How to give manager feedback

[Parfortheparsnip]

Got annual review soon and there's an opportunity to give my manager feedback. I work for a small charity and my manager is the director.
He is fairly new and I am still finding my feet working with him. He's quite often unexpectedly spiky and unpredictable. Things I might not consider urgent are often urgent for him, and he's seemingly relaxed about stuff that's pretty core to the charity - so it can be difficult to know what reaction staff will get from him.

Because we are a small organisation, everyone is busy all of the time and there's not much wiggle room for me to delegate tasks downwards. Not without risking the core service the charity provides.

However, the director's main way of working is to delegate tasks he identifies to me. I hope it doesn't sound precious of me but I genuinely don't see the director doing anything except annual or long term tasks - which realistically don't require his attention for 40 hours a week. I'm basically the squeezed middle person in the chain, often in meetings all day, barely have time for my essential tasks, always rushing etc.
Everything operational or shorter term that comes to the director gets delegated to me - and I'm struggling - I have to put down a task I'm working on to pick another one up and I really want to ask him if he could just... do some of these tasks himself.
For example, a quick edit to the website. A short email to a colleague.
does anyone have any advice on how to feed this back to him in my review without making my working relationship with him more difficult? I don't want to carry on like this or I will start dropping one of my many tasks and service users will suffer.

Make it about your role, rather than criticising his work style and workload. He is probably doing lots of things that you are unaware of.

Tell him you are struggling with the workload, especially when lots of small, urgent jobs are pushed your way. Ask him to help you with a more structured way of working and to understand that you should be prioritising

I could have written your post a few years ago, totally identify with the squeezed middle!
I would agree make it about your workload, but also don't be afraid to say you feel the pressure from above and below and feel like the squeezed middle.

I took along evidence of my increasing workload from my own job, plus also all the extra tasks I was being given and was very clear I was doing more and more in my own time. I asked for help in prioritising what were the important tasks in my role.
But actually being very frank and open about the manager transferring their pressure down into me helped and we had a better working relationship for the next couple of years until they moved on.

I really don't think you should be telling your manager that he needs to do these things himself. I agree with previous posters, you need to keep your point to being about your own workload, not providing feedback on his as you perceive it.

Thanks all - really helpful. I think that's a good point to ask him if he could help me prioritise tasks on my 'list' and maybe that will help. Then at least I will know what I can put down for a few days. Might also make him... reflect.

Sorry to sound a bit... bitter. But it's not brilliant when I don't have more than half an hour in my day outside of meetings and I see him having what appears to be a much more 'peaceful' time.

I suppose I don't literally mean 'why can't he do it himself?' But ... we are such a small charity of only 15 staff - providing a nationwide service, so we are all pretty used to mucking in, everyone gets their hands dirty basically. So to have the highest paid person delegating every task down the chain just feels a bit like a waste of funds!