Making the Team: A Guide for Managers

Decision Making in Teams

Decision making is an integrated sequence of activities that includes gathering, interpreting, and exchanging information; creating and identifying alternative courses of action; choosing among alternatives by integrating the often differing perspectives and opinions of team members; and implementing a choice and monitoring its consequences (Guzzo, Salas, & Associates, 1995). Decision making is a key activity that teams must do, no matter what their governance structure—self-managing, manager-led, or self-directing. This is true for tactical, problem-solving, and creative teams. In teams, information is often distributed unequally among members and must be integrated, and the integration process may be complicated by ...