The Delivery Paradox Every New Leader Faces
Written by Jonathan Rozenblit, Guest Writer and Senior Level Executive Contributor
Whether you're leading a team, a project, or work that brings people together from across the organization, your new leadership role is likely to bring you to a moment you haven't met before. In that moment, you'll have a decision to make about where your focus goes, and what you choose goes well beyond the result in front of you.
How getting things done evolves
The way you've been able to take pieces of work, see what is needed, and carry the work through to results has likely brought you into your new leadership role. Now the scope of what you're accountable for grows, from the results of your own work to the results you deliver with others. What the people alongside you bring to the work, and how they bring it, shapes those results.
Many of the moments in this new role will feel familiar. What's new is that other people are involved, and their involvement changes how those moments unfold. More than fifteen years ago, I stepped into a role where I was accountable for results I could only deliver with other people. No one walked me through these moments, and I learned how to handle them the hard way.
Consider a problem that needs solving. Up to now, you've worked out the answer and provided it. Now the answer can be something you shape with the people doing the work, and what you arrive at together can be better than what any of you would have reached alone.
Then there are the questions that come to you. Answering right away has served you well. Now the person best placed to answer may be someone else doing the work, and you can point the question toward them.
Timelines change too. You set your own because you knew your own work. With others doing the work, the timeline becomes something you work out together until it's one everyone can commit to.
Decisions shift as well. You made the call on your own work. Now you might gather the information the people closest to the work need, ask them to recommend a way forward, and then make the decision. You might even ask them to make the decision instead of you.
The same goes for knowing what to do. When the work was yours, you only had to tell yourself. Now you share what needs doing and why it matters, so the people doing it can work out the best way to do it.
Coordination looks different. Before, the pieces of your work were yours to move, and you could own them end to end. Now delivering results depends on everyone working together, so much of your role becomes making sure each person has what they need to move their part of the work forward. In each of these moments, a familiar thought is likely to show up.
The thought underneath
The familiar thought often sounds something like this: I just need to get the work done. Sometimes it arrives as a question: I need to get the work done, so what do I need in order to do that?
It's a practical thought, and it has served you well. In your own work, getting the work done was the job, and you were the one doing it. Asking what you needed was how you cleared the way.
Look closely at the two parts of that thought. The first is "get the work done." It points your focus at the work itself, at the result in front of you. The second is "I." It places you at the centre, as the one who gets it done. Together, they settle where your focus goes before you've had a chance to choose.
In your new leadership role, "get the work done" and "I" carry more weight. With others doing the work alongside you, "I need to get the work done" can turn every problem, question, timeline, decision and piece of coordination back toward you. The question "What do I need?" keeps the focus on you, even while the people alongside you are doing much of the work.
Followed far enough, the thought takes on a bigger shape: I'm the leader, so I need to know everything, decide everything, coordinate everything so that I can direct everyone accordingly. It starts with getting the work done. Where it leads is carrying it all yourself.
I know this thought very well. Back in that first role, my focus was very much on the work. I was "that guy" who solved the problem and then told others what to do and how to do it. I answered questions on the team's behalf, committed to timelines on the team's behalf and made decisions on the team's behalf, all without consulting them. Then I told them the outcomes and expected them to follow suit.
At the time, nothing about working that way seemed out of place. Isn't that how a leader is supposed to work? Reality showed me otherwise. One day, my manager sat me down and told me that no one wanted to work with me anymore because of how I was showing up. That was when it occurred to me that taking a closer look at how the people around me were experiencing me was necessary if I wanted to keep delivering results with them.
Where your focus goes as a leader
Think back to those familiar moments. In each one, two pulls meet. The familiar thought pulls your focus toward the result in front of you: getting the work done and working out what you need in order to do it. Your wider scope pulls your focus toward the people delivering that result with you.
Both pulls can be there at the same time, and both point toward delivering the result. Together, they create a tension. One asks what it takes for you to get the work done. The other asks what the people doing the work need you to contribute, or to help them with, to get the work done.
You'll likely feel that tension in those moments. The thought "I just need to get the work done" feels familiar, so it tends to arrive first, especially with a deadline close or a question waiting. From there, the thought leads quickly to a decision, and the decision leads to action, often before there's been much time to think it through.
Either focus delivers results. Focusing on just the result can get you today's result. Focusing on the people delivering it gets you today's result and the results after it. I call this the Delivery Paradox.
What becomes available
Here is the Delivery Paradox in one sentence: the way to more results is to focus less on the result and more on the people delivering it. The result is likely what your focus reaches for first. The people delivering it are the ones who make that result possible, and every result after it. When your focus goes to them, today's result still gets delivered, and more becomes available with it.
In your new leadership role, your part is to make sure the people doing the work have what they need to be, bring and do their best. Getting things done evolves from what you do to what you make possible for the people alongside you.
The people alongside you take on more of the knowing, the deciding and the coordinating. You get to deliver results with them without carrying everything yourself.
Focusing on the people also makes new benefits possible, and they carry into every delivery from here on. The quality of the work can improve because the people doing it can bring more of what they know and get better at it each time. What they're capable of can increase as a result. The increase is what lets them deliver results the way they do. The people who delivered results this time will know you had a part in what they found they were capable of. People remember who was alongside them when they did their best work, and as a result, they'll likely want to be there for you the next time.
When I started keeping the Delivery Paradox in mind and shifting my focus from the results to the people who delivered them, I noticed that the work came back faster, more complete, and sometimes better than I'd asked for. It no longer felt like I had to carry everything myself. People started offering their thoughts and suggestions. They took on tasks without being assigned, wherever they saw they could contribute. They raised concerns early, before those concerns became problems. They put more effort into the work. They brought me into their brainstorming and invited my thoughts on their process while it was still taking shape.
The change in how people worked with me built up over time, one moment after another. How people feel about working with you develops over time, moving them toward wanting to work with you or away from it. That process runs on its own unless you're choosing where your focus goes each time the choice between the result and the people delivering it shows up. I wish someone had told me about the Delivery Paradox back then. It would have saved me a lot of effort rebuilding trust and my reputation.
While you're still new to the role, there's an opportunity to shift your focus to the people delivering the results. How you work with each person the first time you deliver results together shapes their impressions of you, how they approach the work with you, and the habits you settle into together. With the people at the centre of how you work from the start, every delivery brings more of what you'd want: more ideas offered, more work taken on without being asked, more concerns raised early. Starting this way also leaves less to undo later.
The next move is yours
Picture the next problem that comes your way, the next question that needs an answer, or the next decision waiting for you. The familiar thought, "I just need to get the work done," will likely show up first. The choice between the result and the people delivering it will show up with it.
Your next move gets made in that moment. Where will your focus go?
Where to go from here
Bring a moment you're meeting right now to an upcoming Delivery Paradox Workshop. We'll work through that moment together: what the choice between the result and the people delivering it looks like for you, and what your next move could be.
I also regularly share small, deliberate moves that leaders can make one at a time as they focus on the people who deliver results with them. If you'd like them delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe to One Move to Practice on Substack.
Read more from Jonathan Rozenblit
Jonathan Rozenblit, Leadership Development Coach
Jonathan Rozenblit guides corporate professionals through their journey of discovering and developing their unique practice of leadership so that they can create conditions for themselves and others to be, bring, and do their best at work. Jonathan holds Professional Certified Coach credentials from the International Coaching Federation, is the co-creator of the Leadership Practitioner program, a program that equips individuals with practical tools to inspire trust and cultivate collaborative cultures where people can bring their best selves to work every day, co-host of the Leadership Practitioner podcast, and co-author of 'The Essential Leadership Practitioner: A Framework for Building a Meaningful Practice of Leadership'.
