# Rotate the Lead — Facilitator Guide

> Folder: `rotate-the-lead` · Category: leadership · 8–16 people · 25 min · offline + online · print props · tool pack
> License: CC BY 4.0

A 25-minute, 8–16 person leadership tool. Give the team a real small task, then rotate who's leading every few minutes — and make each handover restate the goal, what's done, and the next move before anyone directs. Leadership stops being a job title and becomes a set of visible moves anyone can make and pass on.

## Objectives

By the end of the activity, participants will have:

1. Carried a real thread through one full round — and handed it over in one breath: goal, done-so-far, next, **before** directing.
2. Made one decision as lead that was **visible and owned**, and felt the difference between a call that is named and one that drifts.
3. Seen which teammates can hold a round cleanly — leading shown as a set of moves anyone can make, not a rank only one person holds.

## When to use this activity

- A team where leadership is stuck on one person and nobody else has practiced holding the thread.
- Before handing someone a real stretch assignment — rotate the least-senior person first.
- You have 8–16 people, one small finishable task, and 25 minutes; online, it runs on a shared doc.

## The handover pattern

| Move | The rule | What it makes visible |
|---|---|---|
| Restate | The incoming lead says goal / done-so-far / next in one breath **before** directing | whether the thread was actually shared — or only ever in one head |
| Call | Each lead makes one visible call and names its owner | the decisions a room was making by drift, silence, or the loudest voice |
| Pass on | The round closes on a clean summary handed to the next lead | exactly what the team loses every time the thread drops |

Two rules only, and the rounds test both: no directing before restating; no leading without one named call.

## Setup

- 8–16 people, in one working group (above 12, run two parallel groups on the same task).
- One real, small, finishable task — triage the backlog, plan next week, draft the one-pager. Not a discussion topic; something with an output.
- The card faces from `rotate-the-lead-prop-cards.pdf`: handover, lead-now, listen-first, make-the-call, pass-on, what-I-noticed (see **The card** below).
- A visible timer — each round is a hard ~4 minutes, and the rotation is the point.
- Put `rotate-the-lead-activity-poster.pdf` (A3) on the wall so the two rules stay in view.
- Print one `rotate-the-lead-worksheet.pdf` per group — the one-page artifact sheet the room fills while it talks.
- Put one `rotate-the-lead-workbook.pdf` at each seat if people want their own copy; the sheet above is the group version.
- Optional: open `rotate-the-lead-slide-deck.html` in any browser to run the 12-slide deck on the wall (S opens the presenter drawer, T starts the round timer); `rotate-the-lead-slide-deck.pdf` is the same deck for print.
- Online: the rotation runs in a fixed order on a shared doc; the worksheet lives on the screen, the timer on the call.

## How to run it

| Time | Phase | Facilitator does | Participants do |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–4 | Set | Pick the real small task, name the first lead, hold the room until "done" is agreed | Agree out loud what "done" looks like before the clock starts |
| 4–20 | Rotate | Call hard ~4-minute rounds; watch every handover for restatement-before-directing; never say who leads next early | Four leads in turn: restate goal / done-so-far / next in one breath, make one visible call and name its owner, close on a clean summary and pass on — while the room keeps the artifact moving on the worksheet |
| 20–25 | Name it | Ask each person for one leadership move they saw work — or didn't | Each person names one move; write the good ones down as the team's handover pattern |

Then run the debrief — see `rotate-the-lead-debrief.md`.

## The card

The sheet from `rotate-the-lead-prop-cards.pdf` (poker spec, 63.5 × 88.9 mm, bleed and cut guides, branded back, blanks) carries six faces: **handover** — restate before you direct; **lead-now** — this round is yours; **listen-first** — hear the room before calling; **make-the-call** — one visible decision, one named owner; **pass-on** — close on a clean summary; **what-I-noticed** — for the seat watching the thread. Put the **handover** card where the room can see it; it is the rule every round is testing. Blank faces take your own wordings.

## Failure modes

1. **The task is too big to move in four-minute rounds.** Shrink it before you start. A task that can't advance in four rounds isn't a rotate-the-lead task; it's a project, and everyone just flails in the same place.
2. **The real manager keeps re-taking the pen.** That's the finding, not a foul. Note who it displaces and what the room does when they return — then ask them to take a normal turn near the end instead of hovering.
3. **Everyone just repeats the previous lead.** Restating is not parroting. Require the new lead to name the *next* move as their own call, so each round actually changes the direction of the work.
4. **The rounds run, but the artifact stalls.** Leading is being performed while the output dies. Send the next lead's first sentence to the worksheet: name what the group produces in this round, then start the clock.

## Variations

- **New manager onboarding:** rotate the least-senior person first; it's the safest place to practice holding the thread.
- **Distributed team:** rotate in a fixed order on a shared doc; the restatement-before-directing rule matters even more when no one shares a room.
- **Deeper read:** after the rounds, ask who felt the thread get *stronger* and who felt it wobble — the pattern of where it wobbles is your real handover risk.

## Facilitation notes

- Name the first lead deliberately. The least-senior person is the safest opener, and it sets the tone that the pen is movable.
- Don't soften the clock. A squeezed handover — ninety seconds instead of four minutes — is the sharpest data the exercise produces: it shows exactly where the thread drops.
- You are timing the relay, not judging the leadership. The debrief names moves; keep your own read of "who was best" off the wall.
- The handover pattern written at 20–25 only survives if it leaves the room — the worksheet's last box exists for that; copy it into the team's real doc before anyone stands up.

## Put it on the wall

Print `rotate-the-lead-activity-poster.pdf` (A3) to put the run of show, the two rules and the handover pattern the room fills in on one wall while you facilitate.

## Props in this folder

- `rotate-the-lead-prop-cards.pdf` — poker-spec print sheet (63.5 × 88.9 mm, bleed and cut guides): the six card faces, branded back, blanks
- `rotate-the-lead-guide.md` — this run sheet
- `rotate-the-lead-debrief.md` — nine debrief questions with what each targets, plus failure modes of the debrief
- `rotate-the-lead-worksheet.pdf` — the one-page session sheet, print-and-fill: four rounds logged — restatement, the call, its owner — and the handover pattern the team kept
- `rotate-the-lead-workbook.pdf` — participant workbook: the sheet in plain words, the artifact as fill-in pages, session notes, a before-you-leave page
- `rotate-the-lead-slide-deck.html` / `.pdf` — the 12-slide deck for teaching or projecting: presenter drawer (S), round timer (T), built-in QR, print fallback; the `.pdf` is the same deck for print
- `rotate-the-lead-run-sheet.pdf` — the print edition: this run sheet + the debrief, bound as one A4 document with bookmarks
- `rotate-the-lead-activity-poster.pdf` — the whole activity on one A3 wall sheet: run of show, the rules, watch-outs
- `rotate-the-lead-tool.json` — machine-facing file (not listed in the download table): the artifact as a machine-readable template: columns, flow, fields, prompts, watch-outs
- `rotate-the-lead-start-here.md` — one page, thirty seconds, then print and go
- `rotate-the-lead-license.md` — what you may do with all of this: run it, copy it, translate it, rebrand it; keep the attribution line
- `SKILL.md` — machine-readable manifest for AI agents
- `*-Letter.pdf` — US Letter editions of the print documents

## Agent version

Every file in this folder has a stable public URL — an AI agent can fetch the props, the debrief and this run sheet with three curl commands (see `SKILL.md`). The paper version itself needs no screen at all: no projector, no accounts, just a real task and a timer.