DELEGATION POKER: The art of delegating, strengthening trust within teams.
Delegating functions is one of the most important parts of the work organization; this is because the management of our time will depend on a good delegation of tasks. Delegating responsibilities in our workspace consists of giving one of our elements the ability to make decisions, solve setbacks and carry out activities (Dafne, 2020).
The delegation of tasks can be a difficult process for managers or administrators; this is because there may be a distrust in giving power and responsibility to workers. However, the disadvantages of not delegating functions can have negative consequences for business management (Dafne, 2020).
By delegating some activities that need to be done on a day-to-day basis, we free up the time of key people who have valuable knowledge and expertise that can help achieve the company’s strategic objectives, increase participation in planning activities and improve the organization.
Some benefits that can be achieved within teams by delegating:
- Team growth
- Safe environments to foster creativity and efficiency
- Strengthening of knowledge management
- Increased employee motivation
- Strengthening of the organization
I work as a supplier for a company in the banking sector in Colombia. My team is composed of 12 people (a team leader and a technical specialist, five developers, two UX/UI designers, a process analyst, and two testers), we generate innovative and technological solutions in payment methods for a bank in Colombia. Most of the members of my team are outsourced and from different companies, we only have 4 people working directly with the client company. This brings some difficulties in trying to understand the degree of responsibility for some activities or unforeseen situations since being in a client feels the fear of assuming positions that do not look good.
In addition, although the team functioned very well technically, there were some communication difficulties, little leadership initiative by the members who left this responsibility to only two people, which resulted in delays in the approval processes (bottlenecks) due to the leaders’ lack of knowledge of certain technical issues, an excessive burden for them, and additionally the opportunity to guide the leaders to more strategic objectives or even the ideation of initiatives that benefit the work environment and help to strengthen the knowledge of the team members were lost.
For this reason, to empower the team and define the appropriate levels of delegation, I decided to apply the “Delegation poker” by Jurgen Appelo, which allows clarifying who is responsible for what and fostering an empowering environment for everyone in the team. For more information https://management30.com/practice/delegation-poker/
The objective of this practice is to use a tool that consists of 7 levels of delegation, to generate a space for conversation and conciliation about what should be the best level of delegation for certain activities, as Appelo tells us The objective of Delegation Poker is to drive home the idea of delegating decisions and tasks to your team within a controlled environment. It also is a good collaboration game. Many teams play it without even totaling points and more than anything else it’s a conversation topic and a starting point for the discussion of who should do what. (Appelo).
To work with the practice “Delegation Poker” we must take into account the following aspects (Appelo)
- Delegation is not a binary thing. There are plenty of “shades of gray” between being a dictator and being an anarchist.
- Delegation is a step-by-step process. You hand over accountability to other people in a controlled and gradual way.
- Delegation is context-dependent. You want to delegate as much as possible but if you go too far chaos might unfold.
“Delegation Poker is a way for you and your team to implement the Seven Levels of Delegation. Together, you not only decide who does what but to what extent decision-making power rests with each teammate, depending on the task or project.” (Appelo).
The 7 levels of delegation
Level 1. Tell: The manager decides for the team.
Level 2. Sell: The manager makes the decision for the team but tries to convince them that it is the right one.
Level 3. Consult: Before making the decision, the manager listens to the team’s opinions.
Level 4. Agree: The manager engages the entire team in conversation and reaches a consensus to make the decision.
Level 5 Advice: The manager offers his or her opinion, but the team decides.
Level 6. Inquire: The team makes the decision but tries to convince the manager that it is the right one.
Level 7. Delegate: The manager does not require details, but lets the team make the decisions autonomously.
At the moment of applying the practice I did it in the following way:
Step by Step
- This practice is done in the miro tool using a template, in which the photo of each team member is placed with the 7 cards (the 7 levels of delegation), in the upper part the topics to be discussed are placed one by one, additionally, there is a space to assign the photo of the Manager of the team, which in our case is the team leader. the link is shared in advance to ensure that all members can enter without inconvenience.
- To begin with, the objective of the practice is explained in a general step-by-step manner.
- The practice begins by explaining the levels of delegation, giving a specific example of a situation to make it easier to understand.
- The leader shares with the team the activities, which are activities he is responsible for related to the team that he wishes to discuss at the delegation level. He writes them on a post-it next to the board for further discussion. Some examples are the distribution of activities to be done, solution of dependencies with other teams, leadership in sessions, topics to be discussed, peer reviews, breakout sessions, among others.
- The activity begins by taking one of the activities identified in the previous point. It is placed in the space of the template “Topic to discuss”. If there are doubts, the leader provides clarity to facilitate the discussion.
- Once it is clear to everyone, voting takes place (all team members vote equally). Each participant must choose among the cards with the 7 levels of delegation, which one he/she believes is the right one for this specific activity, and vote by taking each card to the top of the template.
- Each person explains why he or she believes this should be the level of delegation, the others reflect on it and reach a consensus. If no consensus is reached, the leader makes the final decision on the level of delegation for this activity.
- Move the card of the chosen delegation level and place it to the side of the activity, proceed to the next activity until the listing is finished.
- The voting space is used to reflect on the current state of the delegation and it is proposed to leave open the possibility of experimenting with the level of delegation decided by all.
The session ends with the practice “Happiness Door”, to get the feedback of the session and understand how they received the activity and the agreements that were generated.
The participation of the management was supported by the team leader and the technical leader, they had great participation, they were always attentive to guide the team in details about some processes, and supported them in the discussion of the activities, giving them the confidence to vote according to their criteria, it was a very open space where communication, courage, respect and active listening prevailed when proposing to experiment with new ways of delegating. The development of this practice and the scope of the delegation-level is only applied in our team in the defined and agreed tasks, which have to do with the objectives defined for the last four months of the year 2021.
It was agreed to carry out the experimentation with this new system of delegation which brought incredible benefits to the team, it eased the burden of the leaders since the team members collectively began to make decisions according to their knowledge about: how to organize, distribution of tasks within the sprint, distribute the leadership in execution fronts, manage dependencies with other teams, devise tasks to promote learning, many sessions began to be led proactively by team members, they began to open spaces for knowledge management which allowed the improvement of best practices and learning on various topics, for example in testing automation tools, development technologies, among others.
In agreement with the team, we made an additional experimentation space with this practice, in which we took as an example of a store with a high level of control, we randomly chose activities to agree on the level of delegation, we made several iterations, in which we chose a person from the team to have the role of “Team Leader/manager”, we took an activity and everyone voted on the level of delegation that they considered should be adequate, once the decision was made. A case performance was made where a real-life situation was recreated exactly related, the person who had the role of Leader had to take the assigned position of the chosen card (Delegation Level) and start the discussion where he/she would try to solve it.
As a facilitator I learned how important it is that the people involved in the leadership of the team have confidence in the ability of the people who make up their teams, this allows to create safer environments before failures, generates more opportunities for experimentation, and frees the burden of management, allowing them to actively participate in designing strategies that help drive their teams in achieving the objectives of the company. One of the results of this experimentation is that as the iterations went on, the same cards started to be repeated, generally from level 4 to 6, which made us reflect on the mental transformation we are undergoing, the team members feel capable of assuming the challenges of leading activities effectively and the management gives them the confidence to delegate some of their functions, which empowers them.
As a reflection, the team felt all the support of the team leadership, being able to actively participate in making decisions about the best way to address these activities that arise in the day today, it was explicitly reflected the confidence that the project leaders have in the team and the importance of improving leadership within the teams, so that it does not focus on one person, foster good relationships between colleagues and strengthen the performance of the team. The experiment allowed me to reflect on the importance of understanding all the contexts of each of the people in the team, to understand why sometimes some levels of delegation must be different. The key is to find a balance since delegation levels should not be the same for all team members or all areas of an organization.
My next experiment with this practice will be to apply the activity with a “Delegation Board”, but taking it as a proposal to my team of project facilitators, including the agile coach, so that we can better organize the level of delegation of some activities that are not so clearly defined and produce reprocesses within the teams.
Dear Network, I invite you to use this practice within your teams, so that you can experiment with different levels of delegation to strengthen trust, accountability, commitment, and support among team members. Additionally, generating intermediate levels of delegation can positively empower the team and strengthen its path to self-management and organization.
References
Appelo, J. (s.f). Delegation Poker & Delegation Board. Retrieved from https://management30.com/practice/delegation-poker/
Dafne. (5 de Marzo de 2020). La importancia de delegar responsabilidades dentro de tu equipo de trabajo. Retrieved from https://www.bumeran.com.mx/noticias/la-importancia-de-delegar-responsabilidades-dentro-de-tu-equipo-de-trabajo/
