Delegation Course Modules

I was delivering a course on delegation and needed to emphasise the point of poor delegation to the group that was in the training. This activity is excellent to do this.

Sink or Swim is based around an imaginary organisation called Bob’s boats, where delegates are given A4 paper with little clear instruction and asked to build boats.

The poor instructions and the role play that is used to demonstrate a lack of enthusiasm for their efforts is a great way to demonstrate how delegation should not be done.

Everyone who did the exercise really enjoyed it, and it really made the delegates think about how delegation could be improved.

It is always popular with delegates and shows brilliantly how poor delegation can lead to problems including frustration, confusion and most importantly not getting the job done that was wanted. It demonstrates the important learning points whilst being great fun – a brilliant mix. We have also used this for train the trainer courses in terms of not training people properly.

Just a few thoughts on 'Sink or Swim'. I ran the exercise as part of a section on delegation with a group of team leaders - all of whom had expressed an interest in improving their delegation skills.

The first section requires minimal materials - handouts, a supply of plain paper - and is easy to set up. After the initial shock, the delegates threw themselves into [the exercise] with varying degrees of success and enthusiasm while I was 'out to lunch'. The review of the exercise was very effective, bringing out how not to do it and for generating thoughts on more effective means of delegation.

The next phase was an evaluation of what successful delegators do. This worked well with the review slides supplied with the exercise.

The final part (the story around the Tsunami) worked well as a reminder about setting boundaries and empowering delegatees. I found the exercise took about forty-five minutes.

At the end I also added some discussion and slides around the benefits of delegation and reasons why we don't delegate. These generated some 'lively' discussions. In future courses, I may have these discussions, before the exercise.

All in all a really good exercise for delegates to experience and think about delegation.

Thanks Trainers Library!

I've used Bob's Boats which was a successful excercise for Delegation and left many of the participants actually wanting to finish making their boats after the course had finished! It was a good excercise to get everyone involved and participating and helped them understand the importance of always making sure that the tasks delegated have been followed up.

Bob's Boats always, always gets the most amazing response. One client I visit where I used it about 3 years ago I still get comments "here's Bob's or Burton's Boats". What fantastic recall.

I have used this exercise in management development programmes and it generates some very interesting discussion, revealing a great deal about how and what managers delegate. For the statements exercise I copied the statements onto pieces of card and asked them to sort the cards into 4 piles. This makes it easier for me to 'eavesdrop' on groups and see what decisions they have already made. I give them the sheet at the end to make any notes.

I used The Wedding Planner exercise at the end of the session to summarise what we had learnt regarding time management, prioritisation and organisation. I split them into two groups of three and gave them half an hour to work out what they were going to do. They seemed to struggle a bit at first and get in a bit of debate how they should organise it. They suggested afterwards that they would have liked some scissors to chop the tasks up and move things round (why didn’t they ask!) After half an hour we discussed what they had come up with and both groups had done it slightly differently. They both understood though that they could delegate tasks and lump similar things together to get things done quicker. In particular they saved time by not travelling so much. Again we linked this back to their role and they thought about how they could organise their own time better.

I used the Wedding Planner as a group exercise in an Assessment Centre. I was looking for an exercise that would require the candidates to show their planning, organising, decision-making and communication skills (amongst other competencies); this exercise is ideal because it covers all those bases. It was run as per the brief and I followed it up with some additional reflective questions. I was able to get exactly what I needed for the purposes of selection and I would recommend it as an exercise in this context too. Thanks Trainers’ Library – it meant I didn’t have to come up with a whole new exercise from scratch!

We completed the Wedding Planner in a Time Management session recently, it was a fun and fantastic way to show how to priorotise. All of the delegates were female and really played up to the role, however I am sure that men would be just as receptive due to the nature of the brief.

I've used 'The Wedding Planner' and it went really well in a time management session for Team leaders. They enjoyed the opportunity to work through a scenario that wasn't work related, yet could still highlight the pitfalls that they themselves make during their working day.