Should you be doing that?

Elsbeth Johnson, a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, Mass., has a simple question for leaders: Are you the best and cheapest person to get a task done?

If the answer is “no,” that’s a sure sign you need to delegate better.

In her Harvard Business Review article “Why aren’t I better at delegating?”, Johnson says leaders “don’t always know how to distinguish between the work they should be doing and the work they should be handing off” and must overcome common challenges to being a better delegator.

1. Dopamine. Johnson says the pleasurable rush people get after completing a task or project is difficult to give up. Leaders don’t have as many discrete tasks to do as lower-level employees and often try to seek that dopamine hit in ways that can be considered micromanaging and counterproductive. Johnson suggests: “Instead of chasing quick dopamine hits, train your focus on longer-term goals.”

2. Don’t help your team too much. It’s easy to get sucked back into being hands-on with tasks when asked for help or guidance. Instead, resist the urge to jump into a project and reframe questions back to employees to help them arrive at a decision or path forward themselves. You can offer examples of how you handled similar problems and ask them to check in with you in a few days with an update.

3. Redefine work. Just because you are not on roofs installing materials or interfacing with clients doesn’t mean you aren’t doing “real” work. But shifting your mindset from being activity-based to being focused on strategy, networking and people management is crucial for optimal company performance.

Johnson acknowledges becoming an effective delegator is difficult but reminds leaders “if you stick with it, you’ll get so much more out of your team members—and yourself, as a developer of talent and as a big-picture, strategic thinker.”