Five Decision Rules for More Decision-Making Clarity

What does it actually mean for a team to make a decision, or “agree” on something? Lack of clarity around decision making is all-too pervasive, so let’s unpack your options for decision rules. ‘Decision rules’ are the threshold by which a decision is deemed “made.”

Different types of decisions call for different levels of commitment and shared understanding from the team. Ranked from most alignment to least alignment needed, here are the decision rules your team should choose from.

UNANIMITY
Unanimity means that every single team member fully supports the decision. The decision is what team members feel they would choose if they were making the decision on their own. This is the highest bar a team can have for its decision-making, and should be reserved for the decisions that really need full support. Of course, it takes the most time to achieve.

CONSENSUS
Consensus means that every single team member agrees to live with (not block) a decision. It’s a level below unanimity, because the decision may not reflect what each team member would choose if they were making the decision on their own.

‘Consensus’ is the word most commonly used to refer to team agreement. The problem, though, is that most teams don’t stop to define what this means to them, or how they’ll know if they have achieved it. Leaders guess based on implicit clues as to whether consensus was reached, only to find out later that someone wasn’t actually on board with the decision.

Teams should define what consensus means to them and have a clear process for measuring it. For example, a team could use a 1-5 ranking, where 5 means full support. They could decide that the majority of members would need to be a 5, and no one could be below 3 in order to feel they have consensus.

VOTING
Voting puts support for a decision into a binary option: team members are either for or against this decision. It has the advantage of being a very quick decision making process if time is of the essence. Its disadvantage is that it can fragment a team into winners and losers, and those who voted against a decision could become blockers to that decision’s execution.

AUTHORITATIVE
This is where the leader of the team (the one with the most decision-making authority) makes the decision on his or her own after considering the team’s input.

UNILATERAL
This is where the leader of the team (the one with the most decision-making authority) makes the decision on his or her own without considering the team’s input. This is not recommended if you as a leader want a high level of commitment for the decision! If a unilateral decision needs to happen due to circumstances, there are ways for leaders to reconnect with their team after the fact, explain their rationale and hear concerns. This will go a long way in re-establishing any trust that might have been lost.

The most important step to all of this is to, when possible, to be explicit up front about how the decision will be made and which decision rule is planned for. If the team supports the decision rule, that goes a long way in the team members supporting the decision itself, even if it’s a different decision than they would have made.