Consensus decision-making effective in both communities and workplaces
If you’re in a leadership position — at work or in the community — you make decisions and oversee decision-making processes. Often it’s best to consult the people you are leading to reach a group decision. Voting may seem the quickest route to a resolution, but it isn’t the best way to enrol everyone. Worse, voting can silence voices and thwart creativity.
Formal consensus decision-making leads to broader engagement. I have been training leaders in formal consensus decision-making for more than 25 years, and here’s why I recommend it.
CIRCLE OF MORAL CONCERN
Slowing down your decision-making process and listening deeply to the people in your group also increases how much you care for them and how much you view them as people.
As a professor of psychology, neuroscience and behaviour, in the Rutherford lab at Mcmaster University, my students and I study the perception of social categories.
My students and I are interested in learning how people can increase their circle of moral concern. When people behave in ways that harm others, they may not be including those others in the circle of people they care about. The deep listening involved in formal consensus decision-making draws people into that circle.
EXPERTISE IN THE GROUP
If a problem is difficult, if there is expertise in your group that can inform and improve the decision at issue, or if a solution is going to be expensive, it’s a good time to consider a broad, robust decision-making process.
Perhaps the most critical times to use a durable consensus decisionmaking process are when a decision is going to be controversial, or if the success of the decision relies on enthusiastic acceptance.
I suggest a specific model called formal consensus decision-making, in which no proposal is adopted until every concern is heard, understood and addressed. This model, complete with charts, roles and procedures, was developed by Food Not Bombs, a volunteer organization dedicated to nonviolent social change.
Political science researcher Sean Michael Parsons discusses the formation of Food Not Bombs in his 2010 dissertation. He points to how historian Barbara Epstein discusses the relationship between 1960s movements (which shaped the politics and habits of Food Not Bombs) and Quakers.
In the Quaker religion, Quakers do not vote, but rely on “communal discernment” — listening for a truth that emerges when people listen to one another and together “in the Spirit.”
BUILDING CONSENSUS IN A UNIVERSITY
More than a year ago, I became chair of Mcmaster University’s department of psychology, neuroscience and behaviour. Since then, the department has not voted once.
My department uses formal consensus decision-making, and instead of policies, we have standard operating procedures. Where other departments have policies, bylaws and governance documents, we wanted something different, because creating bylaws can be contentious, enforcing bylaws can be worse and bylaws can’t anticipate unanticipated situations.
Instead, we now use a living document simply called, “This is how we do it.” This document was not ratified by vote. It was reviewed by the entire department in a process where we analyzed how we currently did things and how we hoped to change — a “gap analysis” process.
If you’re wondering how to get a group to agree to any kind of governance document without voting, let me tell you the story of how we ratified our “This is how we do it” document without taking a single vote.
IDENTIFYING VALUES
First, we created a core values statement, and today we measure all our practices and procedures against it. We started our core-values exercise in January with four large group meetings: faculty, staff, post-doctoral research fellows, graduate students and undergraduate students.
Representatives from each group met with our facilitator, who distilled the data she collected during those sessions, specifically the values that had been nominated in each meeting for every domain we discussed.
Finally, a small working group including representation from each of the large groups met to draft our core values statement. This draft went to the entire department with a request for feedback. After a final meeting of representatives, the core values were finalized.
Next, we had a faculty retreat to develop our “This is how we do it” document. In small groups and all together, we examined and discussed the fit between our department’s core values and this document.
We used notes from all discussions at the retreat to update the document and circulated it to the department for further comment. Now we have our way forward.
MAJOR BODIES USING CONSENSUS
In Canada, some major organizations are taking more inclusive and deliberative decision-making seriously. There are even two governmental bodies in Canada that have a consensus style of government, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories.
LISTEN TO DISSENT
Voting can silence voices. You may have been in a meeting at some point when a disagreement broke out and someone angrily suggested, “Let’s take a vote!”
All too often, that can be a way to silence dissent.
Why not try consensus at home, in your workplace, your church or faith community or your running club?
someone has to be aware,’” he said, referring to his children Maddie and Jacob, 14 and 12, at the time.
“That’s reasonable. So I told the guys my kids are at home alone, someone has to go to them. So I was conscious enough at that time to be aware. Then the other thing that went through my head was, I just bought these skates, maybe I will not get to use them again. Completely stupid.”
Eddie told me he had just recently joined this particular team. One of his new teammates was Jeff Matheson who said he was sitting next to Eddie as he collapsed on the bench.
“I say to the boys all the time – you know what saved Eddie Hickey that night, it was his two kids,” Matheson said with strong conviction. “I’m telling you right now, I’ve never seen anything like it … I’ll never forget it.”
Matheson remembers Eddie falling backward off the bench.
“I swear to you, those two kids,“he said, reiterating the idea Eddie fought through the attack to be with his children again. “I know it sounds cliché but I remember Eddie mumbling, ‘my kids are at home, somebody has to call my kids.’ And that’s before they lost him (he went unconscious).
“How he survived is because of those kids … I swear to that to this day.”
EDDIE’S TAKEAWAY
Eddie said he speaks about the experience often so that others may be in a position to help someone like him if the situation comes up. He remembers Arsenault’s smart question about being dizzy versus feeling like he was going to pass out, the importance of having AEDS in arenas, and that it didn’t necessarily matter that he entered the game in good health – not overweight, not a smoker and exercised regularly – that it could happen to anyone.
“At first, you get a little bit of that ‘why me?’ question going on,” he said. “I live my life the right way, excetera. But it didn’t take me long to flip that way of thinking to come to the conclusion, ‘why not me?’”
“It’s actually probably easier for me. I don’t have this big lifestyle shift to go through. I don’t have to lose 50 pounds, don’t have to stop smoking. I don’t have to start exercising and being active. It’s already part of my daily living that I don’t have to change. So, hopefully, the rest of it will kind of work out for me.”
Noting February is Heart Month, Eddie said he has talked about the importance of the Heart and Stroke Foundation since the incident.
“And I’ve spoken to a few other larger groups like on the insurance side,” he said, noting having critical illness insurance helped on the financial side of what he and his family went through.
“But, you know, the whole thing wasn’t so much an eye opener for lifestyle or whatever, but it was, what it taught me - and this is what I tried to get through with my Facebook post - just to appreciate the average day.
“Days where there is no drama, trauma or worry because a family member is sick or in crisis. We always look forward to the trips and other big items that we want, but they’re very few and far between. We have a lot of very average days where there’s nothing really going on but what I’ve learned is, those are good days. When I don’t have to worry about my kids or my parents who are, 84 and 78, but are healthy.”
His closing remarks on that Facebook post echo the sentiment very articulately.
“For everyone, enjoy the days when there’s no death, no conflict, no chaos, or even no celebration,” Eddie wrote.
“The ordinary day is a blessing that we shouldn’t overlook.
“Don’t wait to express those thoughts or feelings that are on your mind or in your heart. That’s why I feel compelled to share my story today - January 13. There’s no guarantee you’ll get that opportunity to share what’s inside of you tomorrow. January 14, 2011, almost didn’t happen for me.”