Group Decision-Making Techniques: Strategies for Effective Team Consensus

Much like the best time tracking software records the passage of moments, group decision-making involves the careful consideration of ideas and perspectives to arrive at the best possible outcome. Making decisions as part of a group can be challenging. First, you need the right people – experts in the field. Next, you need to get them to talk and agree on the issue at hand. And this is where problems begin. Everyone has their own opinion, and no one wants to compromise. Knowing how to apply group decision making skills correctly is the solution you need. 

In this article, we’ll help you uncover:

• How to establish an effective group decision-making process?
• What are the best group decision-making methods?
• What are the pros and cons of group decision making?
• How to make group decision-making effective?

Group Decision-Making Basics

Before we dive into the steps, let’s define group decision-making. Many confuse teamwork with group decision-making, but while both involve multiple individuals analyzing and solving issues, they differ. As Katenback and Smith explain in The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization, here are the key differences:

	Group member	Team member
Independence	Each group member is independent	Teammates rely on themselves and their mates
Leadership	Decision-making groups have a leader	Teams share leadership roles
Performance evaluation	Group performance can’t be measured directly	Team performance and work outcomes can be measured
Decision-making	Group members discuss, decide, and delegate	Team members discuss, decide, and do the work

The overall effectiveness of group decision-making depends on many factors. For example, time constraints or any underlying conflicts can impact the group decision-making outcomes. That’s why, before problems occur, it’s vital to establish group decision-making procedures and monitor them along with their implementation. 

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Group Decision-Making Process (Step by Step)

Now that we’ve established the basics, below are the steps to implementing the most effective group decision-making process!

1. Planning 📝

In this phase, decide how you’ll make decisions and measure success.

• First, choose decision-making tools like meetings or brainstorming sessions.
• Second, define success by setting criteria that align with your goals, values, and stakeholders’ needs.

Ask questions like:

• Will it work?
• How much will it cost?
• Will it fit the existing system and schedule?

2. Determining alternatives 🤔

Generate 5 to 9 possible solutions that meet your criteria. Focus on the best alternatives and consider previous solutions that worked in similar situations.

3. Selecting the best alternative 💎

Now, choose the best solution by comparing each option to the criteria you defined in the planning stage. The one that meets the most criteria is the best choice.

4. Deployment 📤

At this stage, you bring your decisions into reality. This involves determining the actions and tasks that follow the final decision. It also includes the guiding requirements on how to organize the process.

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Group Decision-Making Methods

Group decision-making requires attention and guidance, but it doesn’t need to be a lengthy debate. To make it more effective and enjoyable, some managers use games and activities. Here are some ideas to engage employees in the process.

💭 Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a technique to generate ideas with a group of 5 to 9 members, a leader, and a flipchart.

• Stage 1: The leader presents the issue, and members suggest ideas, which the leader writes down.
• Stage 2: The group evaluates each idea against success criteria.

If members feel uneasy sharing ideas, consider anonymous brainstorming using a voting app, chat, or email.

💁‍♀️ Nominal group thinking

This method is a structured variation of brainstorming that encourages independent input without group interaction, reducing bias from dominant voices.

Procedure:

• Members write their ideas and give them to the leader.
• The leader displays ideas on a flipchart.
• Members discuss and improve the ideas.
• Each member evaluates the ideas and votes.
• The leader tallies votes and determines the best solutions.

🙋‍♂️ 🙋‍♀️ Delphi technique

The Delphi technique works well for remote groups of experts, each with their own expertise in a particular field.

Procedure:

• The facilitator defines the problem and selects experts.
• Experts submit solutions via questionnaires.
• The facilitator reviews answers and sends follow-up questions to dive deeper.
• The process repeats until a consensus solution is reached.

🤷‍♂️ 🤷‍♀️ Dialectical inquiry

This method encourages teams to discuss and debate alternatives, uncovering potential issues and making it easier to reach a decision when there are pros and cons on both sides.

Procedure:

• The group is divided into two teams: pros and cons.
• The pros team presents their ideas, and the cons team offers counterpoints.
• Teams switch roles.
• The leader decides whose arguments were stronger and focuses on the key issues.

This method can also be adapted into a devil’s advocate practice, where one team member challenges ideas to reveal hidden problems.

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Pros and Cons of Group Decision-Making

When it comes to group decision-making, success depends on many factors — team manager skills, relationships between members, demographic diversity, and more. Even though these factors vary, experts have outlined some common advantages and disadvantages.

👍 Advantages of group decision making

Group decision-making allows teams to:

• 🧠 make well-informed decisions thanks to the variety of expertise involved
• 🌍 come up with unconventional ideas, especially with diverse cultural backgrounds
• 🔎 reveal and prevent hidden challenges that could arise later
• 📋 better understand follow-up tasks, since everyone helps generate solutions from the start
• 🤝 enhance collaboration through active discussions, debates, and collective work

👎 Disadvantages of group decision making

No technique is without its drawbacks. Here are the main disadvantages:

• ❌ absence of personal responsibility, as failures are attributed to the group, not individuals
• 🐢 slow or ineffective process if the manager poorly organizes the decision-making
• 🧩 risk of groupthink, where members avoid conflict and critical discussion, leading to poor outcomes
• 🎲 tendency for risky shifts, where the group makes bolder decisions than individuals would alone, often because responsibility feels diluted

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How to Make Group Decision-Making Most Effective

Here, we’ve gathered some of the best tips on how to make group-decision making more effective and less tedious. Using these makes group decision-making a less stressful, more effective process:

1️⃣ Keep your groups small

The larger the group, the more biased its decision is. Your groups shouldn’t exceed five members per group. Otherwise, the participants will feel less responsibility for the decisions made and are more likely to fall into groupthink. 

2️⃣ Make your groups diverse

Not just a way to please HR. People from different backgrounds can come up with unusual but viable ideas. These ideas can significantly benefit your business and lead to unexpected outcomes. This rule also works for heterogeneous groups. When men and women work together, they better imply their diverse skills and fulfill complex tasks faster.

3️⃣ Make the environment safe

The best way to make the working environment safe when everyone can freely share their opinions is to provide some anonymity in the group decision-making process. For this, collect suggested ideas and criticisms independently. This will help ensure that your employees that you’re genuinely ready to listen to their opinions and statements. 

4️⃣ Don’t entirely rely on the experts

You may know the strengths and weaknesses of each of your employees. Nevertheless, when searching for new ideas and non-obvious solutions, listen to every participant. This way, you avoid dominant opinions and groupthink biases. 

Visual learners among us may want to take a look at this video covering some of the basic ground rules for making better decisions in groups:

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Wrap Up on Group Decision-Making

Group decision-making is an integral part of any profitable business. And you can’t make these decisions without relying on a team of experts. Organizing an effective process and adhering to group norms within your company requires a little work, but it’ll all be worth it with professional management skills and patience. 

We, at Everhour, hope that you’ve learned how to establish a group decision-making process and successfully manage it!