Another advantage is that you have a wider range of alternatives. You have more people coming from different cultures, different backgrounds, and different experiences. When you ask people, “What do you think?“, you’ll have a lot more input than just your limited sphere of information. So when you say, “Let’s look at different ways we could address this,“ you may have some very creative options that otherwise you might not have thought of yourself. Ultimately, you have a better understanding of the final decision.

If you have a group of people, all of whom need to achieve a goal, and you’re just a piece of that, it aids consensus. If you’re just dictated to, sometimes you don’t really agree with the direction that was taken. But when participants in group or team problem-solving are all involved in all stages of the discussion, then comprehension on the decision is high. Everyone thinks, “Well, maybe we didn’t do it the way I think we should have done it, but at least I was able to provide my input, and I understand where this came from.“

I sit on the National Board of Directors for the National Speakers Association – I’m the current President, as of this writing – and oh, we constantly discuss and argue and go back and forth about the way that we feel we should handle a particular situation. We don’t all agree. But when we come out of that it’s a team decision, it’s a group decision, and while I might not have voted that way, at least I understand exactly why we chose that course of action.

This leads to better acceptance and ownership of the decision, and this is key, because you want your team members to not only accept the decision, but to feel responsible for making it work. If you have one person who is the bottleneck on the team, who isn’t getting their information in in a timely fashion, who’s holding things up, you’re really going to have a challenge meeting the deadlines in place for that particular objective.