Delegation Poker

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Origins

Delegation Poker was created by Jurgen Appelo as part of the Management 3.0 toolkit, published in Managing for Happiness in 2016.¹ Appelo's observation was that the most painful conflicts between managers and teams were not about what decisions to make, but about who got to make them — and that almost no organization had a shared vocabulary for that question.

The game gives teams that vocabulary. It uses seven explicit levels of delegation, a small deck of cards, and a structured conversation that turns the implicit, contested question of authority into an explicit, negotiable one.

The Seven Levels

Appelo identifies seven distinct levels along the autocracy–self-management spectrum:

• 1. Tell. The manager makes the decision and announces it.
• 2. Sell. The manager makes the decision and explains the reasoning to the team.
• 3. Consult. The manager asks for input, then decides.
• 4. Agree. The manager and team decide together, as equals.
• 5. Advise. The team decides; the manager offers input first.
• 6. Inquire. The team decides; the manager asks afterward to understand.
• 7. Delegate. The team decides; the manager stays out of it.

The progression matters. Level 1 is full autocracy; level 7 is full delegation. Levels 2 through 6 are the gradations most real management lives in — and most teams have never named them.

How the Game Works

The format is simple:

• Each participant gets a deck of seven cards, numbered 1 to 7, corresponding to the levels above.
• The group lists a set of decision areas: hiring, technology choices, budget, working hours, ways of working, customer-facing changes, and so on.
• For each decision area, everyone privately picks a card representing where they think authority should sit.
• Cards are revealed simultaneously. Differences are visible immediately.
• The group discusses the gaps. Why does the team think this is a level 5 while the manager thinks it's a level 3? Through negotiation, the group settles on a working level for each decision area.
• The agreed levels are written up as a delegation board — a visible artifact the team and manager refer to going forward.

Why the Format Works

• It makes the implicit explicit. Most authority conflicts come from differing assumptions about who decides. The game surfaces those assumptions.
• It separates the question of authority from the question of value. A team can disagree about where authority sits without disagreeing about what the decision should be. The game forces the first question to be answered first.
• It creates a contract. The delegation board is a written agreement. When future tension arises, the team can point to it: we agreed this was level 5; you're treating it like level 2.
• It is iterable. Delegation levels can — and should — change over time as trust builds and competence grows. The game can be replayed.

Common Pitfalls

• Decision areas too broad. "Engineering" is too broad to assign a single level. "Choice of testing framework" is concrete enough to negotiate.
• One-time use. Delegation evolves. A delegation board that's never revisited becomes another piece of dead documentation. Replay yearly.
• Manager rubber-stamping. If the manager always agrees with whatever the team picks, the format becomes theatre. Real conversation requires real disagreement.
• Levels treated as static. A team's appropriate level might be 3 today and 6 next year. The board should mark progression goals, not just current state.
• Conflating roles. "The manager" is sometimes plural (multiple stakeholders). The format works best when the authority figures in the room can actually speak for themselves.

The Delegation Board

The output of the game is a visible artifact: a 2D grid with decision areas as rows and the seven levels as columns. Each row has a card marker at the agreed level. The board is posted where the team can see it, referenced when authority questions arise, and revisited periodically (typically every six to twelve months).

The board does three things at once: it documents the current state, it provides a vocabulary for future conversations, and it lets the team plot a trajectory — we're at level 3 on hiring now, we want to be at level 5 by year-end.

Relationship to Other Practices

Delegation Poker pairs naturally with Sociocratic consent (which describes how the team makes decisions once authority is theirs), with working agreements (which encode the specifics), and with team chartering (which establishes the broader context). It is, in effect, one slice of the larger conversation about how the team will operate — but a slice that is often the most uncomfortable to have without a structured format.

Coaching Tips

Make decision areas concrete.

"Hiring" is too broad. "Final hiring decision for our team's roles" is negotiable. The specificity is what produces useful conversation.

Reveal cards simultaneously.

If anyone shows their card first, the rest anchor on it. Simultaneous reveal is what makes the differences visible.

Negotiate the gaps openly.

When team and manager pick different levels, the conversation about why is more valuable than the resolution. Don't rush past it.

Post the board visibly.

A delegation board in a drawer is a delegation board that doesn't get used. Pin it where it shows up in daily work.

Plot the trajectory.

Mark not just the current level but the desired level. The game becomes a roadmap for growing team autonomy.

Replay the game annually.

Levels evolve. A board that doesn't get revisited becomes dead documentation. Annual replay keeps it alive.

Summary

Delegation Poker is a small, ritualized way to have one of the most consequential conversations a team can have: who decides what. By providing a shared vocabulary of seven levels and a structured game format, it makes a topic that is usually fraught, indirect, or unspoken into one that is explicit and negotiable. The delegation board that results is a small artifact with outsized value — a contract the team and its leadership can both point to when authority questions inevitably resurface.

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