How do you improve group communication and decision making?

A strong leader must facilitate communication, encourage participation, and guide the decision-making process. They should be open to feedback and create an inclusive environment where all members feel comfortable sharing their thoughts. 2nd, seek different viewpoints. Multiple perspectives can lead to more innovative and well-rounded decisions. 3rd, create an inclusive environment and make sure quiet members have an opportunity to speak.

Setting clear expectations not only helps with communication but it also builds efficiency in the process which makes organizations more agile. Clear expectations also helps build company culture in a positive way, helps everyone align, understands their roles, and helps prevent unnecessary drama. Setting clear expectations also helps an organization monitor and track their progress, results, and growth.

Group decision making can be challenging but also very rewarding with all the voices in the group are heard, one way to establish a good communication process is by sharing the agenda and goals of any meeting or team work as part of the welcome and context setting, but also by asking the participants to share their expectations. It is important that those participants expectations can be shared once they know the agenda so there is clear alignment on the focus of the conversation and what each of them expect to have or learn after the time together.

Often time management needs to be noticed. Getting struck with a particular agenda often hinders critical discussions. Set a realistic time frame by prioritizing the plans. It is beneficial if the participants are given points to prepare for active communication.

There is a tendency for meetings to go off in the wrong direction. This is the reason an agenda and clear purpose is essential. It ensures that all team members stay on track and that all relevant issues are addressed within the set timeframe. The moderator of the meeting also has to be firm and skillful in ensuring that team members are moved along through the agenda without spending too much time on only one agenda item.

Active listening is the best way to capture all ideas in the room and to manage a focus conversation that can lead into decision making. When thinking in decision making is likely that not all the entire room will agree on the same perspective or thinking, but if the conversation allows time for reflection with the right questions and by hearing ideas and providing feedback on the why, not only the what, participants can change their minds or disagree to commit and move on as a team.

Active listening and constant feedback can be a problem if you are not able to manage detractors and non contributors. Pay attention on your audience. They can be your best or your worst.

Active listening allows for authentic empathy to exist in a company’s culture. When authenticity and empathy exist, then the trust factor among co-workers goes up. This improves teamwork, efficiency through understanding, and a genuine care for one another which often leads to higher work ethics and willingness to collaborate as a team.

One thing I've found helpful is to call team members by name to contribute to the conversation. This ensures that those who rarely speak have a chance to participate. It's also to ensure that when composing teams, we pull together a variety of lived experiences to foster robust thinking and problem solving.

In order to build trust and advance on decision making the different voices in the room needs to be heard and for that a facilitator needs to design the specific spaces and activities to ensure everyone can have a moment to share, debrief, represent a team or work in small teams. Every person comes from different backgrounds and that is the beauty of team work, to hear all voices and when well planned new members can learn, ask questions and align and those with tenure in the team can share their perspectives but also hear new and fresh ideas. It is important to also be aware of the different needs that all participants might have to be heard, like disabilities or others to provide the right activities for everyone in the room.

Contribution is important because it allows for creativity to exist and the best ideas to have an opportunity to win. Contribution also allows for members to feel heard and feeling heard causes members of an organization to feel valued. Contribution leads to less resistance in getting buy in from the whole team. Every member with their various backgrounds can generate a great collaborative effort that achieves more than members working alone individually or simply be told what to do.

Try to give tasks and roles to people with different backgrounds. This can be a boost. If you do the agenda game as I said at first point you can have a easier life

It's essential to tap into the power of diverse perspectives. You gain so much when there is a diversity of voices and opinions. I have run many meetings where some people don't get a chance to contribute. Therefore, if you're a leader or in charge of a group discussion, you have to be intentional about creating an inclusive environment. Use your position of authority and leadership to make people feel comfortable about speaking up. This is not always easy but as you become more experienced as a manager, you'll discover that an actively engaged group delivers the greatest success for any project or business.

When critical thinking is integrated into the meeting process, it pushes participants to use it as a problem-solving skill, that contributes to creates a unique way of thinking, advancing the mindset for conflict resolution, effective communication, feedback management, among many other leadership skills that reflects the natural and intuitive use of "critical thinking".

Critical thinking is important because it helps make sure that bad decisions aren’t made simply out of emotion and impulses. Emotions should be a factor of consideration but not necessarily the primary or most important factor. Critical thinking helps groups to consider different angles, vantage points, data, intentions, and consequences. Decisions do need to be made and not delayed to the point of inertia, but critical thinking is necessary to make any important decision.

Using the right tools is necessary to get the right data and to be effective in your work. Having the wrong tools can make you inefficient or have the wrong data. Having the right tools is necessary for continuous improvement processes.

To make a pause in the process is the most natural way to identify areas of opportunity, to see where everyone is, to test the assumptions on understanding and gaps. To review the advances and to recap on next steps is a way to align on the goals and re-direct the efforts to keep advancing with truly understanding on the audience and their needs to move forward with decisions, consensus or agreements.

Stay firm at what you believe but also make sure you provide enough space for others to come up with their points as well. Discuss every viewpoint individually and ask others to weigh in on that while trying to establish a common view point. If you are a leader, sometimes, you can let go of your individual opinions to incorporate them for others.

I won't use the word "strong" leader. I prefer "effective". An effective leader will recognise that they ultimately have to have the final decision and the responsibility that entails. But importantly, they will be able to communicate to the team that everyone's input is not only welcome but necessary to arrive at an effective decision. An effective leader will be able to inspire the team with the confidence to contribute and will be humble enough to accept a diverse range of opinions and ideas without abdicating their responsibility.