Is a consensus necessary when making team decisions?

While many of the decisions we make on a daily basis are quite simple, some are not. These decisions may involve gathering a huge amount of information, exploring many different ideas, and drawing on other peoples experience. The consequences of the right or wrong decision may be profound for the team, the organization and the team leader.

So, should leaders be decisive, think the issues through on their own, and take firm action? In some cases, no, in some cases, yes.

There’s a limit to how much information any one individual can process, and a limit on how many perspectives one person can see. Many decisions need full group participation to explore the situation, provide input, and make a final choice. As you’ve probably seen, groups can often make better decisions than any one person operating on his or her own. This is one of the main reasons that good companies have boards, to which important decisions are taken.

What’s more, many decisions need “buy-in” from the entire team, if they’re to be implemented successfully, and it’s hard to get this buy-in if people haven’t been involved in the decision-making process.

The problem is that when you bring other people into the decision-making process, you need to approach decisions differently. These approaches vary, depending on a number of different factors, including:

• The type of decision.
• The time and resources available.
• The nature of the task being worked on.
• The environment the group wants to create.
• The amount of buy-in needed.

Understanding why and how best to organize decisions for your team is an important skill. We’ll show you some key tools that you can use when you want to involve your whole team in the decision-making process.

As team leaders, husbands, fathers and Christians, what outside conditions are affecting our decisions? How much thought are we giving to our actions before we perform them? Are we giving the correct amount of weight to the input of our team mates, wives, and children?

How often do you actually stop and say to yourself, WWJD? Has anyone found the situation with which this wouldn’t work?

Photo credit: Electroburger / Foter / CC BY-ND
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Photo credit: kowitz / Foter / CC BY-SA