3 Types of Decision Tools That You Should Have In Your Facilitation Toolkit
Without them no progress can be made. Without what, you ask? I’m talking about decisions. Just as in the real world, in a workshop or collaboration session decisions have to be made that can shape the present and future for a company. It all starts with a team to identifying the most suitable solutions through decision making. How can these types of choices be made? Well the use of Multi Layer Voting has been effective for many facilitators.
Anonymous Heatmap voting. The first of three layers, it requires no commitment. It’s used merely as a way to know what the team as a whole is interested in. The results will help give the conversation direction.
This type of voting is excellent when there are many options to choose from such as resulting from an ideation activity. Give 10 voting dots to each attendee. Help them to understand that there are no rules. They can choose to place one to two on a single sticky note representing an idea or even all of their dots on one solution that deeply resonates with them whether they anonymously created the idea or not.
Semi-Anonymous Strawpoll Voting. In this layer, voting is semi-anonymous in that the participants get to contemplate their decision before revealing it and themselves by posting a sticky dot with their name or initials on it. All participants should go up to the workspace at the same time to place their votes. At this point they are able to see who voted for what while not being influenced by each other.
Decider Vote. This vote belongs to one person and one person only. It is made by the stakeholder for example that is designated the “Decider”. If this title carries too much weight for the bearer we can call the person the “Tiebreaker”. Whatever you call this person, their job is to make the final decision and can be called on to do this more than once during the session.
Depending on the type of collaboration session you’re leading and activities you use, the types of voting will vary. For the most part, all of your sessions should always end with a final decision that the team can then make a reality. Otherwise, the event will resemble the end of a typical meeting and we surely don’t want that. As you apply these types of voting, I wish you a happy collaboration!