In the corporate world, you hardly survive without a team. A team usually work together for a common goal despite the differences of the domains the teams are engaged in.
From a start-up to a well-established organisation, the secret of growth lies on the teamwork! The more your team perform, more the organization moves forward!
Decision making in a team is vital in terms of team’s proceedings. In planning in the likes of Sprint planning (In Agile Software Development we normally use sprints of 2-3 weeks for a delivery), Project planning, Design planning, Process planning and so on, teams rely on decisions made! Normally the team lead makes the final decision by considering all ideas, feedback, business requirements, resource availability and so on!
Team leadership
Team leadership plays a major role in decisions making simply because he or she sustains the power of making decisions! A good leader always is a good listener, he/she listens to the subordinates as well as the superiors; after considering all ideas and feedback, he/she aligns the business requirements, the resource availability and other factors that influence the decision making and make the possible best decision. Thus, it is a collective decision, once implemented! More often than not, a collective decision pays off! Why? Purely because it’s no longer the decision made by the lead, but it’s the decision made by all! Everyone has to contribute to execute the decision! If in any case it fails then it’s a collective failure, not an alone one!
When you ought to make a decision on a Sprint Content, or when you decide on the Estimated Time of Accomplishment [ETA] for certain solutions or in a nutshell if you are to decide on any problem-solving scenario, then arguably you must consult your team members to make your final call!
And make them aware that you have considered their ideas and feedback; that’ll immensely improve the team culture as well as the organisation! A collective decision paves the way to collective actions and those actions mean a lot towards the outcome.
In addition, in daily family life too, collective decisions can contribute toward better results than one sided decision!
In any corporate sector, your team is the most valuable asset in your territory! In a leader’s eye view, the precious treasure you have is your team! If the team fail,then you fail! If you fail, then the organization fail! Many leads and bosses are unsuccessful because they lose the grip of the team!
Be humble
Rather than being rigid on your opinions and decisions be humble enough to gather your team to enrich your opinions and decisions: When the team was involved in the decision-making process then they feel that they were a part of the decision and hence there is a duty and responsibility to adhere to the outcome of it!
For me, in the contemporary corporate sector, there is no stupid question, as a leader you have to train your ears to listen to various varieties of questions from various team members: The more you become a good listener, the more you build the trust and comfort in the team! When the team trust you, the entire team moves forward successfully!
Each team member should be empowered by appropriate domain knowledge and training: Even though the team understands the concepts and scenarios of the relevant domains, they must be equipped with strong subject matters in-order to tackle issues arising.
Effective delegation
Use effective delegation: Delegate authority, duty, responsibility, and ownership effectively! In other words, when there is lack of delegation, the chain of success is broken, hence the organisations fail! See the “good” very well and the “bad” notably: Be a very good appreciator while being a very good feed-backer! Enrich them not to repeat the mistakes repeatedly! Members do mistakes, even you do! A great motto: Learn from the mistakes and move forward.
Make sure you handle the less performers and troublemakers diplomatically: Yes, there can be such characters in any team! If they continuously hinder the team moral, then treat them professionally and try your utmost best to get them on track! If not successful, then you have to take professional and ethical actions to keep the moral of the entire organisation!
When you do these as a leader, you earn the due respect!
You must take care of your team, then the team will take your organisation autonomously!
The writer is a Computer Engineer cum IT Manager with over 14 years of Industry Exposure, currently residing in Perth, Australia.