How to Choose What to Delegate and to Whom
Decide which work should leave your desk and who should carry it before the pressure hits. Sort your workload into keep and hand off, match each piece to a person for a named reason, protect only the calls that need your role, and plan the next cycle's handoffs ahead of time.
Developing
Start here. Build the foundation.- 1
At the start of a planning cycle, log every task and recurring decision that lands on you and mark each one keep or hand off, where a keep genuinely needs your role rather than your speed. Read the hand-off rows out loud; a short list means you are marking too much as a keep, so rerun it against what only your role can carry.
- 2
For each hand-off, name a person and the reason using the fit that applies: give it to someone who can already do it well to free your time, someone who could do it with support to build a capability the team needs, or someone with room this cycle to balance load. Record the reason, because 'free this week' lands work on whoever is nearest.
Proficient
Build consistency and rhythm.- 3
Test each keep against one question: could anyone else be given the authority to make this call? Keep only the ones that cannot move, such as a pay or promotion decision, a legal or compliance sign-off, a performance conversation, or a call that commits the whole team, and hand off everything you are holding from habit.
- 4
Scan your hand-off rows, and if they are all cleanup and admin, add at least one visible, valued piece someone would grow from owning. Give the meaningful work to a person ready to be seen with it rather than by default to your most senior report, so delegation develops people instead of only clearing your plate.
Mastered
Operate at the highest level.- 5
Once a cycle, review the plan as a whole, who owns what now and what is coming that could be delegated, and assign the next handoffs in that review before the pressure hits. You are done when a colleague could read the plan and see who owns each piece and why.
Common Pitfalls
Avoid the common failure modes.- The same person absorbs every handoff. You are matching on capacity alone, so add a skill or stretch reason to each row before assigning.
- You only ever delegate the drudge work, so your best people stop volunteering. Put one valued piece into every cycle's plan.
- Delegation happens only when you are underwater. No standing plan exists, so put the cycle review on the calendar and assign ahead.