Group Decision Making and the Reflective-Thinking Process

Although there is no single method that a group must use to make decisions, research has shown that the reflective-thinking process is a particularly effective approach.8 The reflective-thinking process has five steps:

  1. Define the problem.

  2. Analyze the problem.

  3. Establish criteria for solving the problem.

  4. Generate possible solutions.

  5. Select the best solution.

In this section, we take a closer look at each of these steps.