Things in this Newsletter 🗞️

• 🌟 Continuous Improvement ideas

• 🧩 1. Relationships: The Foundation of Every Decis …

• ⚙️ 2. Decision Frameworks: Clarity Before Consensu …

• 🧮 3. Techniques: Tools, Not Magic

• 🔄 4. Retrospective Applications

• Quick Facilitator’s Tip

• 🔥 Things you might like

• 🧐 Facilitate or Plan with Jo

🌟 Editor's Note

Welcome to another Retro Newsletter. If this is your first time here, I highly recommend reading this newsletter first. It will give you the basics.

Decision-making is one of the most difficult tasks for any group.

Why? Because people bring invisible rules from their families, cultures, and early work experiences about who gets to make decisions, who doesn’t, who speaks first, who holds power, and what “agreement” even looks like.

Often these patterns are invisible to the group or team and sometimes even to the individuals themselves. Buried so deep in their unconscious that they don’t even know what’s happening.

This newsletter’s theme, Decisions, Decisions, explores how to make better group decisions by focusing on four layers:
1️⃣ Relationships
2️⃣ Decision Frameworks
3️⃣ Techniques
4️⃣ Retrospective Applications

While these ideas are not going to solve all the difficulties, they can help improve decision-making and create a starting point for greater visibility into implicit and invisible dynamics.

🌟  Continuous Improvement ideas

• Decision Log – Keep a shared record of major team decisions and who made them. It helps track patterns and prevents rehashing.

• Decision Debrief – Once a month, reflect: Which recent decisions worked well, and which ones didn’t? Why?

• Choice Fast/Slow – Experiment with making some decisions fast and imperfect vs. slow and deliberate. Learn when each approach works best.

🧩 1. Relationships: The Foundation of Every Decision

The best investment a group can make in its decision-making ability isn’t a framework; it’s deeper connections.

When relationships and connections are strong, people listen more fully, disagree more safely, and stay in conversation longer.
When they’re weak, even the best decision-making models collapse under stress.

Ask yourself and your team:

• Do we trust each other enough to share dissenting opinions?

• Do we stay curious when someone disagrees, or do we defend?

• Can we separate disagreement from disconnection?

Building connection doesn’t mean everyone needs to be best friends; it means emotional safety, mutual respect, and shared curiosity.

If you want better decisions, start there. That’s easier said than done, so what are the ways to make this happen? Start by creating agreements on how to work well together. Invest time in getting to know each other as humans, and we can often find ways to connect with each other even if we are very different. As humans, we are all of equal value by virtue of our existence. Role model behaviours that reinforce this and gently call out behaviours that don’t.

Work to raise the esteem of the individuals and the team. ^{(Esteem for me is the inherent value of a person, not the esteem based on external factors like success or money, but rather the internal, deep-seated knowing that I am valuable because I am me).} When people are able to operate from a place of value, they are less likely to operate from their defences. Team and Individual coaching go a long way to creating environments where people are safe, heard, and valued.

When these things are in place, decision making is 10X easier and faster, because people are able to debate and disagree with congruence and authenticity and from a place that isn’t about winning, but rather about finding a win (me), win (you/ team), win (the org context)solution.

⚙️ 2. Decision Frameworks: Clarity Before Consensus

Once connection is in place, the next layer is clarity.

Too many teams get stuck not because they can’t decide, but because they don’t know how they’re supposed to decide.

Are your decisions:

• Democratic? Everyone gets an equal vote.

• Consensus-based? Everyone supports the decision, even if it’s not their first choice.

• Consultative? One person decides, after input from the team.

• Delegated? A smaller group or individual decides on behalf of others.

There’s no one right approach; what matters is agreement on the process before the decision.

Unclear frameworks are where teams lose time, trust, and patience. Asking upfront, “How will we make this decision?” is a good way to start.

Some other ideas are to create an easy matrix that makes it clear who makes which decisions and what kinds of decisions they make. Who gives input into the process, and how or who will ultimately make the decision?

For example 😀 

🧮 3. Techniques: Tools, Not Magic

Techniques are the surface layer, useful, but not substitutes for clarity or trust.

Here are a few that can help groups find alignment once they know how they’re deciding:

• Fist to Five: Everyone shows their support level from ✊ (no) to 🖐️ (strong yes). Quickly surfaces where alignment exists or doesn’t.

• Dot Voting: Give each person 3–5 dots to place on options they prefer. Great for narrowing options.

• Money to Spend: Each person gets a “budget” to invest in ideas, showing where passion and value lie.

• Visualise Before You Vote: Have everyone mark where they currently stand on a scale (e.g., “Strongly Disagree” → “Strongly Agree”). It helps make differences visible before the debate begins.

Remember: these tools support decision-making, they don’t replace the conversation. These are very useful to visualise where the energy is before having a conversation. Sometimes, when we start with the conversation first, the loudest people steer the conversation, and our biases lead us to believe that what we are talking about is the most important thing or the idea with the most energy, but really, it was just the starting point or idea.

🔄 4. Retrospective Applications

Decision-making shows up everywhere in retros from choosing topics to prioritising actions.

Here’s how you can weave these layers into your retros:

• Relationships: Use check-ins and curiosity questions to keep connection strong before tough discussions.

• Frameworks: Before voting on next actions, clarify how the final call will be made. (“We’ll use majority vote” or “We’ll choose one we all support.”)

• Techniques: Try Fist to Five when deciding which experiments to run, or Dot Voting to select which themes to explore deeper.

When teams know how they decide, retros move faster, feel safer, and produce more meaningful actions.

Quick Facilitator’s Tip

Name the Decision Mode Early.
Before a meeting or retro, make it clear: Is this decision consultative, consensus-based, or delegated?

🔥 Things you might like

• 📑 Here is a PDF of Sam Kaner’s work, The Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making

• 🔄 Antoinette Coetzee and I run a Communication workshop focused on helping teams improve their communication and connections. For more, check out our brochure

• 🧩 Cara Turner has an awesome article and workshop on creative problem-solving. Check it out here.

If you have fun templates or tools you'd like to share, please get in touch, and I will see how to showcase them here.

🧐 Facilitate or Plan with Jo

Did you know I can help plan your next retro or facilitate it for you? I have packages available for facilitation, planning, or being a sounding board. [email protected] is the email address to use for contact.

I’d love your feedback on what you like or what you'd like to see changed.

Did you know? The term “consensus” comes from Latin roots meaning “to feel together.” Originally, it described shared emotion, not only shared agreement. ❤️

Till next time,

Jo