rote work as a chance to use an aspiring leader’s imagination

Your team will inevitably have stuff that has to get done that is not very much fun to do. Maybe it’s fulfilling some sort of compliance requirement. Maybe it’s delivering an unpopular message to a whole pile of people. Part of the un-fun in these projects is a rote dimension - the thing that is needed may not be complex, it might just be tedious or repetitive. It wears down will power without engaging a ton of brain power. 

These kinds of tasks can be backdoor leadership opportunities for ambitious folks on your team - the exact kind of folks you might shy away from giving stuff like this because it seems “beneath them” or something. 

Consider assigning them the scut work with a meta-assignment on top: they need to figure out how to make this unpleasant project faster, easier, or better. Maybe they discover a way to eliminate it altogether. In the first instance, you might need them to just do this unpleasant thing the old-fashioned way, so it gets done. But they get the opportunity to think, pitch, and reform something instead of just checking a box. 

And you, as their leader/manager, can congratulate them on getting this opportunity instead of apologizing to them for bearing this burden (maybe with a wink and a nudge depending on how earnest/cheesy your culture is).

-Eric