How to make the best choice?
How to make a good decision?
How to assign the right task to the right person?
First of all, one thing is always certain: There is always a choice. In some situations, it seems to us that we simply have no choice. On the other hand, sometimes too many options can give us a problem. The more quality and objective information we gather, the easier it will be to make the right choices.
When it comes to teams, things get a little more complex. When multiple members participate in a decision-making process and make a choice, the outcome can be completely unexpected. Each piece of information collected, no matter how objective, goes through different “filters” of each team member. These filters consist of knowledge, experience, and beliefs. This is also the reason why one, completely identical information can lead to completely different outcomes depending on the person.
CHOICE – AUTONOMY – RESPONSIBILITY
One of the agile leadership principles says that the team should make joint choices, have complete autonomy in creating that choice and that at the end of that process it bears full responsibility for its choice. Through the previous practice in working with different teams, it turned out that the team that makes decisions in this way, has autonomy and responsibility achieves much better results. Relationships within the team are better, every vote is equally important and team members feel as they are in a safe environment. A secure environment, which is equally open to success but also learning from mistakes is the basis for a stable and productive team. Also, self-organizing teams often emerge from this environment.
The question often arises, “if the team is self-organizing, what is the role of the leader?”. In this whole team process, the role of the agile leader is crucial, because he is the one who should provide all the necessary conditions in order to form such an environment. That requires his full commitment to the team. He needs to understand each team member, how the whole team works, what the joint forces are, and where there is room for development. One thing is for sure: an agile leader has new competencies. He should not only manage the team, but he should also teach members how to make decisions and put them at the center of decision-making. Also, it is necessary to develop a team sense of responsibility, but on the other hand, to support their team if they fail, above all to help them learn from mistakes. The outcome is joint development and growth and certainly visible results.
So a lot of things are needed for a leader to create a self-organizing team. Let’s go back to the question, what will be the role of the leader? The leader should preserve a safe team environment, which is very sensitive to various external factors. He is the one who reacts quickly and adequately to all changes in the environment, creating added value for the company and preserving the core values of his team.