Mark Gorkin

There are lots of different ways that teams can choose to make decisions. They can put issues to a vote, they can just listen to an outside expert, they can make the boss decide – and those options don’t even scratch the surface of all the available decision-making approaches out there.

But the most commonly attempted decision-making process is consensus. From the Latin consentire (which means to act together or share in the feeling), consensus in a team context basically means that everyone agrees. (Sounds great, right?) Sure, your team has been asked to recommend some very tough cost-cutting, and it’s politically charged, but at least your team has consensus and is 100% unified around the plan. Worries about back-biting or passive aggressiveness can make even seasoned team leaders weary. But true consensus makes those worries go away.

So it’s going to sound shocking when I tell you that as great as consensus is, there’s one very big reason why lots of team members absolutely hate it…

Every decision-making process involves a trade-off between the quality of the decision (i.e. the breadth and depth of the buy-in) and the time it takes to make the decision. Taking a simple vote, for example, is a fast way of making a decision (plus the rules are simple and widely understood). But it doesn’t have wide or deep buy-in because whoever loses the vote is likely to be bitter and feel disenfranchised.

For example, if you’re on a strict no-carb diet and your team votes to order pizza for lunch, you’re likely to feel like the team isn’t sensitive to your individual needs. And that’s a pretty simple example; imagine how bad it gets when jobs are at stake.

Consensus, by contrast, engenders very deep and wide buy-in. The problem becomes the time it takes to achieve consensus. (Think of a jury that deliberates for days or weeks but still can’t convince those couple of holdouts that the guy is guilty.)

In our upcoming webinar, "The Deadly Sins of Teams," you will learn to use specific tools to leverage a diverse group of individuals to make decisions and take actions that are better, smarter and faster. The first 100 registrants get $50 off, so hurry to reserve your seat now. Learn more here.

Trying to reverse deep-seated opinions and get people to adopt a new way of thinking takes time and an extraordinarily keen persuasive ability. And that’s the tricky part about consensus; you can’t just shove ideas down peoples’ throats or even try to buy their support (e.g. you vote with me on this issue and I’ll support you in the next budget cycle) – because that’s not consensus.

The difficulty and time involved achieving true consensus can make involved parties start to hate it.

First, if you’re on the majority side trying to convince the remaining holdouts to think as you do, it can be both frustrating and fatiguing (you hear stories about juries that get into fights when stressful debates turn violent).

Second, if you’re on the minority side that everybody else is trying to convince, it can feel like you’re the victim of a gang mugging (an 8 on 1 debate is not fun, nor productive).

The third – and most counterproductive – problem with consensus is that true consensus is so elusive; the necessary debate often gets squashed, and important viewpoints never come to light. Imagine a curmudgeonly Senior Vice President watching a team debate and debate an issue and still not achieve true consensus. How many weeks, days or hours will he sit idly by before he gets frustrated and shouts, “Enough already! Since you people can’t decide, I’ll make the choice for you.” Team dynamics are damaged as soon as that happens because it violates the promise implicit within consensus, which is, “you folks on the team are totally empowered to make this decision, whatever it is.”

Too many leaders think you can start out attempting consensus and then if it gets too hard, just stop trying for consensus and do something else. Now, you can certainly try that, but it’s not called consensus. (I’ll cover how to use that technique in my upcoming webinar, The Deadly Sins of Teams.) Because of the delicate nature of convincing and influencing people, true consensus is an all-or-nothing phenomenon. Consensus implies a promise of real empowerment and a willingness to invest the necessary time.

Overwhelmingly, our research has found that team members would rather not even attempt true consensus if there’s a chance the boss will end up making the final decision. Interestingly, however, employees are fine with the boss making decisions – and they’re even happy to offer input when asked (I’ll show you a decision-making approach like this called the ‘Curious Captain’ next week) – but the one thing that drives team members absolutely bonkers is being told the team couldn’t make a decision fast enough so “the grownups are taking over.” (Even when team members are angry and frustrated at a teammate for blocking true consensus, they’re typically more irritated – even down-right peeved – when they believe their boss has stepped in and effectively neutered the team’s authority.)

Consensus holds the potential for great rewards when it works well. But it also carries serious risks. So if you’re not prepared to go all-in, you should probably choose a different decision-making process for your team. And who knows, you might actually find one that’s better suited to maximize the unique talents of your team members.

In our upcoming webinar, "The Deadly Sins of Teams," you will learn to use specific tools to leverage a diverse group of individuals to make decisions and take actions that are better, smarter and faster. The first 100 registrants get $50 off, so hurry to reserve your seat now. Learn more here.