Have you ever sat through a meeting where your team took forever to make a decision? Where all you could think was, “Why can’t we just take a vote a be done with this?” Or perhaps you thought, “To heck with everyone’s feelings, I’m just going to choose!” Laborious decision-making can be a huge energy drain, and yet, if we rush to take a quick vote, we risk alienating almost half the group. To solve this, you can use a decision-making method called Bounded Consensus that blends participation with faster decisions.
The reason we don’t make faster decisions is the need for buy-in. The more people participate in the decision-making process, the more they grapple with the issues and learn about alternative viewpoints, the more likely they are to support whatever is ultimately decided. That’s why consensus, getting everyone in the room to agree, generates deeper commitment and remains the stated preference for many team leaders.
The problem with consensus is that it’s hard to achieve, it takes a long time, and you need everyone in the meeting (or on the call) to actively engage. We’ve all seen people sit through meetings half-asleep, saying nothing, more engaged with their phones than with the group’s discussion. And whether the meeting is face-to-face or virtual, the problem persists.
In the study The State Of Working From Home, Leadership IQ surveyed 3,706 employees currently working from home, and while there are differences between virtual and in-the-office meetings, it turns out that employees’ contributions in those meetings are fairly consistent. For example, 56% of people say that the contributions they make in meetings are the same whether they’re working from home or in an office. Meanwhile, 23% say the contributions they make in meetings are much, or a little, better working from home. And 21% say the contributions they make in meetings are much, or a little, better working in an office.
In other words, most people don’t change how much they participate in meetings, whether they’re at home or at the office. And for every person who’s more engaged during virtual meetings, there’s another who will participate less.
The goal is to increase participation from everyone in the meeting to get greater commitment to our decisions while simultaneously speeding up the process. And that’s where Bounded Consensus comes in.
Bounded Consensus is a sincere attempt at consensus, but it offers leaders (and meeting participants) an escape valve should true consensus prove elusive. Essentially, you’ll offer a fixed amount of time during which everyone in the group can discuss, debate and persuade. If consensus is not achieved during that time window, then either you as the leader decide or you put the issue to a vote.
Here’s an actual script you can use at the beginning of your next meeting: “Folks, the purpose of the meeting is to decide whether we should change the ABC standards. There are good ideas in all directions, so we’re going to take the next 60 minutes and explore the plusses and minuses of each approach. In an ideal world, we’ll see a general consensus emerge, and we might even all come to the same conclusion, i.e., consensus. But if we don’t get to a true consensus, then I’ll balance all the options and make a decision based on your input. The goal here is to get everyone’s best ideas while also giving us an escape valve, so we’re not stuck on this call for the next three hours.”
Putting time limits on any activity has the effect of speeding up the process by increasing effort and intensity. When you limit the discussion to 30, 60 or 90 minutes, you’re essentially telling your group, “Don’t waste time on extraneous conversations or going off on tangents; instead, jump in to make your best case. And don’t get stuck on minutiae because we just don’t have time.”
Some leaders will, of course, struggle a bit to enforce limits on group discussions. More than one million leaders have taken the test “What’s Your Leadership Style?” and the most common style is the Diplomat.
Diplomats prize interpersonal harmony. They are the social glue and affiliative force that keeps groups together. Diplomats are kind, social, and giving and typically build deep personal bonds with their employees. But while Diplomats typically have great employee engagement and support, their highly-collaborative style can sometimes lead to quick decisions taking longer than they should.
If you take the test and discover that you’ve got a Diplomat leadership style, then start more slowly with Bounded Consensus. Instead of giving your team 30 minutes to debate, make it 60 minutes. Or look at how long you debated when you last attempted consensus and then reduce that time by 30%.
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March 28, 2021 at 07:30PM
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How To Make Faster Decisions In Your Team Meetings - Forbes
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