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.