In managing and working on teams, the procedures being used must be known, shared, and understood. What is often seen as ‘personality conflicts’ are usually just people with unknown procedures on accomplishing the work.
Decision Making is a standard procedure that is lacking from teams. For the decision to be made, all the people on the team must know;
The Type of Meeting They are Attending
Informational:
- Manager shares information with the team. Little to no need for conversation or feedback.
- Example – Budget Numbers, Profit and Loss, Executive and Board decisions.
Consultative:
- A decision has to be made, and ultimately the Manager will make the decision. The team is called together to discuss and share perspectives, beliefs, evidence, pros/cons, and openly discuss what they feel is best. BUT the manager will make the final decision.
Team Problem Solving:
- A problem exists, and the team must make a decision. This is where consensus and other group decision-making procedures are used, i.e., voting, polling, multi-voting, consensus.
- The team will decide what to do based on the discussion and feedback from other team members.
Who Should be at the Decision Making Meeting?
Often the wrong people and too many people are in the meeting.
Being thoughtful about the type of meeting and the decision to be made…will force you to think about who has to be there.
It is a waste of everyone’s time to call people into a Decision-Making meeting that should not be there. Consider;
- The decision to be made
- The type of meeting
- How much time will be allotted
- When the final project and solution must be implemented
- Who has the proper and necessary context, knowledge, and ability to add to the decision
- Do they need to be there?
The Procedure for Making the Decision
The meeting agenda should include the method for making the decision that will be utilized. At the beginning of the Decision-Making meeting stating;
- The type of meeting
- Why the people who are at the meeting are at the meeting? Why are these people and not some other people are in the meeting?
- The procedure/method that will be used for making the decision
Teams will work together, and people will continue to be accountable for the outcomes when they know the roles and procedures they are working in and how decisions will be made. A team can be derailed when someone believes that a decision will be made by consensus, only to realize they just wasted 2 hours to find out that the Manager planned on being Consultative and ultimately deciding.
LET PEOPLE KNOW the Type of Meeting, Why they are there, and the Procedure / Method used for making the decision, and great work will be accomplished.