Delegation Dilemma | A Team Dynamics Speaking Activity for Adults
Delegation Dilemma is a decision-making speaking activity for upper-intermediate and advanced learners. Five colleagues are described as player cards with five attributes scored out of 100 — execution speed, attention to detail, communication, stress tolerance and teamwork — and each card carries a weakness that the numbers alone do not show.
Why the constraint matters
There are exactly five tasks and exactly five people, and every person may take only one job. That single rule turns a sorting exercise into a negotiation: the strongest communicator is wanted for the client presentation and for the intern, the two most careful people are wanted for the audit and the documentation, and somebody always ends up in a job they will do badly. Learners cannot finish the task without justifying a compromise.
Language it produces
The activity elicits the functional language adults actually need at work: recommending and justifying (I'd put her on the audit because…), hedging risk (the danger is that he…), conceding and pushing back (fair enough, but…), and the vocabulary of team behaviour — to micromanage, to pull your weight, to play devil's advocate, a big-picture thinker, to clash with someone.
How it runs in class
Pairs work on one phone and build a plan they can see on screen. Two pairs then merge and must agree on a single list, which forces them to defend choices they made privately fifteen minutes earlier. The app records the plan but never scores it and never reveals a “best” answer — the moment a right answer appears, the discussion stops.
Because nothing in the activity is tied to a date or a company, the same session works with any professional group, and the debrief question — which person did nobody want, and why? — usually produces the most honest English of the evening.
Two teams, not one
There are two scenarios in the app, and they are not variations of each other. The Product Squad is a software team — the Perfectionist, the Sprinter, the Quiet Expert, the Connector, the Firefighter — facing a client presentation, a financial audit, an emergency bug fix, an intern to onboard and a documentation rewrite. The Agency Floor swaps in the Idea Machine, the Machine, the Diplomat, the Night Owl and the Newcomer, against a pitch, a budget reconciliation and an overnight rebuild. Run the squad first; the agency works better with a group that already knows the mechanic.
The five numbers are a trap, and that is intentional
Each colleague carries scores out of 100 for speed, detail, communication, stress tolerance and teamwork — and underneath, a single line that the numbers cannot express. Elena’s work is flawless and her deadlines are not. Marco delivers in a day, with three typos. Groups that optimise on the numbers alone always produce a plan that falls apart when someone reads the quirks aloud. Let that happen. The moment a team realises the data was incomplete is the moment the conversation stops being arithmetic and starts being an argument.
Use the phrase bank before the discussion, not after
Five groups of functional language sit inside the app: recommending, naming the risk, pushing back, finding the deal, and team vocabulary. Put them on screen for two minutes before the first pairing and ask each learner to pick two phrases they intend to use. Introduced afterwards they are a correction sheet; introduced first they are tools, and you will hear them come back at you during the merge round.
The merge is where the real lesson is
Pairs build a plan privately, then two pairs merge and must produce one list. This second stage is the activity. Learners now have to defend a decision they made fifteen minutes ago to someone who reasoned differently, which produces concession, reformulation and the phrase every teacher wants to hear: all right, but then what do we do about… Budget at least as long for the merge as for the first round.
No score, no answer key, and that is the design
The app records the plan and never grades it. There is no optimal allocation hidden in the code. This is deliberate: the second a right answer exists, learners stop arguing and start guessing what the teacher wants. If a group asks which plan was correct, turn it back — ask which plan they would defend to the person who ends up in the worst job.
The debrief question that works every time
Which person did nobody want, and why? Ask it at the end, to the whole room. It produces comparison, justification and a surprising amount of honesty about how people judge colleagues — and because the colleague is fictional, nobody in the room is exposed. B1 to C1, forty to forty-five minutes, one device per pair.
Goes well with
Further reading
Group Dynamics in Large Classes — making thirty students talk
CEFR Levels Explained — what A1 to C2 actually mean in a classroom