Creation of Training Tool

Introduction

It is a common trend in many organizations that employees’ reviews and appraisals are carried out annually. This leads to the question of how the employees act in periods when they are certain that there are not subject under review. Such a situation may create tendencies of laxity by some team members. However, the action of a single individual will affect the entire organization or department. This is because of the nature of teamwork that exists where teams are comprised of individuals bearing complementary skills and co-joined by a common purpose, performance goals, and approach. It is common knowledge that teams are comprised of employees with different strength levels. Some employees are great team players, while others excel better when working alone.  This points to the need for developing training tools that will accommodate employees at different levels to ensure that they produce the best results. This requires the management to make critical decisions that will address the needs of the team. In such a case, consensus decision making will be ideal to accommodate team members with different strengths.

Consensus Decision-Making Process

A consensus is a team-based decision making that gives the individual team players power to voice in their views in matters affecting them. The consensus decision-making process has been noted to lead to higher levels of satisfaction in a group, generate higher interest in being engaged in a team’s activities, enhances the decision-making process, and ensures greater acceptance of decisions (Yang, 2010).

 The use of consensus decision-making process entails all parties including those in the minority raising their views. The presence of minority or dissenting opinions has been found to foster creativity in the decision-making process, especially based on the fact it encourages higher participation. Among the characteristics of this decision-making process is the ‘negative’ socio-emotional behavior and solution satisfaction, which have been noted to collectively lead to increased decision quality (Yang, 2010). It is, however, important to avoid the risk of falling to mob-thinking and moving along all the decisions without critically analyzing these decisions. Democracy is an example of consensus where decisions are reached following the majority.

Application of the Consensus Decision Making Process

Individuals who have individual strengths in most cases are known to act by solely making their decisions based on the belief their decision will be stronger in their decision making. Such individuals may feel out of place when engaged in situations where they are required to be in close contact with others during the process of decision-making. To encourage such members to fully take part in the consensus decision making, it is important to make the conditions for making the team decision conducive. On this, it noted that it is important to grant such members time to think over issue being addressed. This may be achieved by setting agendas of meetings beforehand. It is also important to ensure that every individual is given an opportunity to express his/her views during the decision-making process. In a situation where their opinions fall on the minority, it is important to establish how to encourage different ideas together before reaching the final decision.

A team-oriented person performs better in a team scenario. Such an individual is open to the contribution of other people in the decision-making process and understands the team environment adequately. For such an individual, it is easy to engage in a consensus decision making process. To ensure that these members produce the best results, it is important to put the focus on emphasizing how team members listen to each other, how they formulate and pose questions to each other and how they present their positions on different issues. This required the creation of an ideal team environment where employees feel free to share their views without fear. This is likely to lead to improvement in the quality of decisions.

Developing Employees with Different Strengths

Among the methods that the managers may take to develop employees with different strengths is coaching. This follows the realization that due to the complex and challenging environment, it is essential to manage human capital for utmost success. Coaching is noted to be an ideal method as it is known to respond to the needs and demands of the workplace and been indicated to be effective in correcting and improving team’s performance (Utrilla, Grande, & Lorenzo, 2014). The manager, in this case, would initiate the exchange through the provision of more information, support, and assistance.

Coaching is described as a one-on-one process aimed at helping others to improve, grow, and reach a higher performance level. It entails focused feedback and encouragement and raising awareness. This will be an ideal method as it enables and empowers people. Managerial coaching is a situation where the managers at an organization use coaching as a tool to assist the subordinate employees to attain a series of externally established organizational goals, as well as, enhance their job-related performance (Pousa & Mathieu, 2014). Application of coaching is bound to help employees recognize their cognitive and affective bias that may have affected the decision-making process.

References

Pousa, C., & Mathieu, A. (2014). The influence of coaching on employee performance: Results from two international quantitative studies. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 27(3), 75-92.

Utrilla, P. N. C., Grande, F. A., & Lorenzo, D. (2015). The effects of coaching in employees and organizational performance: The Spanish Case. Intangible Capital, 11(2), 166-189.

Yang, M. C. (2010). Consensus and single leader decision-making in teams using structured design methods. Design Studies, 31(4), 345-362.