Group Decision Making - Inclusion and Psychological Safety

Are there ways for companies to improve their group decision-making? Here are some practical tips on how to plan/implement best practices as well as psychological elements that should be taken into account.

I teach humanistic leadership, behavioral science techniques and have over 30 years in executive leadership.

1^st - Good decision making. “Good” is a moral value judgement. You have to define what good means to the group.  What is a good outcome?  Only then you can look at your options and weigh them against the ideal.  This step – helps eliminate a lot of conflict in group decision making. Often what happens is different people have different ideas of what good means. When you get everyone into agreement on what a “good” result is – you can more easily gain consensus. 

Let me give you an example. I used to work in the tower industry. What constituted a “good” tower to maintenance – was a tower that was in good shape and didn’t need much work.  What constituted a “good” tower to marketing was a tower in a good location for their customers.  What constituted a “good” tower to accounting – was a tower that was generating more cash flow then debt.  Until you get all 3 stakeholder groups into agreement on what a “good” tower is – there will be squabbling.  And yes – this is a real example from my past – it was finally agreed upon that if we were generating more cash flow then debt – then costs to upgrade the tower were irrelevant as we were already net positive.  If there was less cash flow than debt – then we needed to consider whether there was any marketing growth at this location and how much maintenance costs we would have to put in to get that growth. Consensus through integration of all concerns– made all the other decisions easier. We grew to be a half billion-dollar company.

2^nd – Involving ALL stakeholders. It is very easy to make decisions alone. In fact – there is a reason why many people do this. Getting consensus among people with different ideas of what “good” is – is hard.  But it’s a mistake.  You don’t know what you don’t know and not knowing things leads to poor decisions. Bringing in all the stakeholders (from lowest to highest paid) helps ensure that everyone is on board with the plan. It also helps ensure that you aren’t blind to major issues. Diversity is good for decision making.

3^rd – Dealing with diversity problems in decision making. Having a discussion on what is “good” with a diverse group of people is often quite difficult. We all have blind spots.  We think our opinion is the most important opinion. Sorting all that out – takes humility, patience and dignity.  Dignity is an interesting word. You have to act with dignity yourself and give dignity to people you disagree with.  Most people aren’t really capable of this – or rather – they don’t have a lot of practice – acting with dignity and giving dignity to others. But it’s key to sorting out differences and helping a diverse group – become cohesive – while allowing space for all those diverse opinions.

So … how do you do this? Pragmatically? 

By acknowledging dignity violations. Everyone has been hurt at some point. Some  - more than others.  People coming from marginalized backgrounds (whether it’s gender, race, disability, poverty – or whatever), probably have felt like their dignity has been violated more than others.   Creating space for and acknowledging those violations – helps people feel heard. Helps them feel like their dignity is being acknowledged and helps them move past the past violations so that they can work collaboratively in the present. 

This really does work. But to do it – you first have to acknowledge your own feelings of hurt. Understand that you are in charge of your own dignity. No one has the ability to take it from you. You either act with dignity or you don’t. Claim your dignity. Then – help others claim theirs. Then – the first conversation about what constitutes a “good” outcome – becomes much easier.

Let me know if you have any questions.  In the meantime, if you want to learn more - I have a variety of professional development courses that can help you learn these skills for yourself. 

https://humanistlearning.com/category/businesscourses/professionaldevelopment/ 

How harassment impacts decision making

Making decisions without good information rarely turns out well.

Harassment is a form of bullying. It is done to hoard power and to withhold power from others. It’s about creating in groups and out groups. People whose opinions matter and people whose opinions don’t matter. Whenever we decide some people’s opinions don’t matter we negatively impact decision making.

Lets talk specifically about how sexual harassment impacts decision making.

There was a study recently published about how often the female justices of the US Supreme Court are interrupted. Turns out, it’s a lot. Including by people who are prohibited from doing so, but whom the head justice allows to do it.  These interruptions are often because there is a disagreement on something and the males interrupting the women simply don’t want the woman’s opinion or line of questioning to be heard. https://hbr.org/2017/04/female-supreme-court-justices-are-interrupted-more-by-male-justices-and-advocates

The impact of all this interrupting is that diverse viewpoint are less likely to be heard, which is the point of the harassment. It silences opposition or perceived opposition.

The same impact occurs with other forms of harassment. Harassment is done to put someone off balance and to denigrate and dehumanize them and basically label them as others, so that the people watching, are less likely to side with or even listen to this person.  It doesn’t matter if what is happening is a snide comment, or passively aggressively “forgetting” to invite someone to a meeting on which they have knowledge that would be helpful to the group.  Harassment sidelines them so that their voices aren’t heard and this impacts the quality of the decisions being made.

Ideally, when you are in a group making a decision, you want to weigh the pros against the cons and come to a rational decision about the best course of action. But what happens if you are never given the cons. Or you aren’t told what the pros are?   Or there is an important piece of information that is omitted from the discussion.  When this happens, bad decisions are made and the decisions don’t actually solve the problem the group is trying to address.

Let me give you a rather mundane example of this.  I used to be the director of volunteer services for a rather large non-profit. Our fundraising department decided to hold a volunteer appreciation dinner as a fundraiser. It was a great idea. The problem? They didn’t tell me about it or invite me to any meetings or ask me for advice on which of the volunteers might be worthy of awards being given.  And no, I’m not joking, this really happened.  The result was a volunteer awards dinner with no volunteers present because they hadn’t been invited because no one told them they were invited or that they were receiving an award because the people organizing it never bothered to include the person with that information in their meetings and they never asked me or told me my help was needed. I was totally in the dark about what was happening until the event, which I thought was a normal fundraising dinner. I was sitting with our board members and it was so bad that the chair of our board started to openly mock the proceedings. Literally no one receiving an award was there.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s a pretty silly and stupid mistake they made.  But it’s the sort of thing that happens when people who have knowledge critical to the decision being made are either absent from the meeting or being silenced DURING the meeting. And these two things happen whenever bullying or harassment is happening because exclusion is the point of bullying and harassment.

If you are in business, take bullying seriously. If not for the human toll it is taking on your employees, stop it because allowing bullying and harassment to occur is hurting your ability to function well.
Learn how to stop bullying in the workplace - https://humanistlearning.com/retaliation1/

And the 7 principles of Humanistic Management - https://humanistlearning.com/?p=2237

Finally - learn about reality based decision making - https://humanistlearning.com/realitybaseddecisionmaking/