Remember Bobby? He was the boss who wanted to make all the decisions on his own. He’s learned why group decision-making is important, but now he’s got another issue: how to keep moving forward in a timely manner while still building consensus.

What Bobby and other leaders needs are effective techniques for group decision-making. This article shares several approaches.

Hold up: Do we really need to slow things down so everyone can weigh in?

Yes, decision-making by groups can be challenging. We’ve previously discussed the dangers of groupthink. Yet that’s not the only obstacle you might encounter. Take an example we see often: Our clients want to solicit feedback from everyone regarding survey design. Yet, if they take all the suggestions offered, the survey would be hundreds of questions long (and no one would want to participate!).

An advantage of group decision-making is that you get a variety of perspectives. By encouraging different people to share their thoughts you can build better solutions. Plus, individuals are more engaged when they feel their opinion is valued and heard. Still, there’s a challenge in that, too. When you invite people to brainstorm, you also need to avoid alienating them if their ideas are left on the drawing board.

This article aims to help you address these potential pitfalls by sharing a range of group decision-making techniques. With the right tools in place you can reap the benefits of this powerful method of supporting collaboration, communication, and innovation.

Group decision-making methods

Keep in mind: Just as there is no one individual making the decision when you take this approach, there is no single group decision-making method that will always suit your team. It helps to know a range of group decision-making strategies to shape your processes. Here we’ll cover five options:

1. The Nominal Group Technique (NGT)
2. The RAPID Technique
3. The Delphi Method
4. Devil’s Advocacy
5. Dialectical Inquiry

1. The Nominal Group Technique (NGT)

The NGT begins with group brainstorming. While everyone involved in the brainstorming session is invited to share ideas, a moderator records the suggestions. Once the moderator has all the feedback, a panel of people or the group (depending on its size) rank the ideas prioritizing them from 1 (highest) to five (lowest). The moderator tabulates all the votes and determines the final ranking of all the ideas overall.

This technique is useful for groups with more vocal members or when the decision may be more controversial. The moderator can host individual or group brainstorming sessions to enable those who may be more reluctant to participate otherwise.

Some tips to keep in mind when inviting people to brainstorm:

• Be clear about objective or goal of brainstorming
• Focus on quantity
• Encourage variety
• Support every idea
• Ask questions
• Emphasize collaboration over criticism
• Include a variety of people

2. The RAPID Technique

Designed by Bain & Company, this technique is an acronym for a technique, RAPID®, which encapsulates the different roles in decision-making. In this approach, different people have specific parts to play:

• Recommend: Gathers the information and possible courses of action and develops the pros and cons for all options then synthesizes the information to offer recommendations.
• Agree: You may not always have this role, but sometimes a decision requires a sign-off from financial, legal, safety, or another part of the organization. This role works with the recommender to reach a mutually acceptable proposal.
• Perform: This involves the people who will actually implement or execute whatever is decided. These are the individuals who can flag potential problems or necessary process adaptations. Failing to include someone in this role can make the change management more arduous.
• Input: People with input share the information they have and draw on their own skills, experience, and background to improve the recommendation and ultimately decision.
• Decide: The person or team actually responsible for making the decision relies on the people at other stages of the process.

By identifying who has what role, and valuing the parameters around each role, group decision-making can be systemized and streamlined.

3. The Delphi Method

RAND developed this method initially to forecast the effect of technology on warfare. Yet today the Delphi Method is used across many applications. An advantage is that it allows experts to weigh in, anonymously, as a substitute for empirical evidence.

This method is iterative, which means you’ll go through several rounds collecting data by asking questions of your participants. For instance, a group trying to decide spending priorities might be asked to offer their feedback on the question of where the money should be budgeted. Then, the responses are gathered and aggregated so that everyone can see the results of the previous round. Participants are queried again with an opportunity to revise and explain their responses in several subsequent rounds until you reach consensus (or complete a pre-determined number of rounds).

Panelists are kept separate, which can help with diversity of opinions being shared. However, this process can taken longer as there is no live discussion energizing the debate.

4. Devil’s Advocacy

The devil’s advocate is someone who criticizes the proposal by asking tough questions and prompting people to consider their biases. In group decision-making, you’ll assign someone to this role to help identify risk and avoid groupthink by challenging ideas under discussion.

When appointing the devil’s advocate, it’s a good idea to select someone who can:

• Bring awareness to problems or risks without starting conflict
• Focus on the ideas not the people
• Keep the discussion on task
• Find flaws in arguments rather than hurting people’s feelings

5. Dialectical Inquiry

In dialectical inquiry you divide everyone making the decision into two groups. One group comes up with a recommendation and finds the strengths and weaknesses in that idea. The other does the same with a contrasting idea. Then, both ideas are presented with pros and cons and the group decides how to proceed.

This requires preparation from all group members, but can help you find the best solution as your final decision can ultimately include elements of either solution or both. For example, a group considering launching a new product might have one subgroup discussing an online-only sales model while the other subgroup looks into a pop-up approach instead.

This approach is a good way to get people to see other perspectives and weigh options fully.

Group decision-making in your climate

This article has shared some main decision-making techniques for groups. The right one for your current climate will depend on several factors including decision complexity, size of group, time constraints, communication skills, geography, and more.

At the same time, not every decision needs to be made by a group. We’ll round out this series with a discussion of solo decision-making and when you need it most.

Need a tool to gather group feedback for your decision-making? Request a demo to find out how Sogolytics can help or sign up for a free trial today to see for yourself!