7 Days Until Our AI Course for Leaders! Become More Essential with Artificial Intelligence. Our research-backed course helps experienced professionals
Learn when to delegate to AI and when to keep tasks human. Our research-backed framework helps professionals make conscious choices about AI collaboration while preserving the work that gives their career meaning and value.
10 Days Until our AI Course for Leaders! Become More Essential with Artificial Intelligence. Our research-backed course helps experienced professionals
Learn when to delegate to AI and when to keep tasks human. Our research-backed framework helps professionals make conscious choices about AI collaboration while preserving the work that gives their career meaning and value.
This post is part of our series on expertise and AI. If you're concerned about preserving and enhancing the value of your expertise as AI advances, consider joining our short course—starting August 6th—to learn the psychological strategies needed to make your expertise even more valuable with AI.
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Every time we hand a task over to AI, we're making a choice about what matters, what requires human judgment, and where meaning lives in our work. We're redrawing the boundary between ourselves and the systems we depend on.
Most advice about AI delegation focuses on capability: what can the machine do versus what should humans keep? This misses the deeper question. The issue is whether we should let AI handle something, and under what conditions.
When deciding whether to delegate a task to AI, focus on two dimensions:
What's at stake if this goes wrong? Think about consequences beyond technical accuracy. Would a mistake damage trust, break something strategic, or create ripple effects? Or is this low-risk work that's easily corrected?
How much human context does this task require? Some work is clean and modular: summarize this report, format this data, draft a basic email. Other work is messy and relational: writing a recommendation letter, navigating competing stakeholder priorities, deciding what to leave unsaid in a sensitive situation.
Across hundreds of stories in The Chronicle, we saw a pattern: people were adjusting internally. The choice to delegate (or not) often reflected deeper dynamics we came to recognize as part of three psychological traits:
When people were conscious of these dynamics, they adapted with clarity. When they weren’t, delegation became drift. To help people make those decisions more intentionally, we developed a tool: the Delegation Matrix—a simple grid that maps stakes against context.
Low Stakes, Low Context: Delegate Freely
These tasks are safe to hand over completely. Think formatting documents, summarizing internal notes, or drafting routine communications. Let the machine handle it.
Low Stakes, High Context: Delegate with Awareness
AI can help, but stay present. These tasks carry subtle organizational norms, relationship dynamics, or cultural context that AI misses. Use it for early research framing, internal team updates, or brainstorming while maintaining oversight of tone and nuance.
High Stakes, Low Context: Use with Oversight
AI can accelerate your work, but you stay in control. The output matters even if the task is straightforward. You'll need to edit, verify, and take full responsibility. Think client presentations, policy drafts, or investor updates.
High Stakes, High Context: Keep Human at the Center
This is your work. The stakes are high and the meaning is deeply contextual. AI can provide research or preliminary thinking, but you author, decide, and interpret. Strategic decisions, conflict resolution, public statements—this is where your judgment, experience, and voice are irreplaceable.
The Delegation Matrix builds conscious choice into AI collaboration. It helps you notice where your boundaries might be too loose or too rigid, so you can adapt with intention.
Take writing a recommendation letter for a direct report. This is high-stakes (it affects someone's career prospects) and high-context (requires understanding their specific contributions, growth areas, and how to position them for success). Even if AI could generate something that sounds professional, this kind of advocacy requires your personal knowledge and judgment.
Compare that to generating talking points for a routine team meeting. Low stakes, low context—AI handles the basic structure while you focus on relationships and decisions that need your attention.
Tasks that are low-context and low-stakes are perfect for automation. This frees you to focus on work where your experience, judgment, and voice truly matter.
As AI becomes more capable, your challenge is knowing when you must do the work and when you can let go. The real risk is unconsciously delegating away work that gives your professional life meaning, simply because the AI output looks polished enough to ship.
Your delegation decisions communicate something deeper than efficiency to the people around you. When you personally craft a difficult message, take time with a thoughtful response, or bring your own perspective to a complex situation, you signal care, integrity, and presence.
People can often sense when something feels generated versus genuinely considered. When you delegate the wrong things, you risk appearing disconnected from what matters—not just to the work, but to the relationships and values at stake. The person receiving that AI-drafted recommendation letter can usually tell whether you put thought into their specific situation or handed their career moment over to a machine.
Your willingness to engage personally with high-stakes, high-context work becomes a measure of your character. It shows whether you take responsibility for the human dimensions of your role, whether you're present for the moments that require your spirit and judgment, not just your productivity.
Take a recent task where you used AI and plot it on the matrix. Ask yourself:
This builds better intuition for when to lean in and when to step back. Delegation in this new terrain is less about efficiency and more about integrity. The first step is understanding what you're really handing over and what it means to you and others.
