This section is the result of the corresponding "Leadership Monthly" workshop with contributions of Manuel Fasching, Cony Wiedenig, Thomas Grassauer, Giovanni Liva, Jörg Poecher, Bojan Dolinar, Peter Jelitsch, René Panzar, Heinz Burgstaller.
Whenever a decision needs to be made, you have a broad range of options on how to make this decision. For some situations, it is appropriate to make decisions by yourself without consulting your team. For others, a co-operative or democratic approach, where your whole team decides, is the better way to go. Choosing the appropriate method and degree of team inclusion is of course also dependent on your personal leadership style. Typically, the more you include the team in a decision making process, the more the decision will receive commitment from the team.
In facilitating the decision making process in a co-operative setting, there is of course a broad range of tools that can be used.
A very efficient and effective liberating structure for decision making in groups (also large groups) is 1-2-4-All as it makes sure that everyone in the group is heard. In multiple iterations, inputs to a topic are merged until all issues are aggregated. See also here for a shorthand instruction.
For resource-constrained decisions (e.g., where a budget needs to be kept), the innovation game Buy a feature makes sense. Originally intended to define feature sets in budget-constrained environment, it can be generalized to other resource-constrained problems. Collaboratively, participants need to agree on a subset of the options where their summed-up prize is within the budget.
For decisions, that need deeper research or advanced technical knowledge, your team might nominate a task force that is then trusted to properly research the problem and come up with a decision (or at least options).
In any case, make sure that every discussion in the group is well moderated and that everybody's voice is heard. Methods for finding decisions in groups are also always part of good retrospectives. See here for some further ideas.
Quite naturally, voting on a decision is a straightforward thought when making a group decision. But of course, there are many different types of votes.
If the vote does not need to be unanimous, majority voting can be employed with either relative or absolute majority requirements.
In ranked voting methods, voters do not submit a single vote but they rank the options according to their preference. Depending on the chosen evaluation method, the candidate option of least resistance can be determined. Weighted voting is a subclass of ranked voting where not only a ranked list but a certain weight is assigned to each option. A simple method to gamify this is Planning Poker Voting.
Of course, votes can be public or anonymous, there might also be people with a veto option (probably you as a lead in some decisions).
As a specific technique to collect votes within a group of people, have a look at dot voting (can be done physically or virtually) where voters receive a determined number of sticky dots (each representing one vote) that can then be placed on a flipchart or whiteboard at the respectively chosen option.
Systemic consensus is a nice technique that you can use whenever voting does not yield any usable majorities.
Once a decision is made, your problem is not yet solved. First, the decision has to be made actionable and it needs disciplined application. Whether it is changes in your work process or technical decisions, you need to ensure that you and your team follow through with it.
If you have chosen the optimal decision-making method, the commitment of everyone to the decision should be present. Note to self helps to keep oneself reminded of given commitments.
Thus, it always makes sense to define metrics to measure the successful implementation of your change. Any metric of course also needs proper monitoring. In the implementation, defining milestones and checking them in sync points is an age-old, successful method.
To make sure, you recognize when getting off track with an ongoing implementation of a change or decision, try nominating a sentinel or watchdog. This person in your team is responsible to regularly check if you are still on track and raise the issue if you are not.
Following up on action items in retrospectives or other meetings can also ensure that actions are take appropriately.
In any change, that actually has a defined end or can be successful at a point (i.e., which is not part of continuous change), Definitions of Done are a handy way to check if you have reached your goal already.
Although a majority of your team supports the decision that was made, there might always be a person (or small minority) that straight-out rejects it and does not want to commit to it. It will be your responsibility to get the whole team on track and as always, there is a multitude of approaches to this - again, depending on the specific context.
Convincing skeptics on a factual basis is (although still hard) often the easiest task. Positive examples, visible success or external testimonials may be convincing. One-on-One talks with the respective persons can also support here. In any case, keep in mind, that people typically don't react well to pressure in situations like that.
However, very often the resistance to changes does not have factual reasons. Sometimes, people feel not sufficiently included in the process. There might also be an underlying need that is not fulfilled (either by the chosen solution to a problem or by the process that you used to get there). An appreciative inquiry might help, otherwise, methods from non-violent communication like active listening will be of help to you (consider taking a training in this).
In any case, make the person part of the solution. Ask them to provide evidence for their hesitance. Ask for suggestions for alternatives or better solutions. "What is the minimal change we need to make such that you agree?" is a powerful question here.
A general rule in difficult leadership topics: don't hesitate to ask for help. As your role deals with the most complicated of systems - humans - you can only profit from the experience of others in addressing difficult situations.