Before delegating any task, ask yourself: “Am I the best and cheapest person to get this done?”. If the answer is no, hand it off.
Your role as a leader is primarily context-setting—explaining why the work needs to be done, the expected outcomes, the deadline, and the behavioral guardrails. The team should own the activity-based work, making the decisions about how to execute, because their time is less costly and they are more motivated when given autonomy.
The biggest internal challenge to letting go is often the “dopamine hit of personal productivity.” Activity-based work offers regular, satisfying rewards as you check off lists, while context-setting is cognitively taxing and offers less frequent chemical rewards. Here are some ideas on how to manage this from a recent article in Harvard Business Review:
Create Different Checklists: You can still get that satisfying “tick” by making checklists for your context-setting work. For a meeting, track that you’ve (1) explained the why, (2) outlined the expected outcomes, and (3) described the desired behaviors.
Routinize Good Practices: Structure your one-on-ones around a consistent set of questions, like asking what your direct report’s most pressing challenge is and how you can support them.
Reframe Your Purpose: Shift your focus from short-term personal production to longer-term goals. Remind yourself that by staying out of the activity zone, you are helping the organization scale and encouraging your employees to grow.
When a team member asks for activity-based guidance, you must redefine how you help. Use a four-step model to give the work back to them:
- Re-explain the context: Prompt them to recall the mission, required outcomes, and behavioral expectations.
- Give the work back: Follow up by asking, “So given that context, what do you think the priority is?”.
- Teach with examples: If they lack experience, explain how you made similar decisions in the past and what you learned, then ask how those lessons apply to their situation.
- Establish accountability: End the conversation with, “Let me know how that goes and when you’d like to check in with me again”.
By consistently declining to join your team’s activity zone, you signal that you trust their judgment, forcing stronger players to step up and even reticent ones to try harder to make decisions. Effective delegation is one of the most important skills a leader can learn, enabling you to get more out of your team and fully embrace your role as a strategic thinker and developer of talent.
*Ideas for this blog taken from: Johnson, E. “Why Aren’t I Better at Delegating,” Harvard Business Review, September-October, 2025.
