Delegation and Developmental Levels

Doing a good job of delegation means you have to know your players. A person’s developmental level refers to their basic default map about the ways they deal with information in particular and the world in general. The concept of “meme” is used to avoid implied hierarchies. This work was originally developed by Clare Graves and Don beck, and has ben incorporated into the works of Ken Wilber.

The idea of developmental levels can be confusing just by itself. The natural assumption is that a “higher” level is by definition better, but that is not the case. In this format, it means more recent. In addition, there are two overall tiers of levels, with second tier levels being very recent or current. For our purposes in this blog, we will stay with the most common levels you are likely to encounter in the workplace. The color codes associated with these memes do not have any other significance; they are just a shorthand for the more complex names in the original work.

Lowest-level memes

The three lower level memes are rare in the workplace, and increasingly so. Sometimes people will regress to these behavior types under distress, but it’s rare to find someone who is in this level by default or at a high point. They are:

Beige, characterized by dependence, infantilism, fear/terror. The image associated with this is a crying baby.
Purple, characterized by non-logic, magic, and mystery. The image associated with this is Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Fantasia
Red, characterized by tyranny, threats and intimidation. The image associated with this is Attila the Hun or T-Rex.

If you’re unlucky enough to encounter any of these types on a regular basis, a quick exit strategy is probably your best bet.

Higher level first tier memes

The three higher level memes are quite common in the workplace and essentially define many things about a healthy working relationship. Delegation to these memes looks quite different, and mistaking one for the other leads to frustration and incompletion. They are:

Blue, characterized by obedience, discipline, completion and following the rules. This person is constantly seeking the right way to do something.
Orange, characterized by competition, wining, and creativity. This person is constantly seeking the best way to do something.
Green, characterized by equality, rights and seeing things from someone else’s perspective. This person is constantly seeking the fairest way to do something.

Delegating well

Some of this is founded on the pre-supposition that you have hired the right type of person for the job. If you have a blue person working in the creative marketing department, or a green person working in regulatory compliance, you’re not going to get good delegation no matter what you do.

Assuming you have hired well in the first place, here are the key ideas to help your employee succeed and take over the delegated area or project:

Since blue people are seeking the right way to do something, they will essentially function by saying, “Just tell me what to do.” You can pre-empt this by telling them “…this is the right way to do it.” Manuals and checklists are critical for training purposes and for setting guidelines. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, and many aspects of business management are completely blue and have few aspects of creative improvement or even fairness/internal rationality.
Since orange people are seeking the best way to do something, they will always be tinkering in order to do it better, faster or cheaper. You can harness this by saying, “After you learn how we have been doing this in the past I want you to tell me how we can improve this in the future.” This statement stimulates their creative energies and allows them to feel a greater sense of freedom. This can also bring radically new thoughts and energies to the company.
Since green people are seeking fairness, they will focus on the people side of things instinctively. If your company is small enough to be missing a separate HR department (like most practices), this person can be stimulated by suggesting, “Please review (or create) or policies so they are fair and are meeting the needs of our employees as best we can.” In for-profit, competitive companies, these people may have a hard time fitting in and may feel that no matter what they do, someone is being treated badly. Even if it’s a competitor!

The study of developmental levels is complex, but can be an enormously powerful tool in distributing workloads and placing people in a position to succeed.