Decision making is an essential part of making progress. We use different methods to decide and they shape the new reality. Most of the time we act intuitively, but being more aware can lead to better results. The same decisions can lead to completely different outcomes depending on HOW we made them.
There is a book “Leadership and Decision Making.” by Victor Vroom and Philip Yetton, where they list the following styles. Just by reading those you can get an idea, which of the five decision-making processes seems more efficient to you:
- Autocratic (A1): You use the information that you already have to make the decision, without requiring any further input from your team.
- Autocratic (A2): You consult your team to obtain specific information that you need, and then you make the final decision.
- Consultative (C1): You inform your team of the situation and ask for members’ opinions individually, but you don’t bring the group together for a discussion. You make the final decision.
- Consultative (C2): You get your team together for a group discussion about the issue and to seek their suggestions, but you still make the final decision by yourself.
- Collaborative (G2): You work with your team to reach a group consensus . Your role is mostly facilitative, and you help team members to reach a decision that they all agree on.
While it seems obvious that collaborative approach G2 creates stronger team commitment, provides better quality, and builds a great culture, it’s good to be fully aware that there are scenarios, when decisions should be autocratic. The model provides a set of question that help understand when taking this path is right:
– Is the quality of the decision important?
– Is the team commitment to the decision important?
– If you made the decision yourself, would the team support it?
– Is conflict amongst the team over the decision likely?
In Agile world we need to move fast but at the same time think long-term. Let’s make sure we conciously choose the right approach for every situation.
Attributions:
Landing page illustrations vector created by pch.vector – www.freepik.com