Delegation. If you’ve been in leadership for very long, you’ve undoubtedly had a class or two on the subject, read a couple of books about it, and encountered effective delegators as well as ineffective ones.

I have as well. Your experience might be different, but most of the classes and books I read poorly served the subject of delegating because they focused on the act of delegating, the process of making assignments. We are therefore taught to find people we can give jobs to and then give them away.

But it doesn’t work quite that simply. Delegation is more than making assignments. We tend to look at the attributes of leadership in management terms: organizing, directing, overseeing, and the like. But effective leaders are also skilled in the more intangible attributes—including gratitude. Gratefulness has much to do with the perspective one holds of others and the way one handles them.

We handle things of value with greater care and attention than we do things of little value. We don’t throw jewels on the floor. We don’t handle breakable things roughly.

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