Decision Making – Our Answer to a Team Leader’s Nightmare

Moving from Exclusive to Inclusive Decision Making:

In today’s work environment where team functioning is predominant, the singular important responsibility of a team leader is to create and maintain team synergy. Through our extensive experience as soft skill training consultants, we understand that the team leader experiences the greatest difficulty in moving from an exclusive to inclusive decision making process. Exclusive means that the leader primarily makes the decision; inclusive means that it a democratic process.

Brainstorming:

One of the tools used for inclusive decision making is brainstorming.

These are some guiding points for the brainstorming session:

1. Clearly define and state the problem at hand
2. The group has to be ideally sized – neither too large nor too small
3. Assign one person to write down all the ideas as they occur
4. Assign a moderator to do the following:
   • Every idea is accepted and recorded
   • Encourage people to build on the ideas of others
   • Encourage seemingly odd ideas

Infinite numbers of ideas are generated by this process. But what often happens is that the team leader finds it difficult to organize such an overwhelming amount of information; so the easier way is to abandon it completely. This is a total waste of intellectual capital, time and productivity. More importantly, it interferes with the morale of the group when they realize that their feedback was disregarded.

So the question I would be answering in this article is, “How are we going to use the extensive information that is obtained from the brainstorming session?”

The answer: “The Mind Mapping Tool”.

The Mind mapping tool – a creative solution for organized meetings:

In the late 1970s, Tony Buzan formulated a tool called Mind Mapping which added a totally different dimension to problem solving, decision making and writing.

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items. They are linked and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are useful to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas

(Source: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map)                                                            

Further reference on mind mapping, refer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlabrWv25qQ 

Why use mind maps?

1. Mind mapping is superior to the note taking method. They encourage a brainstorming approach to planning and organizational tasks. According to Buzan, mind maps fascinate the brain through its colourful, curvilinear and radial pattern, hence interesting the brain to retain information for longer durations.
2. The need to improve memory and retain information is inbuilt in every individual. Mind maps are a good tool to get one started, as thoughts will have more clarity and substance.

From my experience in training and coaching a large number of individuals and organizations, I find that job monotony and stress are more prevalent today, and is a common source for job dissatisfaction and work ineffectiveness.

Meetings and tasks can be mapped, and the new approach can generate a sense of excitement and freshness. It is high time that creativity is revived and encouraged in today’s organizations that are doing the sprint to survive the economic recession.

In addition to this, mind maps are like a memory aid and are amongst the best learning tools available today.

Conclusion:

At MMM Training Solutions, we have found that brainstorming and mind mapping are two vital tools a team leader could use to generate ideas in his team. We have successfully incorporated them into our training modules, namely - Personal Effectiveness, Personality Development and Conducting Effective Meetings. We believe that the creative approach is a better option in training participants.

We urge organizations to make these practices a part of its culture, and we can guarantee that the bar of performance will significantly rise.

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