What Delegation Actually Requires: A Case Study in Leadership Coaching ROI

Not everything that counts can be counted.

Joshua McArthur

JSM Leadership Consulting, LLC

April, 2026

Leadership consulting and executive coaching naturally tend to focus on things that can be difficult to measure, but are nonetheless meaningful. Whether an organization is navigating a difficult moment or simply wants to become more competitive and resilient, the work starts in the same place — uncovering what’s actually holding things back. Meaningful levers are often buried like treasure — uncover the right ones, and the rewards are real. Some of these rewards are increased employee engagement, greater fulfillment, more effective communication, better ability to have difficult conversations well, improved interpersonal relationships, and attaining a clear vision. These are often the things that make an organization particularly healthy, vibrant, and competitive. By investing in the things that count but cannot be counted, an organization gains a unique competitive edge that is very difficult for competition to replicate.

Case Study

My approach to consulting and leadership coaching keeps clear and quantifiable business objectives in mind, while also understanding that objectives are often best achieved by taking into account things that count but cannot be counted. The following case study demonstrates what that looks like in practice.

One of my clients, a newly promoted director in his organization, wanted to grow into his new role and provide higher-level value for his organization. His manager was in support of utilizing coaching to support his growth and development. What my client needed help with in order to grow and provide more value in his new role was to delegate more tasks to his team so that he would have more time to work on revenue generating opportunities and other creative work that served various teams and the overall company. His team also desired to grow their careers and saw the opportunity and benefit of taking on some of the work my client normally would be doing.

My client’s primary goal was to intentionally delegate significantly more, because this was what had been holding him back. He estimated that if he was successful in achieving his delegation goal, it would likely result in 2-3 additional hours per day of time for him to focus on other aspects of the business and doing more director-level work, which his manager wanted of him. In order for him to delegate more he needed to: spend more time training his team so they could do the work at the same level or better than he had been doing it, build more trust with his team, improve communication all around, learn to say “no” to others who would try to give him work that was not appropriate for him to do, and enforce and manage expectations of various vendors who were straying from their original agreements.

After consulting and coaching over a period of thirteen meetings, he reported gaining 3-4 additional hours per day of time back, which exceeded what he originally estimated (2-3 hours per day). This equates to the value of an additional skilled part-time employee (15-20 hours per week) in efficiency because my client, his team, peers, and vendors were operating at a higher, more focused, and engaged level. While gaining the value of an additional skilled part-time employee equivalent is certainly valuable in quantifiable dollars, the value from our work goes much deeper than that.

If my client and I had not worked together, in order to attempt to achieve a similar outcome, the organization could have hired a skilled part-time employee. This would have hopefully given my client more time (their desired business objective) but he wouldn’t have experienced personal and professional growth. It would not have forced him to recognize the opportunity to train and develop his current team members (increasing their capacity while further developing their careers and expertise), it wouldn’t have forced him to work on increasing trust among his team, he wouldn’t have had to work on improving communication, he would still be saying “yes” to work that other departments sent him that he didn’t have any business working on, and his vendors would have continued on without accountability. Eventually these issues would have compounded, adversely affecting my client and his organization. In this instance, hiring another person was not going to solve the problem or maximize on the opportunity for my client and his organization. Meaningful growth and transformation were what was needed.

Once my client gained 3-4 hours of time per day, our work shifted to how he could maintain his growth and how he could use that additional time to increase revenue, further develop his team, and add value to the organization as he saw fit. He might need to eventually hire someone else, and as they grow, hopefully that is the case; but he is now better prepared for the complexity of adding a new team member because he has done the work enabling himself and his team to operate at a higher level. It will be exciting to see what else he and his team are capable of and how they impact their organization.

Conclusion

Salaries are typically the biggest expenses for an organization and my client and his team are now certainly providing more value than what they cost their organization — however you choose to measure it. That’s what genuine ROI looks like. If you are interested in getting the highest ROI possible in meaningful ways, that’s what I do. My goal is to achieve the particular business objectives my clients desire, while overdelivering in ways that matter.

Joshua McArthur

JSM Leadership Consulting, LLC

JSMLeadership.com

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