Written by Susan Kuepfer

Ad-hoc requests are flooding in. Your team is already at 100%. You need to delegate, but to whom? And how do you say NO to the rest?

If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. And the fix doesn't start when the requests arrive: it starts now, during goal setting season. 

Get your goals right, and delegation becomes obvious. Get them wrong, and you'll spend the year firefighting.

Here are the three goal setting mistakes that set you up for delegation failure.

Mistake #1: Crafting Goals in a Vacuum

What it might look like: You retreat to your office and emerge with perfectly formatted SMART goals, ready to present.

Why it backfires: Your team has no ownership because they had no input. They can't see how their work connects to the bigger picture or to each other's work. Your stakeholders have no idea how your team supports their goals. When urgent requests come in, you have no basis to push back because there's no clear link to the organization's strategy.

How this kills delegation: When a new request arrives, you can't answer the critical questions: Does this support our key goals? Who owns the goal this connects to? Without these answers, everything feels urgent and you default to doing it yourself or delegating to your most trusted and probably overloaded team member. 

The fix: Make goal-setting a three-way conversation

1. With leadership: Understand the organization's strategy and your team's role in delivering it
2. With stakeholders: Learn their goals and how you support them
3. With your team: Gather their insights on how to deliver better than last year

How you do this depends on your context, but here's the key: involve your team in planning the process itself. Ask them, "How should we create exceptional goals together this year?"

Then agree on:

• Who owns which goals
• How you'll review and adapt them during the year
• How you'll evaluate incoming requests against these priorities
• Who else needs input and alignment with our goals?  How do we do that? 

➡️ The delegation payoff:

First, when stakeholders understand your goals, that urgent request becomes a real conversation: "Here's how this supports our Q2 priority" or "This would pull us away from the goal we agreed on, can it wait until Q3?"

Secondly, when the team is clear on who owns which goals, who you should delegate to becomes a clear path. 

Mistake #2: Mixing Directional Goals with Everything Else

The downside of gathering input from the team and other stakeholders? You could end up with a massive, messy list.

What it might look like:

• Hold bi-weekly stakeholder meetings
• Increase market share by 15%
• Choose and implement new CRM system
• Make a list of CRM vendors

Why it backfires: When everything is a "goal," nothing is a priority.

How this kills delegation: You can't delegate effectively when you can't tell the difference between a destination and a tactic. The confusion leads to either over-delegation (the team is  overwhelmed) or under-delegation (you're overwhelmed).

The fix: Separate your directional goals from everything else.

Directional goals are your year-end destination. They describe the end state, not how you'll get there. These are why your team exists. Keep it to 3-5 directional goals at most.

Example: Increase sales by 15% to $X million

Everything else serves and supports these directional goals:

• Process goals: The systems and habits that make it possible
• Project goals: New initiatives to create or fix something
• Learning goals: What individuals and the team need/want to develop
• Tactics: The weekly/monthly action steps to achieve the above goals

➡️ The delegation payoff:

A new request comes in? Ask: "Does this support a directional goal and a corresponding support goal?”  Sometimes, we still have to agree to do these ad-hoc or extraneous tasks, but more often than not, having the conversation about how this task aligns to the strategic goals and the price to be paid for doing the task (delaying or not doing something else) helps all involved. 

Mistake #3: Forgetting a Team "Thriving" Goal

What it might look like: Every goal focuses on external deliverables. Nothing addresses how the team functions or team well-being.

Why it backfires: You hit every target and end up with a burned-out, disengaged team that can't sustain performance. And when team health tanks, delegation becomes impossible. 

How this kills delegation: Burned-out team members can't take on new challenges. They're barely keeping up with existing work. Every delegation attempt feels like you're adding to their burden rather than developing their capability.

The fix: Include at least one directional goal focused on team thriving

• "Improve team engagement from 65% to 80%"
• "100% of team members have a clear growth plan with quarterly development opportunities"
• "Reduce cross-functional friction through clear decision rights"
• "End the year feeling more resilient and effective as a team"
• "Exemplify our team values in daily work"

These aren't "soft" goals. They're the foundation that makes everything else possible.

➡️ The delegation payoff:

Team thriving goals reveal:

• Who's ready for stretch assignments
• Where you need to build capability before delegating
• When NOT to delegate (because the person or team needs recovery time)
• Natural delegation opportunities around team culture, onboarding, and development

Healthy teams can handle delegation. Struggling teams can't.

The Delegation Bonus

Here's what most leaders miss: when you get goal-setting right, delegation stops being a puzzle. You gain clarity on what matters, who owns what, and where people are growing.

The question shifts from "Who could do this?" to "Is this important, and if so, who would benefit most from this challenge?"

Your Turn: A Quick Diagnostic

Check your current goals against these six tests:

• ✓ Collaboration: Did your team and stakeholders help shape these?
• ✓ Clarity: Are directional goals separated from other goals and clearly owned?
• ✓ Learning: Have you named what needs to be developed?
• ✓ Focus: Is your goal list prioritized and short?
• ✓ Rhythm: Have you scheduled regular check-ins?
• ✓ Thriving: Is team health explicitly included?

All six checked? Congratulations, you're in rare company.

Not quite there? Pick one to improve this week.

The Bottom Line

The time you spend setting up great goals pays off every single day of the year.

Goals create the clarity that makes delegation obvious. They answer the questions before they're even asked: What matters? Who owns it? Does this new request fit?

Without that clarity, you're stuck firefighting. With it, you're building a team that can handle anything.

What's one goal-setting mistake you're ready to work on?

Want to dive deeper? Attend our free Delegation webinar in January 2026 to discover HOW to delegate. Check out our Leadership Assessments to identify your team's strengths and development areas, or reach out about Team Coaching to design a goal-setting process that actually works for your context.