For the team leader who can't let go of reports... Advice from 36 years as a Samsung man [A Working Professional's Weekend Bookshelf]

#1. There was a leader who corrected employees' reports with a red pen every night. In a hotel room in Oslo, Norway, he realized that he was the bottleneck in the organization. The person trying to manage every detail more carefully was, in fact, holding up the organization's workflow.#2. At a job interview, a candidate turns the question back on the interviewer: “Can you help me succeed?” As the company was choosing candidates, the applicant was checking whether the leader would help them grow.These are scenes from the new book 36 Years as a Samsung Man: People Were Harder Than the Work (Human & Books) by former Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Vice President Cho Sang-ho, who spent 36 years at the company. Having served as head of Europe and Southeast Asia, he asks how leaders can develop the abilities of the people they work with before asking how much work they can get done. His experience prompts readers to consider both how much responsibility to delegate and the standards by which to evaluate people.■ Delegating authority to help team members growWhen a team member's work isn't up to expectations, it may be quicker to fix it yourself. Even if the immediate quality improves, it's hard to say the team's capabilities are growing if the leader has to make corrections every time. The anecdote about a leader who couldn't let go of a report illustrates an organizational problem that can't be explained by diligence alone.
Rather than pushing for short-term results, the author places greater emphasis on building systems that can deliver results consistently and developing employees' abilities. He explains that it is a leader's job to share authority and resources so that people who know the front lines can make decisions. Delegating work to colleagues gives the leader time to think, which can be used to prepare for future business initiatives and the organization's future.
The candidate's question in the interview connects to this point. A manager expects results, while an employee asks what they can learn in the organization and how far they can grow. Delegating work well means not only demanding results but also creating the conditions for people to achieve them.
Of course, simply handing over tasks without decision-making authority—or shifting the blame to an individual when problems arise—is hard to call delegation. Trust that doesn't define what to delegate and how much support to provide can become a vague burden for employees.
■ Fair evaluations that consider performance and principlesOnce work has been delegated, the question remains of what standards to use in evaluating the results. The book recounts the dismissal of a high-performing employee and the author's experience protecting an employee who was branded a poor fit for upholding principles. These were choices he faced while evaluating people and upholding the organization's principles.
The chapter title “People remember exceptions longer than standards” points to the impact such judgments leave on an organization. If exceptions are made only for employees with strong performance, team members may begin to question whom the rules apply to. If someone is penalized for following the rules, it will be difficult for them to make the same choice next time. A leader's personnel decisions thus affect not only the employee's job status but also how other team members work.
How standards are applied varies according to the scope of a manager's personnel authority. Even a team leader who cannot decide an employee's job status can set standards when assigning work and reporting performance.
It is worth considering whose contributions are recognized, whether the same standards are applied to the same problems, and whether team members' decisions based on principles are explained to senior management and backed up. This is also where readers can reflect on how the executive's experiences in the book relate to their own work.

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