as a manager, when should I delegate work versus doing it myself?

A reader writes:

I’m a relatively new manager, and I’m still finding my footing when it comes to shifting from being an individual contributor to overseeing a team. One thing I struggle with is knowing when it’s appropriate to delegate tasks to my team versus doing them myself.

I manage a communications team of four at a university. When my manager assigns me work — things like drafting communications on a specific topic or reviewing copy from another department — I’m never sure whether she expects me to do it personally or for me to assign it to someone on my team. I feel like she is expecting me to delegate them: these tasks fall squarely within my team’s remit, and I do handle the more strategic or planning-focused work that she asks for. But because my manager phrases things as “can you…,” I end up second‑guessing myself.

Even when I do decide to delegate, I feel awkward about it. My team balances daily work with long-term projects, so it’s not always easy for me to gauge their weekly workload. I often find myself over‑apologizing or softening the request, and sometimes I just do the work myself because it feels easier than navigating the conversation.

Complicating things further: one team member is on long-term sick leave, one works part‑time on mainly long-term projects, one is very junior, and so the fourth ends up taking on most of the ad‑hoc work that comes in.

As a general rule, work should flow downward to the lowest-level person who can do it well enough, so that more senior (and more expensive) people’s time is freed up for work that only they can do.

But then you need to balance that against the rest of the person’s workload and how it should all be prioritized.

Beyond that, you can also balance it against things like “I know Jane really loves this topic” or “Jane really hates writing on X but Barnaby has said he doesn’t mind it” or “Barnaby has been asking to develop his skills in this area and I have enough time this week that I could coach him through it.”

There may be some things that have to stay with you, like when something has complicated or sensitive messaging, or when you’re the only one with the skills to do it, or when everyone else’s plates are fuller than yours (and if you’re not sure what someone’s workload looks like that week, ask straightforwardly — it’s fine to say, “If you took this on this week, what would have to move back, if anything?”). But ideally over time, as you develop the skills of the people on your team, the goal is that you’re guiding the work more and doing it less yourself. (Of course, if a chunk of your time is supposed to be allocated to independent-contributor-type work, that changes that calculation.)

Also, it is a favor to people on your team to just be matter-of-fact and not apologetic when assigning work. Think about how you feel when your boss delegates work to you: it’s not weird because it’s normal for both your roles, right? And it would feel awkward and probably a bit tiring if she always seemed apologetic about it and like you had to reassure her that it was okay to assign you work, so be sure you don’t do that to your team.

Also, these could help:

how to delegate when your team is already overloaded

should managers ask or tell when assigning work?

the “delegating” tag

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