Delegation for GMs and head chefs: how to stop being the bottleneck

Here's a test. If your phone rang at 6pm on your day off, how many of the questions could only you answer? If the honest answer is "most of them", you're not indispensable. You're the bottleneck. And bottlenecks burn out.

Most GMs and head chefs got the job by being brilliant at doing things. Delegation asks you to get brilliant at something else: making other people brilliant at doing things. It feels slower at first. It is slower at first. Then it isn't.

Why it's hard (and why you have to anyway)

The usual excuses, all of which we've said ourselves:

• "It's quicker if I do it." True today. False across a year.
• "They'll get it wrong." Sometimes. So did you, once.
• "I don't have time to train them." You don't have time not to.
• "It's my name on it." It still is. Delegating a task doesn't hand over your accountability. It shares the work.

The cost of not delegating is sneaky. Your sous or AGM never grows, gets bored and leaves. You end up doing the ordering, the rota and the deep-clean schedule on top of running service. Something slips, and it's usually the thing that only gets noticed when it's gone wrong.

Hand over outcomes, not chores

"Can you do the dairy order?" is a chore. "You own dairy: we never run out, we're not binning more than a couple of litres a week, and the order's in by 11am Tuesday and Friday" is an outcome. The second one gives someone something to be good at.

When you hand something over, be clear about:

1. What good looks like. The result, not just the steps.
2. The limits. Budget, suppliers they can use, what they can change without asking.
3. When you'll check in. And when you'll stop checking in.
4. What to do if it goes wrong. Who to call and what not to panic about.

The delegation ladder

Not everything should be handed over in one go. Move people up a rung at a time:

Say out loud which rung you're on. A common delegation failure is someone thinking they were on rung 3 while you thought they were on rung 2.

The "who owns it" audit

A note on the safety-critical stuff. Some jobs, like allergen information, temperature records and food safety procedures, need extra care when you hand them over. You can delegate the doing, but make sure the person is properly trained, the method is written down, and you're checking the records. Food businesses need to be able to show inspectors that staff have the right training for their role, so keep a simple record of who has been trained on what.

Check in without hovering

The art is in the follow-up. Too little and things drift; too much and you've just added a step to your own workload.

• Agree the check-ins up front. "Let's look at the order together Tuesday and Friday for two weeks, then I'll leave you to it."
• Ask, don't tell. "How did the order go? Anything you'd change?" gets better answers than "You over-ordered cream."
• Fix the system, not the person. If something keeps going wrong, check the instructions before you check the human.
• Let small mistakes land. If it's not unsafe, illegal or very expensive, let them find it and fix it. That's how the learning sticks.

Give the credit away

When the thing you delegated goes well, say so, in front of people. "Jo's had dairy waste down for a month" in the team meeting does more for Jo than a bonus would. When it goes badly, the conversation happens privately, and you own your part of it.

The real goal

Delegation isn't about doing less. It's about doing the things only you can do, like hiring well, setting standards, looking after regulars and planning the next six months, while the team runs the day-to-day. The best compliment a GM or head chef can get is a smooth service on a night they weren't there.

Watch

13:30

A Day With the UK's First Female 3-Michelin Star Chef | Open to Close | Ep 4: Core by Clare Smyth

HexClad Cookware on YouTube (opens in a new tab) · 13:30

Why watch: a day inside Clare Smyth's Core. Watch who makes which calls, and how few of them come back to the top.