“When you ask for our input on a team decision, it’s clear you already have your mind made up. You’re just asking us so you can say that you did.”
OUCH.
This was brutal and honest feedback from members of my team in a 360 feedback session a few years ago. And, they were right. I do think I honestly wanted input, but the egotistical air of already knowing my “right” answer did not welcome quality input and did little to gain buy-in from the team. Their input rarely changed my mind. It was clear to the team that I thought I knew better than them. (In case you were wondering, I did not know better than them.)
This was a clear lesson to me that team decision making is not just about making good choices, it’s about building trust, collaboration, and buy-in. Here are five actionable tips to enhance this process.
1. Know and use diverse team decision making techniques
Employing various techniques, such as knowing when and how to use directive, consultative, voting, or consensus-building can help teams reach quality decisions in an appropriate amount of time. These are the tools in your tool belt. They all have a time and place for their application, and the skilled leader knows how and when to use them best.
Learn different techniques from innovation centers like IDEO, a global design company. They use diverse decision-making tools and techniques like brainstorming sessions and prototyping to foster creativity and arrive at innovative solutions. Similarly, more technical team decision making techniques from the PMP and Lean Six Sigma worlds, such as nominal group technique, or multi-voting can be useful for refining options generated through brainstorming and prototyping.
How many different techniques do you deliberately use to make decisions? Can you articulate to your team what decision making style you are using and why?
2. Define clear team decision making processes
This is the plan for how you’ll use your tools. Establishing structured methods for making decisions helps teams navigate complex issues systematically, ensuring clarity and accountability. Just as important as having a process is communicating it, ensuring it is understood, and following it. If it is not documented and followed, it is not your process, it is an aspiration.
This can be as simple as consulting the team, letting them know you have an idea of which way you want to go in the decision, but that you need their input first to make sure you aren’t missing a key piece of information. Sometimes decisions can be simpler, and you just need to make the call. If this is the case, let the team know and make the decision.
An example of this could be deciding where to host an executive retreat. The decision where to do this affects everyone involved. The person responsible for planning the off-site event could spend a significant amount of time soliciting input from everyone attending. However, in reality, most team members probably don’t have strong preferences as long as the location meets basic criteria, such as amenities, location, and budget.
Sometimes, decisions take much more careful deliberation. McKinsey dives deeper into types of decisions and best practices with high stakes and overwhelming amounts of data.
3. Assign clear roles and responsibilities for the team decision making process
This is where you hand your folks the tools to use. Defining roles within the decision-making process ensures accountability and streamlines the implementation of decisions. It helps prevent decision fatigue in central individuals.
Types of roles can include something like the RACI framework:
Responsible: This person does the thing
Accountable: This person is accountable for the outcome of the decision
Consulted: This group provides input that can affect the decision
Informed: This group must be kept aware of the decision, but does not have input
However, McKinsey would say that there is too much ambiguity in the RACI framework and proposes an alternate method of assigning roles. Regardless of the framework you choose to assign roles, make sure everyone is on the same page and knows what is expected of them.
4. Promote psychological safety in the team decision making process
Give your team the freedom to learn how to use their tools more effectively. Recognize there will be mistakes, and embrace those as opportunities to learn. A psychologically safe environment, by Amy Edmondson’s definition, is one where it is ok for team members to take interpersonal risks. This is the table stakes for working with a team. It is the bare minimum that you must do and it is a necessary condition to be effective as a team.
Understand what psychological safety is and isn’t. Know how to make it a reality. Pay attention to the team. Know who speaks up and why they do it. Know who keeps quiet and why.
Hot tip: Has anyone spoken up or contradicted you this week? No? You might have a problem. Reflect on the last time someone on your team took an interpersonal risk. How did it go? If your team members are unwilling to take interpersonal risks, your team is likely not as effective as it could be.
5. Build team emotional intelligence in the decision making process
This is the next step beyond psychological safety in team decision making, and it requires team emotional intelligence (not just emotionally intelligent individuals). Druskat and Wolff found the three factors that lead to effective collaboration between team members:
Mutual trust
A sense of group identity
A sense of group efficacy
The factors all require an emotional connection to each other and the mission of the team. With these factors present, Druskat argues, team members do not just feel safe speaking up, but they feel compelled to participate and collaborate because of the shared connection.
With psychological safety, the group knows they can make honest mistakes and put themselves at risk because their team and leadership will support them. Fostering open communication puts it into action. This is where you avoid being the emperor with no clothes parading through the streets. If you build an environment where everyone communicates through the decision making process, you’re much less likely to be caught with your pants down.
Of course you can take this to extremes. One of the best (and hardest to work for) bosses I ever had would regularly ask for input, often to be met with crickets. A common reminder from him was “if you see a problem, and you don’t speak up, you are being disloyal to the team.” That’s a pretty aggressive way of putting it, but I don’t disagree with him.
Putting it all together in team decision making
Knowing the tools to use, having a framework in which to use them, assigning clear roles in that framework, giving team members latitude to maximize their contribution, and building a group identity that inspires contribution are all places where leaders can improve team decision making in their organization. Every group will have a different way of putting this into practice, but every group can examine their team decision making and find ways to improve along these five lines.
What is your biggest challenge in team decision making
We’d love to talk with you if you’re curious about exploring the topic further and practicing these skills with your team.
