Reaching True Consensus at Work

How often do you find yourself in a situation where you need to reach a solution to a problem with your co-workers? How does your group go about it? Does your boss decide what to do? Does your group decide to vote and let the majority decide the outcome? Or do you try to reach a true consensus?

If you have been part of different groups, think about how you felt when your boss simply made all the decisions and distributed the tasks authoritatively. Compare it to the times when the group voted on what to do, who should do it, etc. And lastly, reflect on the time when you were engaged in a discussion where everyone contributed their opinions in order to reach a group decision.

When you finally reached a conclusion in each case, and dispersed to implement the goal, how engaged were you with the task at hand?

Here's an article that will discuss the pros and cons of each option, and how to go about doing the best option: Getting a true consensus.

Kayee once joined a workshop on teamwork, in which one particular activity stood out in relation to group decision making. The participants were split into three groups, each was asked to find answers to a list of questions. Each group had an appointed leader and were instructed to arrive at answers in different ways.

The first group was to have the leader decide on the answer if there was disagreement in views. The second group was asked to vote for the majority decision if there was not a unifying view. The last group was asked to discuss disparate views and get individual views across in order for a true consensus to be arrived at.

Then came the crux of the exercise. Which group came up with the most correct answers? It was the third group -- although they took the longest amount of time to reach a solution to their problem. The first group with the autocratic leader, although the most time efficient, had the least amount of correct answers. The second group that made decision by majority vote was in the middle in time efficiency and arriving at correct solutions when compared to the other groups.

This exercise simulates three group decision making processes and the most likely outcomes of each process. At times when we feel pushed to come up with solutions and decisions quickly, we often don't give ourselves enough time to explore solutions thoroughly. As a result we encounter problems later in the process.

Ever tried implementing a plan only to find out things that didn't occur to you or your team during planning? This is often the consequence of "pushing" for a solution in as short a time as possible. This is like the autocratic leadership situation above or at best, the majority vote situation.

Although true consensus has a trade off in taking a longer time to arrive at a solution, true consensus has the benefit of taking into account a diversity of perspectives and hence exploring alternative solutions more thoroughly, thereby reducing the chances of avoidable pitfalls.

You may have noticed that we're not talking simply about "consensus" but "true consensus". Why the pickiness in the use of words?

Here's why: a group that claims to have consensus where people agree for the sake of moving on but who don't really believe in the outcome of the group's decision is different from the type of consensus where the group truly agrees and believes in the decision. In fact, many people hide behind the curtain of false consensus.

Developing new ideas into a workable plan for implementation more often than not requires team effort. The beauty of teamwork is the diversity of views brought to the table.

Most companies have different divisions and some seem to have opposing views and goals. Marketing and production are the classic example of having dissenting views and goals. But when we bear in mind that everyone actually belongs to the same company, then for the good of everyone, we should actually be working toward the same goal.

Our differences come from the angles with which we approach a problem. The marketing division pours energy into thinking about ways to make products marketable. The production division focuses efforts in maintaining the quality of products. The administration division works toward streamlining working processes. If all these divisions are well aligned, and can agree on a common goal to achieve, then chances are everyone will be working effectively, productively and synergistically.

It is common practice nowadays to bring together people from diverse fields of expertise to find solutions to a complex problem. The aim is often to reach a true consensus, as true consensus results in better decisions and hence better use of new ideas. How to arrive at true consensus is the next question we will investigate.

True consensus is arrived at by individual group members airing their dissenting views and group members working their way through differences. Jeffrey Sachs, a prominent economist who acted as special adviser to former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, calls this process "analytical deliberation".

Sachs described how analytical deliberation was used when he was tasked by the World Health Organization to chair the WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (CMH). The CMH was asked to propose practical solutions based on economic costs and benefits to alleviate the health crises in Africa.

The CMH consisted of 18 commissioners including Nobel laureates, leaders of worldwide organizations and government ministries from the fields of health, economics, trade and finance.

Given such diversity in a group, Sachs wrote: "If you put people of strongly opposing views in a room together and infuse their discussion with data, background studies, and unhurried time for debate, it is possible to bridge seemingly irreconcilable positions among the members of the group."

As a result, the group formed a consensus on the relationship between poverty and disease, the reasons for the short life expectancies in poor countries and how much the rich world should help the poor world to invest in health. Challenging topics to discuss and debate but as highlighted by Sachs, it is possible to reach consensus.

Sachs wrote that the resulting report "found a wide audience, in part, because it was based on a broad and surprising consensus". A consensus arrived after much deliberation has the benefit of being well argued as many dissenting views have been taken into account.

Furthermore, from our experience in our work, a deliberated consensus has the benefit of team members' commitment to an idea or plan of action, because everyone involved feels they are engaged in the decision making and contributing to the outcome of the goal.

It is also useful to note the difference between debate and conflict. Where debate focuses people's attention on ideas and the differences in opinions regarding ideas and is a constructive process, conflict is focused on people and negative emotions for others and is a destructive process.

Making group members aware of this difference at the beginning of a meeting and instructing group members to debate and not get mired in conflict will set the expectations for accepted behavior and standards for working together on the outset. Group members also need to be aware of their own "inducibility" (Johnson & Johnson, 2006) -- their willingness to change their views based on convincing argumentation.

Whether you are a team member or team leader, you have a part to play in (truly) uniting the diversity in views to yield better decisions. Do you work by conflict or by debate? Are you "inducible"? Are you taking advantage of a diversity of views in your team to get better decisions? How can your group reach true consensus?