Teamwork Skills

Decision-Making

Decision-making can be one of the greatest challenges and sources of frustration your team faces. Often, the decision-making process is unclear and individual participation is sketchy. 

There are several decision making methods, but primarily on: delegating decisions to others and unanimous agreement of the group (otherwise known as consensus). 

Both require the development of team skills, and training, but the Consensus (or unanimous agreement) demands a high level of trust among the members of the group. People need to believe that each member is a fair and reasonable person of integrity who has the organization's best interests at heart. There are no perfect groups or perfect individuals, but for consensus to work the members must believe that everyone is honestly doing their best. 

Many meetings have ended without a decision, sometimes you  have to re-convene and re-hash, to feel that you have to negotiate and compromise in order to achieve partial consensus…and at times achievement supersedes the decision being made.   This is why decision making is such an important teamwork skill.

TIPS IN DECISION MAKING: 

1    Explore the concepts of routine vs. crucial decisions and how individual preferences can impact the decision-making process. 

2.  Learn how (and when) to use various decision-making approaches: majority vote, unanimous agreement, flipping a coin, delegation, unilateral with discussion, and unilateral without discussion. 

3.  Practice decision-making approaches that: expand circles of influence and gain consensus.