A forensic lab manager sent the FLA mentors a question that comes up in most labs within the first year of someone stepping into management: when do you delegate a task to your team, and when is it better to handle it yourself?
Some leaders may approach it as a time-management problem. Julie Sikorsky approaches it as a question about whose development the task serves.
The Opportunity Goes to Them
Before she became a manager, Sikorsky volunteered for everything. Every assignment that came along, she took it on.
“Before I became a manager, I wanted every opportunity that came my way. I would volunteer for everything. Everything, everything.”
— Julie Sikorsky
The move into management did not change her orientation toward the work. It changed who the work was for.
Her rule for delegation starts with a question some never think to ask: not whether she has time for the task, but whether someone on her team would grow from doing it. If the answer is yes, it goes to them. As an analyst. As a professional. As a person learning what they are capable of. The task leaves her hands not because she cannot do it, but because she is no longer the one who should.
That shift, from taking every opportunity to giving every opportunity, is what she describes as the center of becoming a manager.
Grudging Terribleness
The other half of the rule is the part that sounds less appealing.
The tasks no one volunteers for, the administrative load, the noise that clogs up time without advancing the lab’s mission: those stay with the manager. Not because she is the most efficient person for them. Because keeping that friction away from the staff is part of the job.
“If it’s something that’s grudging terribleness, I’m going to take that on because I don’t want to detract from the mission.”
— Julie Sikorsky
She calls this keeping the noise away from the staff, so they can do what they need to do and grow in the process. And she names the mindset underneath it plainly: nothing is below the manager. The willingness to absorb what is unglamorous is what protects the team’s capacity for what matters.
The two rules are the same. Every task that could build someone belongs to them. Everything that would distract them belongs to the manager. It is the servant mindset the series has returned to across several episodes, and Sikorsky applies it in both directions.
About the Forensic Leadership Alliance
The FLA was created to give forensic lab leaders access to peer mentorship and practical tools that aren’t easy to find elsewhere. John Collins, Dr. Pamela Marshall, Julie Sikorsky, and Dr. Ray Wickenheiser have been working together since 2020 on leadership development for forensic scientists, with a focus on coaching, mentorship, and team empowerment.
Questions submitted to the FLA mentors are addressed directly, without softening the complexity of what forensic lab leadership actually involves. Topics span managing generational dynamics, navigating change, delegation, public engagement, and succession planning. These are the kinds of challenges that rarely appear in formal training but come up constantly in labs.
Join the Alliance
FLA members receive access to exclusive written and video content, one-on-one coaching sessions at ISHI, and a free leadership resource guide. Membership is free and open to forensic science professionals at any stage of their leadership path.
The FLA also hosts a full-day workshop at ISHI 37 on October 26, 2026 in Providence, Rhode Island. This year’s topic is succession planning as a product of intentional leadership culture: what it looks like when future leaders step forward because they want to, not because they were pressured.
The capacity for critical thinking is already on your team. The conditions for it may not be.