to lead as a lived organisational practice rather than a slogan.
This issue carries particular importance in South Africa. Remchannel’s 2023 Salary and Wage Movements Survey analysed data from 64 organisations. The survey found that nearly two-thirds of senior managers who resigned had worked for those organisations for five years or more. People who understand their impact and recognise the value of their work are far less likely to join that group.
Courage – have you actually permitted your managers to lead?
Sometimes managers do not need more training or development. Instead, they need permission. Peter Drucker defined strategy as choosing what not to do. That process requires courage.
Business leaders possess significant agency within their organisations. A single poor decision rarely removes them from their position. Consequently, organisations often reward courage, while failure does not prove personally fatal.
Leaders can act because they have authority, budgets and titles. However, managers do not automatically enjoy the same freedom. Therefore, managers need explicit support. Leaders cannot merely imply it or assume it exists.
The first step is simple. Leaders must state clearly that managers have permission to lead. They must also commit to supporting them when they do. This directly supports empowering managers to lead in practical terms.
Managers need leaders to share their authority and organisational influence. This support helps managers develop the confidence to decide and act. Great managers take risks daily. They hold difficult conversations. They negotiate with suppliers and clients. They also make decisions about priorities.
Unlocking organisational performance
Without clear support from leadership, the possibility of reputational damage or career consequences becomes very real. As a result, managers hesitate. Decision paralysis follows. Managers view choices as too risky. Therefore, they escalate everything. Eventually, every issue lands back on the leader’s desk.
Leaders must lend their authority to managers. Acting becomes easier when managers know leadership stands behind them. This is the practical expression of empowering managers to lead. Give them your courage until they develop their own.
The leader who steps back grows further
The truth is simple. Leaders grow when they invest in managers. Research published in the Southern African Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management identifies weak managerial experience and skills as major contributors to SME failure. Failure rates range between 60% and 80% during the first two years of trading.
The businesses that scale are not those where founders know everything. Instead, they are the businesses where founders develop people who do. When organisations establish the four foundations, the leader’s role changes. Leaders become thinking partners, vision setters, context providers and orchestrators.
At the same time, the organisation gains what it needs to grow. It develops a capable, motivated and aligned management team. These managers understand where the organisation is going and why. The leader who steps back does not disappear. Instead, they finally get to do the job they originally signed up for.
