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.