 Why do teams find it so hard to make decisions together? Well, in this next video, you are going to learn a simple framework that's going to help you understand how groups essentially make decisions together. This framework is also going to help you understand why collaboration essentially breaks down in most teams. The video that you're about to watch is a shortcut from a two hour live training video I run recently, where I really dive deep into the topic of the dynamics of group decision making and I gave some really useful tips on how facilitators can help groups through the decision making process. If you're interested in joining or participating in more events like this one, be sure to join our free community called Facilitator Club where we will be posting upcoming events. And in these sessions, in these live training sessions, you can ask any question you want about facilitation or workshopping and the AJ and SMART team are going to be there to answer those questions for you. Okay, I don't want to waste any more of your time. Let's just jump straight into the video. So why is collaboration broken? Before we try to understand this, we first need to understand how groups make decisions. So we need to understand the decision making process. And this is where we're going to get a bit complicated and go into a bit of theory, but this is going to be really useful for you and your future workshops and future facilitation gigs. Yeah. That's a word. But no, understanding the decision making process and a lot of people don't really go too deep into this. Understanding it is actually a core competency. That's a hard word to say. For every facilitator, any leader, any person who wants to work with a group, you need to understand how they make decisions. It's incredibly important. So I'm going to go over here and I'm going to teach you something. What camera do I look at now? This one? The other one. Okay, the other one. It looks so good actually. I'm going to be teaching you about the dynamics of group decision making, how people make decisions together. Now, so this is more of an idealized model. She's trying to write, oh no, oh my God. Yeah, we're grand. We're fine. This is more of an idealized model. And before we go into it, I want to draw something first. Can people see me? Yes. Okay. I'm so worried. Okay, right. That looks weird. So before we go into the idealized model of how groups of people make decisions, I want to explain to you two types of thinking that most people that every person actually engages in when they're engaging in problem solving or decision making. And that is the first one up is divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is all about, this is how I teach as well. It's manic. Divergent thinking is all about generating multiple ideas and multiple, yeah, multiple options to solutions. So this is the really fun phase of thinking. You can be incredibly creative. And then we have convergent thinking. Jeannie Mack, look at this. It's so cute. Going down. It's good. Convergent thinking then is where you need to start narrowing down your ideas, refining your ideas. So this is more of like an opening to let's say a workshop or if you're in a meeting, you're going to be generating multiple ideas to a certain solution or challenge. And then you're going to be trying to refine your ideas down and deciding on a particular one. Okay, so we're going to talk about the idealized model of decision making. What would happen in an ideal world if people could actually collaborate? So people come together. There's a new topic or challenge they want to try work on. I need my fans over here. And. Oh, no, not those type of fans. The actual fans. Oh, thank you so much, Jacob. Chaos. Thanks. That's actually lovely. Yeah. So in the divergent thinking zone, what people might think happens is that loads of ideas are generated here. And they're trying to solve a particular challenge. Loads of ideas. Each circle is representing an idea. And then they kind of come into this middle zone and they're listening to each other. Everyone's staying focused. Everyone is being really nice and they're not being taken away from the discussion. No one is being very dominant or loud or taking over any of the conversations. And then they nicely move in here to the convergent thinking zone where they reach a decision point, like we kind of said earlier. I feel like I'm repeating myself. But yeah, this is in an ideal world, but this isn't how we work and how human brains work. What normally happens in this zone here, in this middle zone. Use a different color. Oh! Say the name. Oh no! Okay, but I will be getting to the name. Don't worry. So what happens in this middle zone, I'll tell you exactly what we call this in a second, is that people actually go on tangents. People go off track completely. They can't kind of stay focused. They're getting distracted. Their energy levels are dropping. The more introverted people don't have a space to speak up because the more loud people, the more articulate people are so dominant that the introverted people's ideas are being sabotaged. So lots of really good ideas are being lost in this zone. Because yeah, there's no space for people to properly get out their views and express their views. So what Sam Caner calls this zone, and he acknowledges it, he calls it, I know Ellie, I'm getting to it, he calls it the groan zone. The groan zone, perfect name for it, but we decided to call it the messy middle because it is, it's chaos. It's absolute chaos. But I'm gonna leave the groan zone up here now because I'm gonna give a shout out to my boy Sam Caner and his colleagues who've come up with this amazing framework. And what this framework is actually called is the diamond of participatory decision making. I'm gone off track. No, I'm not. But no, it's incredibly important for facilitators, people leading groups, people working with groups to understand that this middle zone actually exists. It's actually a core competency to be able to understand this because understanding it means that you can figure out different methods, different skills, different techniques to help participants through this messy middle and to the convergent thinking zone. And what normally happens here, people really, really feel stuck here, unmotivated and that's when projects are prematurely abandoned, that's when teams usually kind of give up and say, look, the problem is too challenging, let's get back to this next week and they actually schedule in another meeting and the meetings could go on for months and months and months on one challenge just because they don't have somebody to help them through this very, very tricky, messy middle groan zone. I guess the two terms really, really confusing. But don't worry, we as facilitators can help people through this phase by using different skills that I'm gonna be teaching you in a second. Different techniques to help people stay focused, stay energized, they'll be using different techniques to make sure that everyone's listened to and they have a space to share their ideas so these poor introverted people can get their ideas out. Also, they're managing the discussion to make sure that everyone has a space to share their perspectives and I'm going on. You know what I mean. So, yeah, knowing this framework is really important as well when you're running a workshop or if you're running a meeting, we like to show this framework to participants at the very beginning because it kind of sets, oh, that's such a bad word. It sets expectations and lets people know how they're gonna feel because feeling stuck in here, feeling a bit like there's loads of miscommunications happening, feeling like the process is spinning out of control, that's a complete normal part of the decision-making process and telling participants this is really important because it kind of relieves a lot of pressure off these participants as well. They can kind of relax and go, all right, it's gonna feel messy, but that's normal. We'll eventually be able to get out here and come up with a well-defined solution to our challenge. So yeah, that's a tip. Use this framework at the beginning of your workshops to set expectations but also understand it deeply because this is incredibly important for you as a facilitator to know because knowing that this exists, yeah, it's a game changer going on. Oh, you're back! Oh, hello, welcome back. I hope you enjoy that video. If you're interested in watching more live training sessions like that one, be sure to join our free community called Facilitator Club and the link is in the description below. Get in there, be cool and join us. Okay, we're curious. We'd love to know, does your team also struggle with collaboration and making decisions together? Cause if they do, we'd love to hear about it. Share your experiences in the comment section below. Now, please leave because I need to clean my TV. Bye! Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you in the next video. And you're going to understand why facilitators are so important in helping children. In helping groups. In helping teams.