You will be able to decide which hands-on work you keep and which moves to your team.
Expect to keep some hands-on work as a new team lead. What you need to settle is which tasks stay with you and how many hours of your week they use, and you settle it by putting two questions to each task in turn.
In a team of four or five there is usually no room for someone who only manages, and no one is waiting for you to stop contributing the day you're promoted. The hands-on tasks you hold on to also keep you in touch with what the work is like today: the tools that drag, the clients who are hard to deal with, the points where work passed between people goes wrong. Giving all of it up in one move is a mistake.
Take Wei Ling (an invented example; every figure about her is invented too). She runs customer operations for a logistics company in Tampines. Three months ago she was promoted, and up to March she was one of the team's five members. She still looks after the two largest client accounts, puts together the monthly service report, and takes the difficult escalations since she knows the background better than anyone. The calendar audit she did in Lesson 1.1, "Your output is now your team's output", came out at 31 hours of doing and 9 of managing in an ordinary week.
Wei Ling's first reaction was to stop all hands-on work in one go. She would have lost her contact with the day-to-day work and dropped everything on the team at once, so she went through her tasks with the two questions. Your starting point is the same: write down every task you do, small recurring ones included, even those that never appear in your calendar.
Put the first question to each task: does it need your authority? This is the authority test. Certain work belongs to the manager because of the position. Examples are approving a refund over the team's limit, signing off a new process, picking between two priorities your own manager gave you, and telling a client their deadline is moving. Tasks like these stay on your side. Passing them to someone who lacks the authority sets that person up to fail. Wei Ling keeps approving leave and rostering for this reason, along with any escalation that needs a call on refunds or contract terms.
When a task doesn't need your authority, ask the second question, the context test: does it depend on context that only you hold right now? The words "right now" are there because context can be passed on. If you're the only one with the background today, but a colleague could pick it up within a few weeks with your help, the task belongs on the hand-over side along with a plan for teaching it. Context that can be taught in a few weeks does not justify keeping the task.
Wei Ling sat in on the negotiation of one client's contract and knows the reason behind an unusual clause in it, so part of that client's work genuinely needs her. The monthly service report is different. It requires no special authority, and everything needed to build it is in a spreadsheet anyone can open. She had held on to it because she's quick at it and slightly proud of it.
A task that fails both tests is one a team member could learn with support. Most of the work that got you promoted falls into this group.
Before you fix the list, run two checks. The first is whether you're keeping something because you like doing it. New managers tend to hold on to the work they find most enjoyable, such as the creative part, the client with the high profile, or the problem nobody else has cracked, and they reason that no harm is done since the work gets finished. When a manager keeps all the interesting work and passes down only the routine, the team reads it as a lack of trust in them on anything important, and they are usually reading it correctly. It also blocks people who are ready to develop, because the stretch work they need is on your desk.
On Wei Ling's team, Arjun has the most experience, with six years in the industry. He has never run a top-tier client by himself, because the previous manager kept those accounts and then Wei Ling did. One large account would be the step up he has been waiting for. If she holds on to both accounts she is protecting a habit, and she will probably lose him within a year. Giving him one account also frees several hours of her week.
The second check concerns manager-only work: one-on-ones, feedback, planning, and getting someone unstuck. The plainest sign of too much hands-on work is that this work slips because your own tasks overran. You cancel a one-on-one so you can finish a report, or you intend to tell someone their client email needed improving and the moment never comes. Once you see this, more work has to move off your plate, regardless of what your calendar audit shows. The right balance between doing and managing varies with team size and company, and it is wrong whenever managing is what gets squeezed out first.
Wei Ling found two of these signs. She had pushed back Hui Min's one-on-one three weeks running, and since being promoted she had given nobody feedback on their work, other than fixing it herself late at night.
Two rules apply when you choose who takes something: don't pass everything over at once, and don't give work to whoever happens to be least busy. Each task should go to someone who will learn from it.
Hui Min is newer, but she's organised and has asked for more variety. Once Wei Ling had applied the two tests and the two checks, her list looked like this:
Two big accounts: she keeps one for now, and Arjun takes the other with a month of overlap. Monthly service report: goes to Hui Min. Escalations: she keeps those needing a decision on refunds or contract terms, and Arjun handles first contact on the others. Approving leave and rostering: both stay with her, since they need her authority.
She moved work in stages and picked each person for what they would learn from the task, with no regard to who had the most free time.
For now, the aim is only to see your work clearly and place each task on one side of the line. Planning the handovers in detail is covered in module 3.
Now take your own task list, including the small recurring things that never make it onto a calendar, and sort it the same way.
Write your current tasks in two columns, keep and hand over. Next to each task you hand over, write the name of the person who could take it.
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