Decision Making

Few leaders do a great job of leading team decision making. In part, this is because different types of decisions call for different decision-making processes, but most team leaders stick with one approach. They do this because they have a style with which they are comfortable and because they believe they need to be consistent or risk confusing their direct reports.

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Think of the different ways teams can make decisions. Possible approaches can be arrayed on a spectrum ranging from unilateral decision making at one end to unanimous consent at the other. In unilateral decision making, the leader simply makes the call, either without consultation or with limited consulation with personal advisors. The risks associated with this approach are obvious: you make miss critical infomations and insights and only get lukewarm support for implementation.

At the other extreme, processes that require unanimous consent from more than a few people tend to suffer from decision diffusion. They go on and on, never reaching closure. Or, if a decision does get made, it is ofter a lowest-common-denominator compromise. In either case, critical opportunities and threats are not addressed effectively.

Between these two extremes are the decision making processes that most leaders use: consult-and-decide and build consensus. When a leader solicits information and advice from direct reports – individually, as a group, or both – but reserves the right to make the final call, she is using a consult-and-decide approach. In effect, she separates the “information gathering and analysis” process from the “evaluating and reaching closure” process, harnesing the group for one but not the other.

In the build-consensus process, the leader both seeks information and analysis and seeks buy-in from the group for any decision. The goal is not full consensus but sufficient consensus. This means a critical mass of the group beleives the decision to be the right one and, critically, that the rest agree they can live with and support implementation of the decision.⊕ (Watkins 2013, chap. 7)

The following rules of thumb can help you figure out which decision-making process to use:

• If the decision is likely to be highly devisive – creating winners and losers – then you usually are better off using consult-and-decide and taking the heat. …
• If the decisision requires energetic support for implementation from people whose performance you cannot adequately observe and control, then you are usually better off using a build-consensus process. …
• If your team members are inexperienced, then you are usually better of relying more on consult-and-decide until you’ve taken the measure of the team and develped their capabilities. … If you’re put in charge of a group with whom you need to establish your authority (such as supervising former peers), then you’re better off relying on consult-and-decide to make some key early decisions.

⊕ (Watkins 2013, chap. 7)