Which Vroom Yetton Level is Right for your Team?

In last week's post we discussed Vroom Yetton, a powerful tool for determining how groups will make decisions. By providing the leader with a thought process for determining the optimum level of involvement of others in the decision, this process allows the leader to make the rationale behind level of involvement clear to the team.

But how can a leader decide which level of involvement is the right one? Whatever choice is made, the reasoning behind it should be based on certain factors, including:

• Need for complete buy-in: The more commitment needed from the team to ensure effective execution, the more involved they should be.

• Learning opportunity for the team : If the team can use this problem to improve its capacity for making effective decisions in the future or to gain greater knowledge of the issue at hand, then ask them for more input.

• Criticality of the decision: If the decision is extremely critical, the leader may not have the freedom to allow very much involvement. On the other hand, the leader may decide that the importance of the decision warrants greater involvement by the team to ensure that they’ve fully vetted all options. Be sure to explain the rationale for whichever choice you make, and if you decide upon limiting team involvement, then identify other ways of gaining their commitment to executing this critical decision.

• Breadth of impact of the decision: The broader the impact, the broader the involvement should be. This will give you a greater opportunity to take all of the critical constituents’ viewpoints into account when you develop the solution, and when you plan implementation of the decision.

• Difficulty of execution: The more difficult the execution, the greater the need is to get the entire team involved. It may not possible for one person to foresee all of the things that will need to be done if you make the decision alone, and you don’t want to count on others’ engagement if they didn’t have skin in the game when the decision was made.

• Complexity of the problem : This factor can prompt you to go either way. One might argue that the issue is so complex that you need to get the full involvement of the team because no one person can have the necessary knowledge and breadth of understanding to make this difficult decision on their own. On the other hand, this very complexity may make it too difficult for the leader to explain the situation to the rest of the team, and thereby give them a credible role to play. This would require the leader to make the decision individually.

• Individuals’ knowledge or credibility on the topic: If the leader has limited knowledge on the topic, then bringing the rest of the team into the equation obviously makes great sense. If a member of the team was the one who lacks knowledge, then I would still recommend including that person in the discussions for two reasons. First, it will broaden their understanding of the topic; and second, a certain amount of ignorance about an issue can sometimes be a great vehicle for challenging the assumptions that everyone else accepts as true.

• Timing: If speed is of the essence, then the leader may not be able to involve the whole team. When the building is burning, you don’t want to be debating alternative escape routes if one person absolutely knows the one best way. Be careful, however, not to use this need for speed as an excuse for expediency versus effectiveness.