Daring Feats of Decision Making — Trinity Team Coaching

When an organization needs to make a series of strategic decisions, the ponderous rituals related to strategic planning just won’t cut it if answers are needed urgently. Just suppose... a team could come together, actually enjoy the decision making experience, complete it in the required time frame, and chart out the right course for the company or organization as a result. What would make this scenario a possibility?

Assuming an organization can relinquish the mindset of “this is how we’ve done it before”, the appointed multidisciplinary team must be guided by two principals to be successful: Relentless Action and Seeking Understanding of What’s Important.

Bring in a Team Coach to facilitate the process and play ringleader to help a team perform daring feats of decision making.

Create a Team Charter for Relentless Action

The team coach invites the newly formed team to create a set of agreements that are action and task oriented. Given that this is a short term team, the elements of the team charter must help move the conversation quickly, and help make decisions. Charter elements, designed by the team, could include: putting full attention to the task, full participation, and permission to disagree. Once the team coach gets a “yes” from all, the charter is in place, and she takes on the job of traffic cop. It is the team, prompted by the coach, who decides how much time will be devoted to each task, including sharing of viewpoints. And if someone is diverging, the team coach has the right to step in and get them back on track, including the setting aside of devices to attend to the task at hand.

Seeking Understanding of What’s Important

The team coach is constantly asking questions to bring agreed-to criteria such as opportunity, resources, and vision into the conversation. This prompts dialogue - how does this project represent who we want to be? Why is this important to the company? These questions play a crucial role when there are impasses on more tactical concerns such as time and resources. “Chunking up” to the vision, the team is invited to find common ground on what they can all agree to, to counteract the downward spiral of disagreement.

The team coach is the chief instigator of keeping the energy and momentum going, helping reframe negatives into positives, and shift from “I” to “We”; Hey, look how much we accomplished today! We got it done!

Guided by the team coach, the team can come back to the table for the next round of discussions with energy and enthusiasm, to ultimately come to a set of decisions that support a unified vision.