Putting the Team First

As a key leader at your organization, you have to make so many important decisions that can have a profound impact, right? Your products affect the health of people. In some cases, it could be a life or death kind of impact. What are some strategies that you turn to time and time again to successfully navigate the decision-making process on so many crucial items and products?

Yeah, the decision-making process in management is key. You know, there’s a term these days I love hearing which is, “I may disagree with you, but I’ll commit.” So, there’s lots of decisions in an organization where there’s going to be different opinions on how to take the company. There are big impactful decisions.
And the key for me is that every stakeholder needs to be heard. And you need to have an ability to go to each stakeholder and say, I’d like to drive this decision. I want to hear what are your concerns? And let’s talk about how we’re going to mitigate your concerns.
So, giving the people who are the decision-makers an ability to voice their concerns, be heard, address it and talk very openly about it, there’s got to be trust in the room. A lot of times you’re making a key decision for a company and you might not say what you’re feeling because you’re going to offend somebody or you’re worried about, “Oh, well, if I say this, they’re going to attack me later on for that.”
So, this key concept of trust within the team is so critical to me. And I love this book that I’ve always referred to, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – it’s one of my favorite books.

I need to read that.

I just love it so much because it talks about how when you’re making key decisions for a team, you always have to put the team you are on, first. That is your first team. And so, driving decision making, having the ability, the trust in the team to say how you really feel so that you can make the best decision for the company together.