Making Better Team Decisions
Today’s complex world often requires us to pool the experiences and expertise of a team of individuals to make decisions. Teams may be comprised of people who regularly work together, but sometimes, teams are comprised of people who may not even know each other. Regardless of the composition or purpose of the team, better decisions are made when attention is focused on different aspects of the decision-making process. To have a practical, mindful discussion and, subsequently, high-quality decisions, team members need to perform three tasks:
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They need to:
Contribute information they have
Integrate the information they learned from others.
Discuss information to form a consensus.
Research shows that this approach significantly and meaningfully increased the amount of information contributed, increased the amount of information recalled, reduced the number of errors, and improved decision quality.
It sounds simple, right? The problem comes when team members need to focus on these steps separately. For example, instead of listening and considering the thoughts, ideas, and facts provided by other team members, team members often think about how they will respond when it is their turn to share information. The key is to learn to control your attention.
Mindful Attention
We often think attention is out of our control or difficult to maintain. However, attention can be managed to deliberately capture new information and incorporate that information into our decision-making process. When our attention is focused on the present moment, we are open to receiving new information, allowing us to refine our decision-making process based on new information.
How to Implement This Process
The primary implication of implementing this practice is to set aside time for these three separate periods: contributing, integrating, and discussing. This means there would be periods when everyone is asked to be silent and think. Pausing to think is not normal and will feel uncomfortable, but it has tremendous benefits.
The time allotted for each decision-making process could be based on ratios used in studies (e.g., 35% contributing, 25% integrating, 40% discussing). However, the ideal distributions must be based on the process's goals. For instance, it is possible that complex business problems (e.g., an environmental emergency) would require more time to discuss and resolve than the contribution process.
Summary
Implementing a process that includes time for sharing and discussion and a period of silence requires deliberate effort and structure to be effective. The leader must articulate and convince the team members that the benefits will outweigh the discomfort. This process has a meaningful effect on decision quality by helping teams avoid errors related to breakdowns in contributing, integrating, and discussing information.
Pausing to think is the antithesis of multi-tasking. Focusing attention on one task at a time enables us to be more mindful and to perform the one focal task better without distraction. Furthermore, prior research has found that mindful people act more ethically, especially during decision-making, due to the heightened awareness of the present. This may deter typical unethical mindsets, including self-serving thoughts and unconscious biases.
