Engaging Team Members In Decision-Making

Here's a revealing question for leaders: Do you actually know what decisions your team made last week? 👀 If you're like most managers, the answer is no. A Reality Check: Senior team members make dozens of significant decisions daily that you never see. Many of these shape your product, team, and culture in ways you don't realize. In the Teamwork Lab, we developed a simple but powerful exercise. How it works: 1️⃣ Ask your team to log their decisions for a week 2️⃣ Categorize decisions by type and impact 3️⃣ Discuss and work together to: ▶️ Identify patterns in stuck vs. flowing decisions ▶️ Clarify ownership boundaries ▶️ Remove unnecessary approvals What we learned: 🙌 19% increase in decision clarity ✅ 60% made more progress than usual 💙 85% would recommend to their teammates I’m an involved, supportive manager—and I was *shocked* by how much I learned the first time I did this with my team. It showed me new ways they excel in their roles, and how to help them remove friction or reduce complexity. 💡 Try it: Ask your team to write down every decision they make this week. When you discuss, ask how they *felt*. You’re not questioning their judgement or revisiting the outcome. You’re focused on understanding their experience. What was unclear? What was frustrating? What was easy? You'll be surprised—and you'll immediately see how to be a more effective leader. #Leadership #TeamEffectiveness #DecisionMaking

When you disagree with your team, give them a chance to convince you. I have been fortunate to work with superstars. As my career progressed, increasingly the superstars worked for me. Now, there was never a transitive property in effect: my staff being superstars did not equate to me being a superstar. But in my experience, good leaders can earn their own star power by getting the most out of their team, and I certainly aimed to lead strong teams. So what do you do when the inevitable happens—you disagree with your superstars? To answer that question, you need to go back several steps. Good leaders set their terms for respectful discourse and norms of decision-making from the outset. For me, ensuring team members know they will have an opportunity to bring their expertise to the table to try to change my mind is a critical tenet in the ruleset. I have a proven track record of decisive decision-making, so I never worry that this “convince me” opportunity conveys weakness. On the contrary, I am more concerned with ensuring that I don’t succumb to confirmation bias or other cognitive weaknesses that can come from relying solely on your own experience. So, I’ve made it a priority to create a “convince me” atmosphere wherever I’ve led a team. I have found that when I slow down and really listen (especially when I disagree) I often learn something. Sometimes I’m persuaded. Sometimes I’m not. But either way, the conversation is a valuable one. This practice shows your team that their voices matter. It encourages ownership and critical thinking. And it reinforces that the best ideas don’t have to come from the top. You don’t lose authority by being open to persuasion—you gain credibility. And often, you make better decisions because of it. I’ve included a picture with three superstars who “convinced” me time and again in the years we worked together: Andrew Hunter, Todd Harrison, and Tom Karako.  #Leadership #ManagementPrinciples

Dear Managers, A-Players will leave your company if you don’t empower them to make decisions. Let me explain... Top talent gets bored when they feel like their judgment isn’t trusted. So many inefficiencies in an organization come from not being clear on who makes decisions. Your job as the leader of the company isn’t to make every decision. It’s to develop leaders by trusting top team members to call some shots. Our leadership team constantly looks for opportunities to make other people the decision-makers. Nothing is more empowering than saying, “Hey Brent, why don’t you make the call on that?” You can share your opinion but the decision is theirs. Getting your team to think, “Oh wow, I get to make a decision?” inspires loyalty and increases engagement. Here is how I decide who gets to make a decision: • Who has the most experience in this particular area? • Who is closest to the customer in this particular area? • Who is most passionate and energized about this particular area? Now, I still have my team members check in with me. I share my opinion and gauge which way they are leaning, but I don’t take their decision-making ability away. You have to own your limited capacity as a leader. Making every decision as a senior leader does one thing well, and that’s slowing everything down. Team members in nearly every large organization we work with complain about the speed of the decision-making process. Empower top talent to make decisions and you’ll get: • Engaged and loyal team members • Movement with speed and precision • More time to make the big decisions that actually require your brainpower Join the 12,000+ leaders who get our weekly email newsletter. https://lnkd.in/en9vxeNk