When And How To Involve Your Team In Decision-Making

Heavy is the head that wears the crown…or, to more correctly quote William Shakespeare, “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

In either case, this quote really hits home for leaders of organizations.

Every day, leaders face dozens of decisions. Some are mundane, some are easy and some are very difficult because they have serious consequences for the organization.

One way to facilitate decision making is to know when and how to involve your team so that you’re making decisions with full information, diverse perspectives and the full buy-in necessary for successful implementation.

That sounds easy, but one size doesn’t fit all.

Here are three types of decisions leaders need to make and my recommendations for involving your team.

Strategic Decisions

Strategic decisions have significant impact on an organization’s future. Examples include restructuring, acquisitions, launching a product or service and anything that takes the organization in a new direction.

The assessment of strategic decisions benefit from the leadership team’s combined expertise, insights and perspectives, but you don’t want everyone on the team weighing in on these types of decisions.

However, you should be transparent with your team about the organization’s long-term goals and resulting big-picture decisions, sharing the context of decisions to build understanding, engagement and buy-in.

When a client of mine was evaluating a potential acquisition opportunity, they assembled a working group of senior managers to help assess the opportunity and arrive at a decision. While only this smaller group was privy to the deep details, the leader communicated to everyone that growth was an organizational objective and explained how the acquisition fit into achieving it. The entire team felt in the loop and that they had a voice, even though the decision had already been made.

Tactical Decisions

Tactical decisions focus on the immediate steps organizations need to take to achieve long-term goals. Examples include making a key new hire, improving workflow processes and other means of getting from Point A to Point B (the achievement of the larger strategic objective).

When one of my clients was struggling to deliver a large project, the leader empowered the team to allocate personnel and resources to meet the deadline and deliverable.

Because tactical decisions are likely to impact your team’s daily routine, getting their input is invaluable. Additionally, having your team own as many tactical decisions as possible will save you time, build capability and motivate employees.

Operational Decisions

Operational decisions are those that help your team work effectively and efficiently. Gathering team input on day-to-day operations matters because the more involved team members are the better they perform.

Further, team involvement not only generates more ideas for making systems or processes run smoothly, but also more creative solutions.

When one of my clients needed to assess their organization’s tech stack, they didn’t do it in a vacuum. They thoughtfully selected the right team members to help make the decision. The resulting tech stack addressed the most pressing needs of every department – something it could have failed to do had the wrong individuals been tasked with providing input, analyzing options and making the final call.

Wearing and Sharing the Crown

As a leader, you still wear the crown and the unease that occasionally comes with the decisions required of that role.

But when you understand how to delineate the various types of decisions that need to be made and the best way to involve your team in each, your job gets easier.

To share and facilitate effective decision-making, I recommend all organizations develop a decision-making matrix that aligns decision types with team members, level of involvement and specific role.

Without a matrix like this, every decision appears to be new territory when, in reality, it isn’t. As a result, analysis paralysis occurs, decision-making gets stalled and organizational progress is greatly slowed.

As the examples I’ve shared show, where I’ve helped leaders implement this tool, I see better decisions being made – and more quickly – across the board.