As a manager, you’re no stranger to making decisions. However, even experienced decision makers can feel the pressure when making decisions alone. The higher the risk of failure, the harder it is to decide. It’s human nature to choose the safe option – even when doing so causes us to miss out on a good opportunity. We regret around 140,000 of the decisions we make over the course of our lifetime – it’s normal that we want to avoid adding another one to the list.
You might find it hard to make important decisions because you fear:
A negative impact on sales
Damage to your reputation
The loss of your job
A negative impact on others
Why is team decision making important?
There are many advantages of team decision making:
You benefit. Input from your team helps you make an informed decision with confidence.
Your team benefits. Your team feels valued and heard.
You benefit again. With your team on board, you decide more efficiently and reach your goals faster.
Discover the best tools and techniques for successful team decision-making.
7 reasons it’s better to make decisions as a team
Let’s dive in to how exactly group decision making can benefit your team – and your business.
1. You can act fast – and boost revenue
You want to put your decision in motion quickly. No blockers. No drama. That's understandable – it means you reap the rewards of your decision sooner. If it goes well, you’ll see better business results and higher revenue.
For a speedy and successful implementation:
Involve everyone who will implement the agreed solution early on in the process.
Put together a decision making team with diverse skills, experience levels and backgrounds.
Establish clear goals and explore solutions together.
Look to Japan for inspiration. Launching a project after a “Ringi” process is faster because everyone is already on board.
2. You promote innovation in your team
Few of us like conflict. It’s why it can be tempting to give preference to consensus or majority opinion. However, waiting to reach a consensus as a team isn’t always the right approach.
Your team brings different perspectives to the table, which means they won’t always agree with you – or each other. Lean into it. Encourage healthy, respectful debate. By doing so, you challenge your team to critically question issues and form strong arguments. This allows you to identify false assumptions and uncover new information. As a result, you make more informed decisions and get better results.
Ask provocative questions and encourage divergent thinking. By doing so, you encourage your team to come up with innovative solutions quickly.
3. You increase team engagement
You make 35,000 decisions a day. That’s a lot if you're doing it alone. By involving your team, you show them you value their opinions – and valued team members are more engaged.
Engaged team members, in turn:
Are less stressed
Are more likely to stay with the company
Achieve much better results
Every time you ask your team to make a decision, you empower them to bring their strengths, experience and expertise to the business. Team motivation increases – and motivated colleagues are more inclined to contribute to company success.
Need to decide between several options? Use our decision matrix template.
4. You improve team collaboration
Most employers say good team collaboration is important. One of the best ways to boost collaboration is to communicate. But it's not always easy. Nearly ninety percent of workplace failures stem from a lack of collaboration or ineffective communication.
Let your team have their say. By doing so, you give them the opportunity to:
Share ideas.
Learn from each other.
Work toward a common goal.
By handling decision-making as a team, you can break down silos. You may even uncover overlaps in your team – you can eliminate these to save resources and prevent duplicate work.
5. You identify your blind spots
When you understand your strengths, weaknesses, and leadership tendencies, you can make more informed decisions. In turn, decisions are less likely to fail. This means more success for you and your team! It’s easier said than done. A Harvard Business Review study shows only ten to fifteen percent of people have this type of self-awareness.
Make sure you’re in the right percentile. Involve your team in decision-making and
Broaden your perspective.
Improve your own self-awareness.
Develop your managerial competencies.
6. You support team development
Is professional growth important to your team? Then make team decision-making a priority. You'll encourage your team to:
Become more engaged with the business.
Gain more knowledge about the background and importance of their work.
Improve their communication skills.
All of these improvements help your team work more efficiently. And that, in turn, means your team is more likely to reach those ambitious company targets.
Go over the rules of debate together before your next decision making session. Pick an easy topic, put what you’ve learned into action, and have fun with it!
7. You build a stronger team
Everyone has their own unique set of character traits. These traits are often amplified in stressful situations.
When your team learns to work with different personalities, problems can be solved more easily. Collaboration also improves the quality of decisions made. The more complex problems you solve as a team, the closer you become.
The result?
A more informed team → better collaboration → more revenue and success.
Dominant, influential, steady or conscientious? Invite your team to use the DISC model and find out how each team member makes decisions.
What happens when you decide against team decision making?
When you don't involve your team in decision making, you enter a vicious cycle:
You overlook necessary decisions or make the wrong ones.
You encourage the best employees to leave.
You miss business opportunities and lose revenue.
If you want to make good decisions, don't rely solely on your own experience. Experience helps, but it doesn’t protect you from making bad choices. As a manager, you’re more likely to make the wrong decisions if you stay in your comfort zone and fail to invite input from your employees. The moral of the story? Stay open to your team's ideas.
Don't make decisions alone. Even if it leads to short-term success, it can be a "wrong turn" in the long run. Invest in developing an effective team of creative thinkers and problem-solvers. You - and the company – will be better off for it.
When is team decision making important?
Before you make a decision alone, ask yourself whether you have enough data to make your decision. Only then can you decide with confidence. Spoiler: most of the time, you won’t have all the information you need to get it right.
It always helps to consider the bigger picture. Even seemingly small decisions can affect multiple teams and departments. Before moving ahead with a decision, check in with those involved. This can be in a meeting or via a collaborative document. It will help you spot gaps in your knowledge, identify any problems, and avoid conflict later on.
Want to know whether you’re better off deciding alone or with your team? Use the Vroom-Yetton decision making model to guide you.
How do you implement team decision making?
It’s important that everyone on your team is engaged in the decision-making process. As a manager, there are ways you can encourage this. Follow these 3 steps to bring structure to team decision-making.
Decide to what extent you want to involve your team.
Pick the right team decision making method.
Pick the right tools for implementation.
For the first step, the scale ranges from "involve my team very little" and "involve my team completely". Pick the one that feels right for your situation. The levels of team involvement could look like this:
Invite your team to share their opinions.
Involve your team in a meeting about the decision.
Give your team a say in the decision.
Delegate the decision to the team.
A collaborative brainstorming tool like MindMeister can support team decision making as it allows you to ideate and explore solutions together. With MindMeister, team members can add their ideas to a mind map simultaneously and see changes in real-time.
5 steps to implementing successful team decision making
Follow these 5 steps to make the team decision making process smoother.
1. Define roles and responsibilities
Clearly communicate who has what role in executing the decision. When everyone knows what they are responsible for, there is:
Less confusion
Less duplicate work
Fewer conflicts
Use an org chart to document responsibilities. It's an easy way to define and communicate the individual roles in your team. You and your team will benefit from:
A transparent division of labor. Everyone in the team knows what others are doing.
A clear hierarchy. Everyone in the team knows who has the last word.
A clear decision path. Everyone in the team knows who reports to who.
Check out our Company Org Chart template in MindMeister.
2. Create a central source of information
Many leaders communicate too little or in the wrong way. Don't assume that your team already knows everything that's going on.
Communicate openly and be prepared to repeat yourself. Reminding your team of important information will keep it top of mind. However, don’t fall into the trap of documenting the same information in multiple places. When you have multiple documents, each needs to be updated. It’s easy to forget to do this – and it’s also a drain on your time. When information is conflicting, no one will know which version is correct. This only causes confusion.
A single central source of information is helpful as:
You don’t need to repeat yourself in writing.
Your team doesn’t have to sift through multiple versions of the same information.
Everyone has the same up-to-date information.
You avoid knowledge loss.
To communicate about daily work clearly and asynchronously with your team, you can use a task management tool with documentation functionality like MeisterTask. However, whichever tool you go for, it should:
Be accessible anytime and anywhere.
Be easy for everyone to use.
Have features for collaboration, such as roles and permissions and version history.
3. Gather multiple ideas and perspectives
Invite your team to brainstorm together and encourage them to get creative. A mind map is the best tool to generate ideas as a team. If your team is hybrid or remote, MindMeister is a good choice. With MindMeister, your team can access and edit the map at any time, from anywhere.
Pro tip: Want to improve your mind mapping skills to make better decisions faster? Take a look at our free MindMeister courses.
4. Choose the right method and tool for team decision making
Explore these 6 methods for team decision making and find out which works best for you.
To implement the most common methods for group decision making, you can use a mind map. With MindMeister, you can explore solutions with your team and clearly outline the decision reached.
Find out more about the 6 best team decision making methods and discover mind map templates to help you get started.
5. Collect feedback
Get feedback from your team before, during, and after the decision-making process. This will ensure that all angles and perspectives are considered and that there are no major objections.
You can record feedback in Notes in MeisterTask. This way, all arguments are collected in one place. You and your team have the information you need to discuss the next steps in a goal-oriented manner.
Make your next decision as a team!
Best of luck with your next team decision. Feel free to let us know in the Meister Community how you get on.
