Escape Room Challenge Delegation Skills Exercise

Purpose

This exercise, taking place in a professionally provided escape room environment, aims to enhance delegation, resource allocation and teamwork under time pressure. The exercise simulates a real-world scenario where a team leader (manager) must delegate tasks effectively, leveraging team members’ strengths, while coordinating problem-solving in a structured, yet fast-paced environment.

Objective

A designated manager is responsible for delegating tasks to the team in order to escape the room before time runs out. The manager will allocate tasks according to the strengths of each team member and manage communication, problem-solving and resource allocation throughout the challenge.

What You Need

• Professional escape room, provided by a company in the city, designed with a variety of puzzles.
• Timer, set to the standard escape room time limit, typically 60 minutes.

Setup

• Take the participants to a professionally designed escape room provided by a specialised company. These rooms are themed and filled with puzzles, riddles, locks and ciphers. The puzzles are distributed throughout the room.
• Each team will consist of 4-6 members. Assign one person in each team the role of the manager. The size of the team often depends on the design of the escape room, so check with the venue. Depending on the number of participants you could have several teams working concurrently in different escape rooms within the same venue.
• Explain that the manager does not solve puzzles directly, but participants based on team members’ skills and strengths. This is an exercise for delegation skills for the managers. For the rest of the team, the exercise is to work together, under the leadership of the manager, and successfully escape within the allocated time.
• Managers need to allocate tasks for team members based on how suitable they are for certain tasks such as physical challenges, logical puzzles or observation-based tasks.
• Managers need to observe their team’s progress and reallocate tasks as necessary, ensuring that no one gets stuck for too long on a single puzzle.
• Each team must collaborate, communicating efficiently with their manager while working on their assigned tasks. Members must always report back to their manager for updates and instructions, in particular when they are stuck, or puzzles are complex.
• If conflicts or confusion arise, the team members must consult the manager, who will resolve issues and make decisions about whether to reprioritise tasks or reassign roles.
• When everyone is clear about the instructions, proceed to the escape rooms and get all teams to go through the respective experiences.
• Expect the staff from the escape room venue to brief each team on the overall structure of the room, the types of puzzles, the objective in each room and any safety regulations.
• After escaping, or failing to escape, expect the escape room company to provide feedback on each team’s performance: what puzzles they could not solve, where they got stuck and how well they did in comparison with their previous customers. Escape room companies often have a log of the shortest time to escape for each escape room, which teams can compare to.
• After all teams have completed their challenges, gather everyone for a reflection session, ideally in a suitable meeting room.
• Get each team to share their experience one at a time. Get them to explain briefly to everyone the challenges they faced, the quality of their teamwork, if they got stuck and lost precious time and how they coped under pressure towards the end.
• Follow with a general discussion.

Managers' Responsibilities

• Task Allocation. Delegate puzzles based on the strengths of each team member.
• Resource Management. Decide which puzzles are the most urgent and important at any given time.
• Communication. Maintain constant communication with team members, ensuring everyone understands their roles, know what to do and report back when they have results or are stuck.
• Problem-solving Coordination. Manage progress, reassign tasks when necessary and resolve conflicts.
• Brainstorm. Tap into everyone’s insights, collected cues and instincts to solve puzzles and progress forward.

Team Members’ Responsibilities

• Follow Delegation. Focus on the task assigned by the manager and report progress.
• Communication. Provide updates and report any issues or confusion to the manager.
• Collaboration. Work together when needed and support each other in solving puzzles.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 10 minutes (plus the escape room staff’s briefing)

Activity: 60 minutes (standard time for an escape room challenge)

Group Feedback: 30 minutes (after the escape room activity)

Discussion

Use these guiding questions:

• For the managers:
  • How did you decide which tasks to delegate to each team member?
  • How well did you manage limited resources and time pressure during the exercise?
  • What challenges did you face in keeping the team coordinated?
  • How well did you manage conflicts of opinion or team members’ insistence to chase areas that were ultimately pointless?
• For the team members:
  • How clearly were tasks communicated to you?
  • Did you feel that your strengths were recognised and utilised effectively?
  • How did you handle moments of confusion or conflicting information?
• Overall reflection:
  • How did the time pressure impact decision-making and teamwork?
  • What would you improve in terms of task delegation, communication, or teamwork next time?

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