Life often involves making hard decisions, whether it’s at work or in our personal life.  Being able to take those decisions head on rather than passing the buck is therefore a key skill to have.

A recent study from researchers at Northeastern University explored the kind of people, and indeed the kind of situations that promote taking the initiative.

When we pass the buck

The study found that we’re much more likely to pass the buck when the decision affects other people than when it affects ourselves.  What’s more, this is particularly so when the decision might have negative consequences.  Indeed, the study found that we’re up to three times as likely to pass the buck on a difficult decision when it impacts someone else than when it impacts ourselves.

Central to this apparent reluctance to take control was an attempt to avoid taking the blame should things go wrong.  It appeared that people were much more reluctant to take the blame for a bad outcome than they were keen to take the credit for a good outcome.

This was emphasized when a second experiment ensured that some participants were anonymized when making their decision.  If their ‘boss’ in the experiment knew that it was them that had made the decision for them, they were much more likely to delegate than if the boss was none the wiser.  Suffice to say, regardless of anonymity or not, people were much more likely to delegate the decision about their boss than if they had to make the same decision about themselves.

“Delegation isn’t just about avoiding blame,” the authors say. “The mere prospect of feeling responsible for others’ poor outcomes is enough to increase delegation.”

Who do we delegate to?

So if that sheds some light on when we delegate, the next question the study explored is just who we tend to delegate to.  Again, responsibility plays a central role, with people generally only delegating to people who would shoulder the burden of responsibility should things go wrong.

In other words, if we despite delegating to someone, we would still take the blame if things didn’t turn out well, then we don’t tend to bother delegating.  For instance, we don’t delegate decisions to people below us in the corporate hierarchy because the buck still rests with us.

The researchers believe that the study sheds an important light onto when we delegate, and indeed why managers often fail to delegate effectively, thus causing decision making bottlenecks.  If they take the blame for poor decisions that they’ve delegated, then the findings suggest this may be why nothing is passed down the line.