When managers make decisions for their teams instead of with their teams, their next step is to sell that decision. They need to get “alignment”, “buy in”, get people on board and excited to see it through. But when people aren’t included in decisions that impact them, the decisions made run the risk of lacking the context that is necessary to solve problems effectively. So solutions presented in this manner don’t always receive a warm welcome. By building consensus, and crafting decisions collaboratively, you improve your chances of avoiding the ineffectiveness and resentment that can result from hierarchical decision making.
I’ve seen leadership teams try to help by solving the problems that their teams are experiencing. They explore contributing factors and come up with an action plan. Then they come back to the team to recap their conclusions and walk through their plan.
This works ok when the problem space is wholly owned and solely experienced by the leadership team. For example, problems in how they work with each other, how they work with leadership levels above them, etc. The danger lies within trying to explore problem spaces that are shared by the people in their reporting teams. When a group tries to solve the problems of another group, they risk lacking context about what causes the problems, and insights on how to approach solutions. This can lead to coming to conclusions that might be different than those that are arrived at collaboratively.
When we make decisions as individuals, we go through the process of:
- making an observation
- applying some sort of meaning to that observation
- feeling emotions or instincts about what we think our observation means
- and making a decision about what action we want to take as a result
For groups to make good decisions, they need to go through these steps together, so that they understand the circumstances, and can contribute their own observations, interpretations, instincts, and solutions along the way. This ensures that you are working from a data set that better represents the issues under examination; you’re including more observations and instincts from the people who are directly affected by the problems.
A team can investigate the following in order to arrive at solutions that are more effective, and have broader team support:
- What do we understand to be the problem? Do we agree that this is a problem, and worth solving?
- What observations identify this as a problem? What observations do others have? Are we missing important data?
- What significance is being applied to these observations? Are we considering this data objectively? What assumptions are being made about the situation?
- What has kept us from solving this problem before now? What are the contributing factors? Do these require their own solutions?
- Is this the problem that we want to solve now? What are the trade-offs in addressing this problem before any others?
- Given the observations and their significance, what options have been considered and how would each fulfill the perceived need?
- What other solutions could we consider? Why might those work or not work?
- How are past conclusions shaping the current reasoning?
By considering these questions among the people with the most direct experience with the problem at hand, you commit to building something meaningful together. You bring myriad viewpoints into a unified effort, working toward a common purpose. Investing this time upfront builds consensus in, instead of having to try to achieve it after the fact.
This is all pulled together from reading on inference and decision making. Here are a few resources if you’d like to learn more:
Consenting to decisions by Mandy Brown
Employing Differences, Episode 151: What leads you to that conclusion? by Karen Gimnig & Paul Tevis
Facilitating with The Focused Conversation by Jake Calabrese
Understanding the Ladder of Inference: Navigating Cognitive Pitfalls by Prof. Richard Peterson