Compulsive Delegating as Responsibility-Avoidance Wrong Attractor: The Offloading Architecture, Direct-Engagement Foreclosure Basin, and the Return to Calibrated Shared Ownership

Compulsive delegating – the systematic offloading of tasks, decisions, and responsibilities to others as a primary means of managing the discomfort of direct engagement – constitutes a well-defined wrong attractor within the displacement framework. This paper formalizes compulsive delegating as a dynamical system state using the ground-state displacement metric D() and accumulated displacement = D()\,dt.

We identify the offloading architecture: a recursive loop in which task-triggered anxiety drives delegation, which produces relief, which reinforces the delegation reflex, which erodes the competence and confidence required for direct engagement, which amplifies future task anxiety. We characterize the direct-engagement foreclosure basin – the region of state space from which unaided return to calibrated ownership becomes dynamically improbable without targeted intervention.

Nine formal propositions establish the key structural claims: displacement monotonicity under sustained delegation, basin deepening through competence erosion, the paradox of apparent productivity alongside genuine accountability absence, and the conditions for exit. We distinguish compulsive delegating from healthy distributed ownership by examining the internal drive structure: whether delegation arises from strategic fit or from avoidance of felt discomfort.

The paper closes with a discussion of consequences – learned helplessness, leadership avoidance, accountability gaps, and skill atrophy – and with the conditions required for return to calibrated shared ownership.