In last blog, I have written about what did I learned after I read an article which is related to decision-making issue for leaders. For this blog, I will stick with this topic, to write another decision-making technique related article. As I mentioned in last blog, after Professor Feinberg talked about the importance of decision-making in a leadership, I start to looked for some related articles about some ways for us to improve the skill to make good decisions.
Brent Gleeson
The contributor for this article names Brent Gleeson, he is a Navy SEAL and since SEALs are trained to be innovative free thinkers with the ability to make rational decisions with limited information under very stressful situation, thus, he did learned how to make quick decisions in those highly chaotic environment. Likewise, different kinds of leaders in different kinds of fields are faced with dozens of decisions to make frequently, to do so, many successful leaders in the world might tell you that they used to make wrong decisions before, but all of those wrong decisions and failures also lead to valuable learning experiences for them. Even though the decision that makes by leaders are not always right, but one of the missions for being a leader is to be the one to make decision, no matter how hard the situation is. Thus, it is very important for leaders to make decision quickly in order to keep the organization or team moving forward.
Through the SEAL experience and based on what he had learned, Gleeson indicated four basic decision-making styles that leaders can choose to use:
Command
Command decision-making means leaders makes decision alone, without consulting followers. Of course this is the most effective style for leaders to use, especially when the team is looking for the immediate guidance. It could be a decision that will lead the team being successful, but it could be also lead the team to the wrong side, it is very depends on the leader’s decision-making capability.
Collaborative
Collaborative decision-making is about leaders are still the final decision maker, but leaders will request and gather the feedback and insight from their team before they make decisions. In this case, leaders tend to make decision supported by proper data and information that collected from their followers. This kind of style can avoid people surrounding you who are always agree with you, at the same time, those follower’s advice helps leaders to clarify their decision.
Consensus
Consensus decision-making is more likely a democratic vote, which means leaders will let their followers to vote, and this style is kind of follow the majority rule. In my opinion, the consensus decision-making style is needed when the outcome is going to affect the whole team and everyone in the team should declare themselves. It is not an efficient way to make a decision, and Gleeson said that this style of decision-making was very rare in the SEAL teams, unless when the team is allowed to vote and have a voice. But if they do so, this type of decision-making can help mold the culture.
Convenience
Convenience decision-making can be used when the followers are trusted, then leaders is not necessary the only one who can make the final decision, leaders can appoint their followers to do so. The benefit by using this decision-making style included it is a good chance to measure the decision-making ability of followers, empowering the team and maintaining leaders own sanity. In addition, Gleeson think the new decision makers might take fresh approaches to solving problems.
In summary, consensus and convenience are the two main decision-making styles we will use in our Hong Kong Student Association, the reason why we will choose to use these two is because we trust each other and we prefer to make a decision as a group, especially when we making some big decisions that affects how the event process.
CARPE DIEM 