Both mistakes are common, and both come from the same root cause: not having a clear, honest test for when a problem is actually yours to solve versus something that needs to go up.
A useful test is this: escalate when you're genuinely blocked and can't move forward without someone else's authority or resources, when the risk of staying quiet is bigger than the discomfort of speaking up, or when you've already tried the reasonable options and none of them worked. Don't escalate simply because a conversation is hard, or because you'd rather someone else deliver unwelcome news, or because you haven't actually tried to solve it yourself yet.
The line gets blurry in the moment, so it helps to ask yourself one direct question before you escalate anything: am I raising this because I've hit a real limit, or because I want someone else to handle something uncomfortable for me? Those two feel similar in the moment and are completely different in what they say about you afterward.
"I've tried resolving this directly with the other team twice over the past week and we're still blocked on the same dependency. I don't have the authority to reprioritize their roadmap, and it's now putting our deadline at risk. I need help getting this unblocked."
A teammate missed one deadline for the first time. That's a direct conversation you have yourself, not something that needs to go to your boss or theirs, escalating this immediately reads as either inexperience or an unwillingness to have a slightly uncomfortable one-on-one conversation.
When you do escalate, how you do it matters almost as much as whether you should. Escalating well means bringing what you've already tried, being specific about what you actually need, a decision, a resource, an introduction, and doing it calmly rather than as an emergency, even when it feels urgent to you. Escalating badly means skipping straight to someone senior with a vague version of the problem and no sense of what you're actually asking them for.
One pattern worth watching for in yourself: if you notice you're escalating the same category of problem repeatedly, the same teammate, the same recurring blocker, that's usually a sign the real issue is bigger than any single escalation can fix, and it might be time to name the pattern directly instead of raising each instance as if it's new.