Name: Collaboration Tip - Making decisions on a team
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T11:37:10.000Z
Duration: 3 min 1 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

One of the most complex aspects of any cross team collaboration is clarifying how decisions get made and by whom.

Adverbs of manner

If you step back and inventory the number of decisions that get made across your collaboration on any given day, you'd probably be shocked.

Large or small, simple or complex, decision making within partnerships are the gears that keep things moving.

And most decisions aren't made by people in leadership roles, contrary to popular belief.

In my experience working with cross functional partnerships, I found that confusion over decisions is one of the greatest impediments to productive collaboration.

In some cases, the wrong people make the decision, in others, people fight over who makes the final call.

Or there's confusion over information or timelines that impact decisions.

This can all lead to painful misunderstandings, unresolved conflict, and ultimately lower quality results.

And if you've ever found yourself standing between scarecrow arms, where people on different teams are blaming others for a decision gone wrong, you know what I'm talking about.

Let's make sure that doesn't happen to your collaboration and how you can avoid the mayhem that results when poor decision making strangles your best efforts.

For this activity, inventory the most critical decisions that get made between you and your collaborator to deliver the value you identified creating together.

10 to 15 vital decisions that produce impactful results will go a long way to strengthening your decision making.

If you're working with your team or as a team with your cross functional partner, brainstorm the list together.

For each of those 10 to 15 decisions, specify what's required to coordinate each.

Does someone have to provide someone else information by a certain time?

Do resources have to be allocated, are there meetings that must take place?

Do certain people have to approve project milestones that are completed?

In my experience, this is the place where people get surprised.

Oh, I didn't know you needed that by the second Friday of the month.

Or, I had no idea that aspect of your job took three days to complete.

Are the kinds of statements I hear quite often.

It's natural for each team to view any decision through their own lens and not consider what's required for their partner to participate.

This part of the process often reveals things about your collaborator you never knew.

And as that happens, you'll form greater empathy and understanding for their contributions.

Enjoy this part as it strengthens your confidence in your partner and your partnership.

Every new thing you learn about them brings you one step closer to a more fulfilling collaboration.

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Collaboration Tip - Making decisions on a team

ultimately

specific

process

vital